Utility
In “The Principles of Morals and Legislation”, Jeremy Bentham defines “utility” as “that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness” (pg.14). Bentham’s utilitarianism is built on the idea that actions are morally right as long as they promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number. He argues that pain and pleasure are the two main forces that control human behavior, and that “utility” is the principle that connects moral reasoning with human wants and needs.
Peter Singer builds on this utilitarian theme in “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” where he argues that economically stabled individuals have a moral obligation to prevent suffering and death caused by lack of food, shelter, and medical care. Singer’s use of utility illustrates his claim that we should act in ways that reduce global suffering and increase well-being, even if it requires significant personal sacrifices that not everyone agrees on. He writes: “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.” (Pg. 231) This reflects Bentham’s idea of maximizing happiness and minimizing pain but applied to real-life global situations.
Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Batoche Books, 2000, pp. 14.
Singer, Peter. Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Philosophy & Public Affairs. Vol. 1, No. 3, Wiley, 1972, pp. 231.
Nomos
In “Nomos and Narrative,” Robert Cover defines the term “nomos” as the normative universe, in other words, a world of meaning shaped by law, stories, and social practices. For Cover, nomos are not just static rules but the lived experience of societies that are created through people’s narratives that define their interpretation of justice. Cover adds, “No set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning.” (Pg. 4) This means law is both a system of rules and a cultural framework within a nomos that people can abide by.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” illustrates nomos through the manner in which the people in Omelas accept their happiness, even though it relies on the suffering of a child. The town’s shared beliefs and values are shown when Le Guin writes, “They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all understand that their happiness… depends wholly on this child’s abominable misery” (Pg. 4). This understanding and the way they justify it make up the “nomos” in the town of Omelas. The people who leave Omelas are rejecting this narrative/ nomos and hence leave to look for a different way to live.
Cover, Robert M. Nomos and Narrative,Vol. 97:4, Harvard Law Review, 1983, pp. 4.
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, 1975, pp. 4.
Contrapasso
In Dante’s Inferno, contrapasso is the rule that punishments in Hell match the sins people committed. For instance, Dante describes fortune-tellers who tried to see the future, “Their heads, I saw, they were horribly distorted between the chin and where the chest should go. Each head was turned to the rear, and thus contorted, they all were walking backward, bit by bit, for their power to look before them had been thwarted.” (Canto XX, pg. 217). This contrapasso shows how their punishment fits their crime, for they wanted to look ahead,yet now they can only look behind. Dante uses contrapasso to show that justice isn’t random, but instead it’s reflective of choices because the punishment echoes the sin.
Michael R. Marrus’s “The Nuremberg Trial: Fifty Years After” shows contrapasso in real life through the way Nazi leaders were punished for their crimes. Marrus writes, “but will hold the perpetrators of these crimes to strict accountability in a day of reckoning which will surely come. Individuals would be held responsible, FDR and Winston Churchill repeatedly assured all who would listen. None who participate in these acts of savagery shall go unpunished,” (p. 563). This is a kind of contrapasso because the punishment was designed to fit the crime. Those who caused suffering faced consequences that matched what they did. The Nuremberg Trials used contrapasso to make an attempt at fair justice by connecting people’s punishments to their wrongdoing.
Alighieri, Dante. Inferno, 1321. Translated by Michael Palma, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2002, pp. 217.
Marrus, Michael R. The Nuremberg Trial: Fifty Years After. The American Scholar, Vol. 66, No. 4, The Phi Beta Kappa Society, 1997, pp. 563.
Imperialism
In the introduction to “Decolonization and Afro-Feminism,” Sylvia Tamale describes imperialism as a system where powerful countries dominate and exploit others, especially in Africa. She explains that “Imperialism and capitalism gave birth to colonialism, which has been kindled and sustained by the logic of fraud, lies, brutal repression, pillage, exploitation, and manipulation. Lies are spread through the power of language and discourse. ” (pg. 7). For Tamale, imperialism shapes laws, education, and gender roles, making it difficult for African societies to define themselves outside of Western influence.
