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posits it against his concept of divine violence. Mythical violence, for Benjamin, is that violence which is both law-preserving and law-making. In Benjamin's analysis, mythical violence thus inevitably relates to existing state structures that prescribe, though laws, codes and norms, either a reaffirmation (preservation) of existing political structures or indeed the making of new laws and codes, thus also prescribing or reaffirming the normativity of
– perhaps by offering shelter or food – were subject to the same punishment. The Icelandic law code, Grágás , provided for similar consequences, equating the status of the newly outlawed to that of a wolf: ‘hann skal sva vida vargr heita, sem vidast er verold byggd, ok vera hvarvetna raekr ok rekinn um allan heim’ [‘he shall be known as a wolf, as widely as the world is inhabited, and be rejected everywhere and be driven away throughout all the world’] (Barraclough 2010 ). The use of animalistic metaphors to communicate the status of the outlaw is significant and