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One of the gravest forms of conduct against human beings. An exclusively human domain; at the top of the hierarchy of horrors that we are capable of committing.
There are many reasons why we condemn homicide, though not always. Many are moral reasons, directly related to the creeds of many peoples, to the secular pacifist currents that under various names have run through our thought, and even to the reasons of the bourgeois economy in its post-revolutionary phase.
To tell the truth, for a long time, and still today, deities and men alike have found homicide just. Typically in war, whether Holy or Ordinary. In such cases it is normally homicide on a mass scale, and then it is called slaughter, genocide… A gradation of quality.
In peace as in war, there are States (read: governments) in which homicide is recognized as a punishment meant for their own citizens. This is one of those cases in which homicide is considered acceptable conduct. A possible consequence of an act constituting an offence.
Alongside the penalty of imprisonment, alongside various measures restricting the person, the homicide of the person recognized as guilty is contemplated.
Being a punishment, homicide takes the name of capital execution. Capital because it concerns the head (caput): when the head is separated from the body, physically or in a broader sense, the event is irreparable. Homicide, precisely.
In pages often cited from M. Foucault, the account of a capital execution in Paris is recalled. It is 1757.
A slow execution, in which the scrupulous and deliberately prolonged suffering of the condemned man is both punishment and a lesson in the power of the King (read: of the government).
As always, when it serves to consolidate support for those who govern, the capital execution must be spectacular, must take place in public, and must put on a show.
No less important is the account of how the homicide took place, for those who were absent, for posterity. The press provides for this. What matters to the King (read: the government) is that it be clear that the condemned man showed he accepted the just severity of the punishment, and that the execution was severe, but not sadistic, not unjust.
Naturally, the lesson, the demonstration of the power of the King (read: of the government), works only if the square, the onlookers, the spectators, side with those who govern and not with the condemned man.
If the square sides with the condemned man, it is the King’s legitimacy to govern, not merely to commit homicide, that is called into question.
This is a case in which a homicide becomes a cause of aversion against those who govern. It is a case in which the exercise of justice brings about the fall of those who govern.
Yesterday came the news that the homicide, by firing squad, of the person guilty of a massacre in the USA will be broadcast live. Streaming. A film.
At the explicit wish of the American government, the whole world will be able to watch.
Translated with AI (Claude); the original Italian version is the authoritative one.
– Last Updated on 09.10.26 by wv