Aimé Césaire’s “Discourse on Colonialism” also explores imperialism, focusing on how colonial powers dehumanize and exploit colonized people. Césaire writes, “Colonization = ‘thingification’” (pg. 42), meaning imperialism turns people into objects to be used. He argues that imperialism destroys cultures and identities, leaving lasting harm on both the colonized and the colonizer. Moreover, Césaire points out that this process is violent and corrupts the morals of the colonizers themselves, writing, “no one colonizes innocently.” (Pg. 39) This shows that imperialism is not only about economic gain but also about spreading harmful ideas and justifying oppression through racism and cultural superiority.
Tamale, Sylvia. Decolonization and Afro-Feminisms. Daraja Press, 2020, pp. 7
Cesaire, Aime. Discourse on Colonialism. Translated by Joan Pinkham, NYU Press; Monthly Review Press, 2000, pp. 39-42.
Reconciliation
In the documentary “Long Night’s Journey into Day”, the idea of reconciliation is explored through the stories of South Africans living through the aftermath of apartheid. The documentary shows how the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (or simply TRC) allowed victims and inmates to confront painful truths, seek forgiveness, and attempt to make amends with one another as a form of healing. As one of the victim’s family members said, “If you can forgive, then you are free.” Here, reconciliation means not just forgiving, but also acknowledging the harm done and working towards a more emotionally painless future.
In “No Future without Forgiveness,” Desmond Tutu explores the idea of reconciliation through the lens of South Africa’s journey after apartheid. He describes how facing painful truths and choosing forgiveness are essential steps toward healing. Tutu wrote, “To forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest. What dehumanizes you inexorably dehumanizes me. ” (Ch. 2 pg. 14) Here, reconciliation means restoring dignity to both victims and perpetrators by acknowledging the harm done and working together to amend the tragic events committed by the inmates. Like in the documentary “Long Night’s Journey into Day”, Tutu shows that reconciliation is not easy but that it requires strong honesty, empathy, and courage for true healing to happen between both parties.
Long Night’s Journey into Day. Directed by Deborah Hoffmann and Frances Reid, California Newsreel, 2000.
Tutu, Desmond. No Future without Forgiveness. Image, 2000, pp. 14.
Memorialization
In Marita Sturken’s “Cultural Memory in the Wake of Violence: Exceptionalism, Vulnerability, and the Grievable Life,” memorialization is described as a process through which societies remember and honor those lost to violence. Sturken writes, “But a significant number of memorials are built in response to wars, in which the dead have been effectively nationalized. War memorials memorialize those who died on one side of a conflict, and any memorial that speaks to lives lost on both or many sides of a conflict is extremely rare. ” (Ch. 5 pg. 68 ). She emphasizes that memorialization involves both remembering and making sense of traumatic events while trying to make meaning of whose lives are considered “grievable.”
In Marlene NourbeSe Philip’s “Zong!” Philip uses poetry to memorialize the victims of the Zong massacre, focusing on the silenced voices of enslaved Africans. She writes, “All that remains are the legal texts and documents of those who were themselves intimately connected to, and involved in, a system that permitted the murder of the Africans on board the Zong.” (pg. 196). Philip’s approach to memorialization is based on giving a voice to those erased from history. Her use of fragmented language and apparent randomness of word placement reflect the violence and mistreatment done to the memory of those enslaved.
Sturken, Marita. Cultural Memory in the Wake of Violence: Exceptionalism, Vulnerability, and the Grievable Life. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, pp. 68.
Philips, Marlene NourbeSe. Zong!. Wesleyan University Press, 2008, pp. 196.
Law
In John Locke’s “Second Treatise of Government”, law is described as a natural and rational principle that exists even before any government. Locke writes, “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone.” (Ch. 2) For Locke, law is about protecting basic rights such as life, liberty, and property. Additionally, everyone is bound by this law ultimately because they are human.
