Purpose

The role of the one who speaks is there­fore not the role of the legis­lator or the philo­sopher, between camps, the fig­ure of peace and of armistice, in that pos­i­tion of which already Solon had dreamt and also Kant. To estab­lish one­self between adversar­ies, at the centre and above them, to impose a gen­eral law on each and to found an order that recon­ciles: this is not at all what is at issue. At issue, rather, is the pos­it­ing of a right marked by dis­sym­metry, the found­ing of a truth linked to a rela­tion of force, a weapon-​truth and a sin­gu­lar right. The sub­ject that speaks is a war­ring – I won’t even say a polem­ical – sub­ject. 

Michel Fou­cault

Feel­ing that they were sym­bolic, we set up this web­site in the week of the 2009 G20 meet­ing and the protests that wel­comed it to Lon­don. For us, that marked the begin­ning of a crit­ical (legal) fight-​back. Neo­lib­er­al­ism is not just a per­ni­cious eco­nomic model but an integ­rated world­view. It became the way we live, the insti­tu­tional frame­work of our soci­ety, how we under­stand and ima­gine our rela­tions with oth­ers and the world. Neo­lib­eral cap­it­al­ism formed the real, its insti­tu­tions the sym­bolic and its ideo­logy the ima­gin­ary orders of our soci­et­ies in the last 40 years. A deeper affin­ity, an alli­ance, brought together greedy eco­nomic policies, polit­ical and legal mor­al­isa­tion and biopol­it­ical governance.

Law, a priv­ileged but not exclus­ive area for our inter­ven­tion, is no longer the form or the instru­ment, the tool or restraint of power. Law has star­ted becom­ing the very oper­a­tion, the sub­stance of power. Legal form is squeezed and under­mined by the privat­iz­a­tion of pub­lic areas of activ­ity and the sim­ul­tan­eous pub­li­cisa­tion of domains of private action. Legal con­tent, on the other hand, becomes co-​extensive with the oper­a­tions of power. The global biopol­it­ical turn and the new human­it­ari­an­ism mean that the main norm­at­ive claims of mod­ern law, typ­ic­ally human rights, have now become an integ­ral part of power rela­tions, that they pre­cede, accom­pany and legit­im­ise the pen­et­ra­tion of all parts of the world by the new order. Law acts as an empty sig­ni­fier that attaches to everything from pave­ment walk­ing, the ever-​present CCTV cam­eras (sur­veil­lance being the new vis anglais), to Iraqi lib­er­a­tion. It is auto-​poetically repro­duced in a loop of end­less valid­ity but is devoid of sense or signification.

But the signs from Athens and France, from Ice­land and the G20 protests are pos­it­ive. Over the last few years, this model of cap­it­al­ism, dereg­u­lated, free-​market, greedy, based on fin­an­cial gambling, cheap credit and dis­reg­ard for any value other than profit has come to crisis. Bail outs, nation­al­isa­tion, reg­u­la­tion aim at sav­ing cap­it­al­ism from its self-​generated implo­sion. At the same time, they have delivered a huge blow to free mar­ket idol­atry. The crisis of the eco­nomic model, some­thing accep­ted as the indis­pens­able bene­vol­ent back­ground of life, gives us a unique oppor­tun­ity to exam­ine the total­ity of the set­tle­ment of the last 40 years. The best time to demys­tify ideo­logy is when it enters into crisis. At this point, its taken for gran­ted, nat­ural, invis­ible premises come to the sur­face become de-​naturalised, objec­ti­fied and can be under­stood for that first time for what they are, ideo­lo­gical con­structs. The aim of crit­ical (legal) think­ing is pre­cisely to start this pro­cess and to exam­ine recent insti­tu­tional strategies as the indis­pens­able com­pan­ion of neo-​liberalism.

This is our time, the time of protest, of change, the wel­com­ing of the event. Crit­ical (legal) the­ory must be re-​linked with eman­cip­at­ory and rad­ical polit­ics. We need to ima­gine or dream a law or soci­ety in which people are no longer des­pised or degraded, oppressed or dom­in­ated and from that impossible but neces­sary stand­point to judge the here and now. (Legal) cri­tique is the com­pan­ion and guide of rad­ical change.