Critical Legal Conference 2011

Truth, critique and writing: Foucault, every-​day

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0
19 December 2011
Truth Critique and writing Foucault

The mys­ter­i­ous sequence of these seem­ingly uncon­nec­ted words made up the title of my present­a­tion for this year’s Crit­ical Legal Con­fer­ence. It took me a good few days after the con­fer­ence, how­ever, to fully grasp what I might have had in mind when I decided to assemble these ran­dom words into some­thing. To under­stand what that some­thing was, after all that time spent in a tedi­ous pro­cess of mak­ing sense, or more pre­cisely, after all that effort inves­ted into con­coct­ing a cer­tain logic that would con­nect these words so that they can re-​emerge as some­thing present­able, some­thing else, some­thing from the out­side had to inter­vene. This was a very unusual spec­tacle, that of arms stretched and legs lif­ted in the middle of a street in Aberys­twyth, ...
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The Derridian Performative & the Foundation of the Interim Transitional National Committee for Libya

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1
10 October 2011
Libyan flag above the communications tower in Al Bayda, Libya 2011-07-17

In March of this year Jean-​Luc Nancy pub­lished an art­icle entitled “What the Arab Peoples Sig­nify to Us” in the Libéra­tion news­pa­per. The art­icle sup­por­ted the NATO lead mil­it­ary inter­ven­tion in Libya. Alain Badiou penned an acerbic response, claim­ing that Nancy had mis­read the situ­ation in Libya entirely. The upris­ing in Libya was not at all like the events we saw weeks earlier in Egypt and Tunisia: there were no mass protests or pro­longed occu­pa­tions; very few women were involved and hardly any ban­ners or flags of protest at the ral­lies; sud­denly weapons were cir­cu­lated amongst the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion; and very quickly a “rebel coun­cil” had emerged that claimed to rep­res­ent the anti-​Gaddafi move­ment. For Badiou, Nancy’s sup­port of the ...
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Disrupting Links: Gender, Identity and Security

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3 October 2011
X-ray art by Nick Veasey

This paper is about, as the title indic­ates, dis­rupt­ing cer­tain per­vas­ive and seem­ingly obvi­ous links. First, the link between gender and iden­tity, wherein gender is assumed to be a stable, reli­able determ­in­ant of an iden­tity that also assumed to be fixed. Fol­low­ing from the assumed fix­ity of iden­tity comes a link to secur­ity, wherein the more pre­cise we can be in determ­in­ing iden­tity, the bet­ter secur­ity appar­at­uses, in this case those found in U.S. air­ports, can func­tion (as more and bet­ter inform­a­tion leads to more per­fect secur­ity). The exper­i­ence of trans­gender people exposes the tenu­ous nature of these links, as non-​normative bod­ies and appear­ances con­found their basic assumptions. In an art­icle describ­ing his exper­i­ence of hav­ing a heart trans­plant, L’Intrus, Jean-​Luc Nancy ...
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Towards an Acoustic Jurisprudence

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27 September 2011
Anechoic Chamber

In the same build­ing in which Bob Dylan recor­ded much of his sem­inal album Blood on the Tracks, there is a room within a room within a room. The out­er­most of these is lined with foot-​thick con­crete, the inner two have double walls of insu­lated steel. The cent­ral cav­ity floats on I-​beams and springs and is lined with fibre­glass acous­tic wedges more than three foot thick. This is the anechoic cham­ber at Orfield Labor­at­or­ies in south­ern Min­nesota. With back­ground noise levels at –9.4dBA (nine point four decibels below the nor­mal range of human audi­tion), it is offi­cially the quietest place on earth. If you were to spend any time in it, how­ever, you would prob­ably be sur­prised by what you heard. ‘The ...
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The Guise of Citizenship: Immigration & Liminal Spaces of Legality

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26 September 2011
m28_18302519

Like all obvi­ous­nesses, includ­ing those that make a word ‘name a thing’ or ‘have a mean­ing’ (there­fore includ­ing the obvi­ous­ness of the ‘trans­par­ency’ of lan­guage), the ‘obvi­ous­ness’ that you and I are sub­jects – and that that does not cause any prob­lems – is an ideo­lo­gical effect, the ele­ment­ary ideo­lo­gical effect (Althusser, Ideo­logy and the Ideo­lo­gical State Appar­atus ) I begin with this quote because it ges­tures at what I would like to explore: the fal­lib­il­ity of cit­izen­ship. I would like to ques­tion the “obvi­ous­ness” of cit­izen­ship in the U.S. within the con­text of immig­ra­tion and lim­inal spaces of cit­izen­ship. Why is cit­izen­ship con­sidered to be an inher­ent right or a right of birth? And when it is not a god given right, what of that space out­side the law? The space I would ...
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The Essence of Ecology: Uncanny Ipseities

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22 September 2011
Vortex Street

Full Title: Uncanny Ipseit­ies: pres­en­cing been­ness – worlding-​rootedness/​rooted world­li­ness – polit­ical dif­f­er­end : be-​ginning-​steering of the west as the be-​coming-​gliding of the east ** The main move of this paper is to con­ceive Heide­g­ger as a thinker about the essence of eco­logy and to be attent­ive to, to glide attent­ively in, the tem­poral, mater­ial and polit­ical uncanny call of this essence, to glide in the most uncanny with­draw­ing essence of speech, an essence of which mor­tals are an instan­ti­ation. The paper calls to be attent­ive to the call of the essence of eco­logy thus pri­or­it­iz­ing it over eco­nomic think­ing rather than the other way round. It calls for glid­ing, amidst the cur­rent dom­in­at­ing steer­ing con­cep­tions of time, mater­i­al­ity and polit­ics view­ing the ori­gin of the ...
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The Dis-​enclosure of Constituent Power: Tunisia, Agamben & Nancy

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21 September 2011
Sean Martindale - FREE

In much of the con­ven­tional ana­lysis, con­stitu­ent power is used to sig­nify an open­ing of con­sti­tu­tion­al­ism to its other. It is framed as an alter­ity that legit­im­ates and facil­it­ates the con­sti­tu­tion. As such, the con­stitu­ent moment has an intensely tem­poral qual­ity. It is either always-​already past or it is to come. Either way, its alter­ity to the con­sti­tuted order oper­ates as a legit­im­acy. It por­trays sov­er­eign power as spec­tac­u­larly at risk and vul­ner­able – the people may always come back, it claims. But on an every­day level, this vul­ner­ab­il­ity is enclosed by the intense secur­ity that the phys­ical force of the police and army bring. Con­stitu­ent power as alter­ity is thus a cap­tured and enclosed oth­er­ness that legit­im­ates the present state. Locke is ...
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Constitutionalism & the Time of the Political

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2
19 September 2011
Al-gorithm

In his book The Idea of Pub­lic Law Mar­tin Lough­lin out­lines three ‘orders of the polit­ical’ that under­pin and ori­ent pub­lic law. The first order begins with Carl Schmitt’s fam­ous for­mu­la­tion of the dis­tinc­tion between friend and enemy. Lough­lin con­tends that it is this decision or ‘deed’ that forms the found­a­tions of the polit­ical, upon which the second and third orders rest. As such, this dis­tinc­tion comes before the cre­ation of the state and before the cre­ation of law. The second order goes bey­ond this stage to include a state-​based pro­gram of gov­ernance. Here polit­ics takes its place as the sys­tem that oper­ates between the gov­ernors and the gov­erned in order to achieve a com­mon goal of secur­ity and sta­bil­ity. The ...
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The Hyper-​Hermeneutic Gesture of a Subtle RevolutionR

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1
15 September 2011
Randy Knott - A is for apple 01

Draw­ing upon the thought of Gior­gio Agam­ben, this paper focuses upon the poten­tial of a single act to change a polit­ical order. Agamben’s writ­ings on the excep­tion and the fig­ure of whatever-​being retain the pos­sib­il­ity for a paradig­matic ges­ture that opens up a space for a polit­ics not foun­ded on a form of belong­ing groun­ded in a par­tic­u­lar prop­erty or sub­stance, such as national iden­tity, race or religion. To illus­trate this event this paper turns to Agamben’s con­struc­tion of whatever-​being, the form-​of-​life that can chal­lenge sov­er­eign viol­ence and the cre­ation of homo sacer. The fig­ure of whatever-​being is con­struc­ted hyper-​hermeneutically. This term is chosen delib­er­ately. Agam­ben con­structs whatever-​being through sin­gu­lar paradig­matic examples. These examples serve as evid­ence for whatever-being’s exist­ence as a pure sin­gu­lar­ity, unable to be ...
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Critical Legal Conference 2011 — Having Been Before the Law

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14 September 2011
IMG_1505

In a slight break from our usual style and approach, and to cel­eb­rate the great suc­cess of the 2011 Critical Legal Con­fer­ence (organ­ized by the Depart­ments of Law and Inter­na­tional Polit­ics at the Uni­ver­sity of Aberys­twyth), crit​ic​al​leg​al​think​ing​.com will be post­ing a num­ber of the papers presen­ted. We hope those of you who could not make it will enjoy the fla­vour of Being Before the Law. As ever, those who wish to put their papers or other crit­ical legal or polit­ical the­ory on crit​ic​al​leg​al​think​ing​.com, are more than wel­come. Please email us through the usual channels.
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CLC 2011 — The power of life’s excess (contesting sovereignty from sites that do not exist)

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23 June 2011
Tbilisi Police.jpg