John Rawls, in “A Theory of Justice”, offers a different understanding of law. For Rawls, law is not just about natural rights but about fairness and justice within a society. He argues that laws should be chosen behind a “veil of ignorance” (pg. 721) where no one knows their place in society and hence the rules are created fairly for all. Rawls says, “Nevertheless, a conception of justice is to be the public basis of the terms of social cooperation” (pg. 724). In his view, law is a set of principles agreed upon by free and equal people to ensure fairness and equality within society.
Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. 1689, Project Gutenburg, 2003, Ch. 2.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press, 1971, pp. 721-724.
Silence
In “Silencing the Past” by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, he describes silence as a major factor in shaping history. He writes, “Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the making of sources, the making of archives, the making of narratives, and the making of history.” (pg. 26) For Trouillot, silence is not simply the absence of sound or speech, but it is a deliberate choice that determines which stories are told and which are forgotten. Silence, therefore, reflects power, and those who control what is remembered also control what is silenced.
In “Cultural Memory in the Wake of Violence,”by Marita Sturken, she discusses silence in relation to trauma and memory. She adds, “The uses of silence as a form of repression and enforced forgetting and also as a means to avoid the demands of retribution and revenge that come from remembering.” (pg. 65) According to Sturken, silence may represent an inability to speak about violence, loss, or injustice. It helps understand how communities remember and, at times, protect individuals from pain; however, at the same time, creating the risk of erasure of important truths.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the past: Power and the Production of History.Beacon Press books, 1995, pp. 26.
Sturken, Marita. Cultural Memory in the Wake of Violence: Exceptionalism, Vulnerability, and the Grievable Life. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, pp. 65.
Visibility
In “Ethnic Notions”, Marlon Riggs uses “visibility” to show how racist caricatures made Blackness visible in U.S. culture while erasing the humanity of Black people. Riggs demonstrates this through the repeated showcase of figures like the Sambo, Mammy, and Brute, arguing that these images “shaped the nation’s perceptions of Black people.” This form of visibility is hence restrictive rather than empowering: Black people are constantly seen, but only through stereotypes that justify social inequality.
Brenda Dixon Gottschild approaches visibility differently in “Digging the Africanist Presence”. She argues that Africanist aesthetics are central to American dance yet remain essentially invisible within white institutions. As she writes, “In the North and West, free and enslaved African American laborers, boatmen, and artisans were observed, copied, hired, imitated, and exploited by whites for their performative abilities” (pg. 88). This invisibility is not absence but erasure, allowing white authorities to take black movement vocabularies without crediting their origins. When read alongside Riggs, her work highlights a relevant contrast where blackness becomes visible when clarified through racist imagery, yet invisible when its artistic contributions challenge white ownership.
Ethnic Notions. Produced by California Newsreel, Infobase, 1987.
Gottschild D. Brenda. Digging the Africanist Presence, Praeger, 1998, pp. 88.
Resistance
In “March: Book Two,” John Lewis frames “resistance” as the combined practice of nonviolent action. Throughout the novel, sit‑ins, Freedom Rides, and mass demonstrations are shown as forms of resistance that reveal the brutality of segregation. Lewis emphasizes that resistance is not unprompted but strategic, rooted in training sessions where activists learned to “absorb the blows” without retaliating. This approach seen in the novel transforms resistance into a moral and political force, one that seeks not only to confront injustice but to reshape public perspectives.
Bill T. Jones offers a different but complementary understanding of resistance in “Dancing to the Promised Land”. For Jones, resistance comes about through artistic expression and the role of identity onstage. His choreography becomes a source where personal history, racial trauma, and queer viewpoints challenge common cultural narratives in society. At one point, Jones states, “My body is my argument”, a line that demonstrates his belief that movement itself can resist erasure . Compared to Lewis’s work, Jones’s work shows that resistance can take many forms, such as collective or individual, but also political or artistic, yet always involves confronting systems that seek to limit freedom and story.
