Your World of Legal Intelligence
 United Kingdom | +44 (0) 20 7284 8080

Book review: Henrique Carvalho, The Preventive Turn in Criminal Law

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorAlan Norrie
Published date01 November 2018
Date01 November 2018
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/1362480618789215
Subject MatterBook reviews
/tmp/tmp-17U0l45hpm8E20/input 608
Theoretical Criminology 22(4)
Krasmann S (2007) The enemy on the border: Critique of a programme in favour of a preventive
state. Punishment and Society 9(3): 301–318.
Steiker C (1998) The limits of the preventive state. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 88:
771–808.
Henrique Carvalho, The Preventive Turn in Criminal Law, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2017;
224 pp.: 9780198737858, £60.00 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Alan Norrie, University of Warwick, UK
The Preventive Turn in Criminal Law reflects on how liberal criminal law undermines
itself through basic commitments it acknowledges then forgets. It develops a critical
basis for thinking about criminal justice based on Hegel’s idea of recognition, especially
in Kojève’s development of it. Here, the legal subject is taken in two ways: first, as the
abstract formal subject universally recognized with every other subject conceived simi-
larly. Onto abstract legal subjectivity are added various necessary but contradictory sup-
plements such as that of dangerousness. Second, abstract legal subjectivity is contrasted
with a deeper, immanent, form of recognition that imagines all subjects as concretely,
formally and substantively, equal, where as a necessary corollary, respectful co-presence
is political, but also operates in appropriate social, economic and environmental condi-
tions. Legal subjectivity thus points both to hypostatization and the creation of the dan-
gerous other within the standard liberal mode, and to the critical theme of emancipation
in a world fit for subjects for whom subjectivity is finally taken seriously.
In this brief comment I focus on the second critical theme which links Carvalho to
other recent work from outside law and is relevant to questions of, for example, tran-
sitional justice. In her recent book, Beyond Doer and Done To, Jessica Benjamin
(2018) talks about recognition as it relates to psychoanalysis and law. She argues in
psychoanalysis for the importance of what...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT