The Caste Contract

If force, by its very nature, moves between two unequal bodies, then it also joins them in a torsion, rarely ever stopping short of violence between them. Where there is inequality, there is force (and all force on these unequal bodies is the force of law). Indeed, law itself — which is needed to regulate relations between unequal subjects even as it turns them into commensurate persons and things — is nothing but a moral regulation and political economy of force. This is why bodies and skins touching--or not touching--each other is the origin of all law, the primal scene of the theologico-juridical.

The most stirring parts of Bhimrao Ambefkar’s itinerary are concerned with this primal scene of politics, this originary force of law: the surreptitious move of the economy of oblique violence into the concentrated realm of political cruelty. In fact, Ambedkar is a tireless--in his own words--archaeologist of the simultaneously layered and concentrated…