Lewis, John. March: Book Two, Top Shelf Productions, 2015.
Dancing to the Promised Land. Directed by Mischa Scorer, Arnie Zane Dance Company, 1994.
Surveillance
In “Discipline and Punish”, Michel Foucault uses “surveillance” to describe the main mechanism through which modern power operates. In his explanation of the prison, he argues that surveillance becomes both continuous and internalized, effectively creating subjects who regulate themselves. Foucault’s discussion of the Panopticon illustrates how surveillance becomes a form of control where individuals behave as if they are always being watched, even when no observer is present. For Foucault, surveillance is not simply a technique but a way of control that extends beyond the prison, shaping schools, factories, hospitals, and other institutions.
Sarah Brayne extends this concept into the present, digital era in “Predict and Surveil”, where she examines how police departments use big data to expand the reach and intensity of surveillance. Brayne shows that modern policing relies on “data-intensive surveillance practices” (pg. 4) that track individuals across their lives, noting that the boundaries of police surveillance have now expanded beyond the traditional criminal justice institutions. Unlike Foucault’s model, Brayne’s account emphasizes algorithmic visibility, where data systems and not physical structures, produce new forms of monitoring. Together, these works show how surveillance evolves from a disciplinary technique to a data-driven technique, revealing how it can shape behavior and the distributing power.
Foucault Michel. Discipline and Punish The Birth of the Prison, Vintage Books, 1977.
Brayne, Sarah. Predict and Surveil, Oxford University Press, 2020, pp. 4.
Repair
In “Until We Reckon” , Danielle Sered uses the term “repair” to describe what accountability should look like in responses to violence. She argues that the criminal legal system focuses on punishment rather than healing, even though “survivors most often want answers, acknowledgment, and repair” (pg. 63). For Sered, repair involves meeting the needs of those harmed, and making sure the conditions that produced the harm are addressed, and supporting people who caused harm in taking responsibility. Her position for “repair” is a relational and community‑centered process, one that cannot be achieved through incarceration alone.
“Time for Reparations” expands the concept of repair to a global scale, showing it as a response to historical and ongoing state violence, colonialism, and racial injustice. Bhabha, Matache, and Elkins argue that repair must address not only individual harm but collective trauma. They emphasize that reparations involve both material and symbolic transformation, arguing that societies must confront the effects of exploitation to build equitable futures. When read with Sered’s “Until we reckon”, this work shows how repair operates across different scales where Sered focuses on interpersonal and community‑level repair after violence, while “Time for Reparations” highlights national and global obligations to correct systemic harm. Both works reveal repair as a practice of justice that requires truth‑telling, accountability, and structural change.
Sered, Danielle. Until We Reckon, The New Press, 2019, pp. 63.
Bhadha, Matache, Elkins. Time for Reparations, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
Mediation
In “What Is an Image,?” W. J. T. Mitchell uses “mediation” to describe how images operate as intermediaries between people, ideas, and social structures. For Mitchell, images are not just objects but active forms that shape how meaning is spread. He notes that images “stand in between the beholder and the world” (pg. 12), emphasizing that they affect emotion and political understanding. Mediation, in this way, is the process through which images shape relationships, between subjects and objects, and viewers and representations.
Nancy Fraser’s “Rethinking Recognition” approaches mediation from a different angle, arguing that justice requires transforming the mediating structures that shape how groups are recognized. For Fraser, institutions, norms, and cultural foundations mediate social value where they determine whose identities are recognized, whose are devalued, and how resources and respect are distributed. While Mitchell focuses on how images mediate meaning, Fraser shows how social systems mediate status and power. These works show how mediation is a process that operates across cultural and political systems, and images mediate what we see and feel, while systems mediate who is granted value and recognition.
W.J.T. Mitchell. What is an Image?, University of Chicago press, 1986, pp. 12.
Fraser, Nancy. Rethinking Recognition, New Left Review, 2012.
