In liberal democracies, we are often told that law is blind to appearance. Yet, the opposite is often true. Public law and policy repeatedly mobilise aesthetic categories—such as decorum, decency, and ugliness—to judge who belongs in public spaces and...
The Trump administration has felt like a nonstop emergency: bigoted attacks on trans people, immigrants, and civil rights in the name of a war on so-called wokeness; the rollback of environmental and public health monitoring; attacks on public employees and the labor...
The 1992 Mabo v Queensland (No 2) decision marked a watershed in Australian legal history, as the High Court formally rejected the doctrine of terra nullius and acknowledged the existence of native title. But legal revolutions are rarely what they seem. This...
‘The whole history of Palestinian struggle has to do with the desire to be visible.’ Edward Said On the evening of March 3rd, 1991, Rodney King, a 25-year-old Black American, was pulled over by LAPD officers after a high-speed chase. What followed was recorded by...
A resident holds a sign warning passers-by to slow down to reduce wakes that exacerbate flooded streets in a suburb of Houston, Texas, as U.S Border Patrol riverine agents evacuate residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey August 30, 2017. U.S. Customs and Border...
We are delighted to repost Brian Massumi’s latest essay, first published on his new Substack. The maturation of the modern nation-state coincided with a progressive becoming-immanent of power to the social field. Concepts such as disciplinary power,...
