Il linciaggio come paradigma della violenza politica

In this paper it is argued that lynching should be considered at the same time as the extreme of political violence and as the metaphysical foundation of social community. A historical and genealogical analysis of lynching should be integrated with a philosophical investigation to identify the essence of this peculiar political violence. In the first paragraph, the focus is on the relation between violence and law. In the second paragraph, this relation is applied to a case study, namely the lynching of black men in the Southern states. In the third part, the analysis deals with the political metaphysics of lynching through a Hobbesian approach. In the conclusions, I argue that this metaphysical framework is still working nowadays in different contexts such as social networks and media.