Labor
In “A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things”, Raj Patel and Jason Moore argue that modern capitalism depends on the continual production of cheap labor, work that is devalued, racialized, and/or feminized. They show how colonialism, slavery, and global supply chains create systems in which certain populations are designated as expendable sources of labor power. Patel and Moore write that capitalism relies on “cheap lives and cheap work” (Pg. 62), emphasizing that labor is not naturally cheap but made cheap through violence, coercion, and political decisions. In their argument, labor is a world‑ecological hybrid that combines human work, environmental exploitation, and the racial hierarchies that structure global capitalism.
Saidiya Hartman’s “Scenes of Subjection” reveals the historical foundations of this logic by examining how enslaved people’s labor was extracted through terror, coercion, and displays of domination. Hartman shows that enslaved labor was not only economically exploited but socially and emotionally manipulated, forced performances of joy, coerced obedience, and public punishment all served to normalize the act of black labor. While Patel and Moore analyze labor within a global capitalist system, Hartman exposes the specific, violent mechanisms through which labor was enforced through a racial hierarchy. Both of these works show that labor is never simply economic, but it is produced through power, racialization, and the shaping of human life into a resource to be used, controlled, and profited from.
Patel, Raj and Moore Jason. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, University of California Press, 2017, pp. 62.
Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection, Oxford University Press, 1997.
Embodiment
In “Docile Bodies”, Michel Foucault shows how modern institutions shape embodiment by training and disciplining the body into an efficient, compliant instrument of power. Through drills, routines, and surveillance, bodies become sites where power is enacted. Foucault writes that discipline produces bodies that are “subjected, used, transformed and improved” (pg. 136), revealing that embodiment is not natural but constructed through techniques that regulate posture, gesture and movement. In his writing, the body becomes a political object that is molded by institutions that seek to optimize and control it.
Andre Lepecki’s “Choreopolice and Choreopolitics” approaches embodiment from the perspective of movement, arguing that states regulate not only bodies but motion as well. Lepecki shows how policing limits expression by dictating where, how, and whether bodies may gather, protest, or appear in public space. At the same time, he identifies “choreopolitics” as the embodied practice of reclaiming movement where dancing, marching and refusing to disperse can be seen as a form of political resistance. While Foucault analyzes how institutions discipline the body into docility, Lepecki reveals how bodies resist through choreographies that disrupt the state’s control of space and motion. These works demonstrate that embodiment is a field of power and possibility that is shaped by disciplinary forces yet continually reformed through resistive movement.
Foucault, Michel.Docile Bodies, Pantheon Books, 1977, pp. 136.
Lepecki, Andre. Choreopolice and Choreopolitics, The MIT Press, 2013.
Exception
In “The State of Exception”, Giorgio Agamben argues that modern governments increasingly rely on the exception, the inaction of law, to consolidate power and redefine the boundaries of politics. He shows how states invoke emergencies to justify actions that fall outside constitutional norms, gradually transforming the exception into a permanent technique of control. Agamben writes that the state of exception becomes “the dominant paradigm of government” (pg. 2), revealing that legality and illegality blur when the government claims the authority to decide when rules no longer apply. In his account, the exception is not a temporary deviation but a feature of modern political order.
The Supreme Court case “U.S. v. Jones” demonstrates how the logic of the exception emerges in modern debates about surveillance and constitutional rights. The case centers on warrantless GPS tracking, raising the question about whether technological monitoring counts as a search and whether the state can bypass traditional legal protections in order to promote public safety. While the court ultimately ruled that attaching a GPS device without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment, the case reveals the tension between expanding state power and the limits of constitutional safeties. In contrast to Agamben, U.S. v. Jones shows how the exception operates not only in moments of declared emergency but also in everyday policing practices. Both works reveal that the exception is a disputed space where state authority, individual rights, and technological power clash against each other.
Agamben, Giorgio. The State of Exception, The University of Chicago Press, 2005, pp. 2.
United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012)
