Response to reviews
| Author | Henrique Carvalho |
| Date | 01 November 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480618784387 |
| Published date | 01 November 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
610 Theoretical Criminology 22(4)
be honoured, while failing to acknowledge the systematic limitations and the structural
violence operating against it, often with bitter outcomes for those involved, would be to
turn away from the validity of the moral drive to recognition.1 One possible way of
exploring the gap between the world of law and the lawful world would be to speak of a
position of partial, or broken, thirdness (Norrie, 2017).
Carvalho’s critique of liberal criminal justice is important for two reasons. The first is
that it renews the critique of criminal justice thinking as unconscious repetition. The
second is that it makes a critical theory of recognition available to criminal justice schol-
arship, and opens a door to recent developments in psychoanalytic theory. That these two
reasons might find a deeper connection is apparent from the language in which the first
is expressed.
Note
1. A good illustration here is the enduring search of family members for the bodies of their loved
ones decades after their murder in countries like Chile. Patricio Guzman’s film Nostalgia for
the Light is a moving depiction of a relentless commitment to moral thirdness in private and
public settings, as well as its vulnerabilities, in post-Pinochet Chile.
References
Améry J (1980) At the Mind’s Limits. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Benjamin J (2018) Beyond Doer and Done To. New York: Routledge.
Meister R (2011) After Evil. New York: Columbia University Press.
Norrie A (2017) Justice and the Slaughter Bench: Essays on Law’s Broken Dialectic. Abingdon:
Routledge GlassHouse.
Response to reviews
Henrique Carvalho
I am greatly indebted, and truly grateful, to Lucia Zedner, Peter Ramsay and Alan Norrie,
for taking the time to take part in this symposium, and for engaging so generously with
the book in their reviews. The opportunity to reflect on their insights and criticisms has
been a very humbling and enriching experience, not least because all three have exerted
significant influence over my work and thinking in this area, and this is evident in the
book. Participating in this symposium has given me the fulfilling sentiment that, rather
than being the end of something, the publication of my monograph represents merely the
beginning of what will hopefully be a long commitment to issues that are very important
to me. For these reasons, this short response will no doubt prove rather brief and inevita-
bly selective, primarily representing my immediate reaction to what I felt were some of
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