Retributive Justice as an Affective Regime

Abstract

This study approaches retributive justice not by reducing it solely to the internal logic of criminal law or to a normative principle, but as an affective regime in which emotions, political discourse, and cultural codes are deeply intertwined. Contrary to the conceptualization of justice in modern legal and political thought as a rational and emotion-free domain, the study demonstrates that punitive judgments are constitutively woven through affective evaluations such as anger, moral injury, fear, and experiences of impunity. The study defines the concept of “affective politics” through the operation of emotions not as individual internal states but as socially produced, circulated, directed, and politically meaningful practices; it emphasizes that emotions draw boundaries between particular subjects and establish moral hierarchies. Within this framework, retributive justice produces an affective economy that determines which emotions are deemed “legitimate” and which reactions receive public recognition. Although the legitimacy of retributive justice is articulated through claims of “desert” and equality, the article argues that these claims are rendered fragile in practice by social position, cultural belonging, and affective proximity. Media and social media intensify public anger through melodramatic representations of crime, thereby strengthening punitive populism; justice acquires meaning within a public affective regime prior to legal procedures. Nationalism, in turn, may reinforce legitimacy production by transforming punishment into a political instrument through which national moral boundaries are reproduced rather than principles of equal citizenship. Along the axis of gender, experiences of femicide and impunity render visible the selective and asymmetrical operation of retributive justice; the failure of justice is experienced by women as a denial of equal citizenship. In conclusion, the study argues that the democratization of justice is made possible not through the suppression of emotions, but through a critical interrogation of which emotions are recognized, which are deemed legitimate, and on whose behalf they are articulated.