The stream pro­poses to engage with the con­tem­por­ary pos­sib­il­it­ies of res­ist­ance to everything that is or that can be asso­ci­ated with sov­er­eignty, power or dom­in­a­tion (sov­er­eign power, sov­er­eign prac­tices, sov­er­eign lan­guage, sov­er­eign thought and the law of the sov­er­eign) from the places, states and sites of what can­not be rep­res­en­ted, known, seen, or gov­erned. In other words, we attempt to think the excess, the bey­ond, the Real, the vir­tual, jouis­sance, the other of sov­er­eign power: instances that can­not be thought within what offers itself to be known and recog­nized as ‘polit­ics’, ‘law’, ‘lan­guage’ or ‘science’. The forms of res­ist­ance this stream aims to dis­cuss are not only mater­ial or an act­ive stand against the power of the law and the ...
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CLC 2011 — Time as Technology: Law? Justice? Atomic Fission?

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23 June 2011
Explosion

Crit­ical Legal Con­fer­ence 2011 The rel­ev­ance of time and tem­por­al­ity seems par­tic­u­larly per­tin­ent for crit­ical legal schol­ars inter­ested in themes of memory, trauma, for­give­ness, and post/​colonialism. How­ever, time also plays an import­ant role in cases that are not overtly con­cerned with “his­tory” as such. For example, ideals of justice are often ori­ented accord­ing to a par­tic­u­lar time in both case law, and con­sti­tu­tional draft­ing. Indeed, the “present” and the “future” fre­quently rep­res­ent the “time” of justice for law­yers, aca­dem­ics, and claimants. How does this notion of time shape what is at stake in con­ceiv­ing of justice? How might atten­tion to time alter how we ima­gine oth­er­wise? This stream will explore the poten­ti­al­it­ies of think­ing (or unthink­ing) through tem­por­al­ity and whether such ...
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CLC 2011 — The Fetishisation of Man by the Machine

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23 June 2011
Fetishisation of man by the machine

Crit­ical Legal Con­fer­ence 2011 From a clas­sical per­spect­ive, early soci­et­ies wor­shipped divin­it­ies, pur­sued grand nar­rat­ives and ideas, then moved on to fet­ish­ising machines and this stage has argu­ably been suc­ceeded by the fet­ish­isa­tion of man by the machine. In this age of late mod­ern­ity, the machine trans­fers its func­tions onto man, as man has become the object of the per­verse desire of the machine and the con­sum­ma­tion of its desire to func­tion at all costs. Once tran­scend­ent, man becomes exor­bit­ate, reduced to the pos­i­tion of a satel­lite orbit­ing his own tech­no­lo­gies; both socially real and at the same time a fic­ti­tious hybrid. The replace­ment of an organic rep­res­ent­a­tion of the world with an inor­ganic arti­fi­cial world­view and con­sequent real­isa­tion of the pos­sib­il­ity of syn­cret­isa­tion, ...
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CLC 2011 — Thou art a scholar: speak to it (The question of Derrida in the 21st Century)

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23 June 2011
April Hauntology Still from Julian House’s Phenomena And Occurences

Crit­ical Legal Con­fer­ence 2011 Der­rida ends Specters of Marx with an injunc­tion for the ‘scholar’ of the future: let the ghost speak, let the reven­ant return, learn how to live by keep­ing up com­pany with the specter. In the ‘age of tech­no­logy’ where human inter­ac­tion is increas­ingly facil­it­ated by a series of spec­tral media and where that spec­tral­ity has enabled polit­ical empower­ment and inter­ven­tion, we return to Der­rida to let his texts speak in con­tem­por­ary con­texts. What would be the res­ult of a return to Derrida’s work? What would con­sist in answer­ing Derrida’s spec­tral call? How can we let Derrida’s ghost speak in the 21st Century? This stream seeks to engage in the work of Der­rida and decon­struc­tion in order to answer ...
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CLC 2011 — Introducing Law (Perspectives and Methods)

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23 June 2011
Burchartz worker machine

Crit­ical Legal Con­fer­ence 2011 Most law degree courses start with one or more intro­duct­ory course to law. It is within these courses that stu­dents get acquain­ted with law, where it comes from, what it does and how a legal sys­tem is organ­ised and struc­tured. Usu­ally, the focus is on pos­it­ive law — the exist­ing law of the par­tic­u­lar jur­is­dic­tion in which the stu­dent is study­ing law. It means that intro­duc­tion to law courses are really intro­duc­tion to cur­rent Dutch pos­it­ive law, Eng­lish pos­it­ive law, etc. This stream seeks to explore the ideas behind such courses. It does so on the pre­sump­tion that in these courses the tone is (or can be/​should be) set as regards the aca­demic atti­tude we expect from stu­dents: an ...
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