In this essay, in other words, a “nigga” is a metaphor for black wickedness, black mens rea, which I will use to probe the intersection of morality, race, and class in matters of blame and punishment and politics. In that spirit, in profane language picked for its unparaphrasable power to focus attention on the implications of moral condemnation for racial justice and political solidarity, I use these jagged epithets here as part of a metaphoric redescription, in racial terms, of the criminal law's ancient subjective culpability or mens rea requirement. Nevertheless, used with the precision and reticence of a surgeon's hands, these vicious epithets can also suture the places where blood flows. Words can wound: more than mere vehicles for the expression of ideas or the transfer of information, words are deeds-acts with consequences-and the words “nigger” and “nigga” are two of the most violent and blood-soaked verbal acts in the English language. Some will find the N-word in my title jagged-edged and hurtful. Nigger Jim, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Jody Armour, Nigga Theory: Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity in the Substantive Criminal Law, 12 Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 9 (Fall, 2014) (162 Footnotes)
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