Material Violence & Material Bodies: Law, Precarity, and Gendered Foundations of State Building in Lebanon

Abstract

With the promulgation of the Lebanese Criminal Code in 1943, the newly independent Lebanese State designed and implemented its legal framework to control and regulate its citizens by intentionally exposing their bodies to material violence - whether merely permitted or directly committed by the State - for the purpose of serving the Lebanese State’s efforts to implement a specific vision of what a legitimate State and the legitimate Lebanese citizen should be. By means such as the categorization of bodies, State-implemented violence as a means of criminal punishment, regulation of sexuality and reproduction, and the legalization of violence and death as tools of governance, the State allowed legal, permissible, legitimate violence to seep and flow through the letter of the law. These processes both perpetuated and hinged upon gendered hierarchies of power and fostering differential precariousness among Lebanese citizens.