lawkeeping

“Secundra Bagh” operates as a historical trope in just this still-vital dialectical sense: for a frozen instant that it marks as such (recall the twitch of diachrony registered in the moving horse), this image puts into contact two apparently exclusive narratives—the stories of imperial lawkeeping and genocidal extermination, of a “Mutiny” and a “War for Independence,” of “our” peacekeeping and “their” unredeemed death—without enabling the matter to be settled into any (self-identical) thesis or meaning.

2016, Nathan K. Hensley, “[Introduction: Reading Endless War] Unburial Grounds”, in Forms of Empire: The Poetics of Victorian Sovereignty, Oxford, Oxon: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 30

The 176 verses of Psalm 119 celebrate the greatness and privilege of lawkeeping. “I delight in your commands because I love them,” the writer exults (verse 47). For such legalists as the Pharisees, however, the law wasn’t kept out of love for God or man, but out of greed and fear.

2017, Tompaul Wheeler, “To Kill a Mocking Son: Part 2”, in God Space: Daily Devotions for Teens; From All about Me to All about Thee, Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, →ISBN, page 154