CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
From Hyper-Chaos to the Irreversible
My philosophical project of radical democracy stands on two foundational intertwined discoveries that offer a firm ontological grounding of power.[i] 1. The world is radically contingent but is simulated by a world that presents itself as necessary through potestas (power as domination) and Entelecheia (when becoming obeys an external finality). 2 Politics can only be grounded in democracy and democracy can only be grounded in Energeia (unqualified, anarchic, synergistic power). The point of this article is to show how both discoveries are necessarily grounded in what I consider the foremost radical philosophical creation of our times, perhaps of Modernity, Quentin Meillassoux’s Hyper-Chaos. Nevertheless, paradoxically, Hyper-Chaos concomitantly offers my project its primordial ontological mainstay: sheer contingency as the sole unfounded base of the world and thus of Energeia, and its...
ARTICLES
Blockupy Frankfurt Day 2: 17 May – for the freedom of assembly
23;32 CET: We close today's blog with a link to the excellent photo slideshow of Sterneck. 21:58 CET: One cannot doubt the importance of today's protests and their successfulness. What occurred in the Paulsplatz in particular had been declared officially and legally...
Blockupy Frankfurt Day 1: 16 May – Frankfurt effectively in ‘State of Exception’
21:45 CET: as we enter an unseasonably cold night, thoughts turn to tomorrow's activism. We're going to sign off the blog for today. Thanks for reading. (above) Water cannon stand ready between Eschenheimer Tor and Hauptwache. 20:55 CET: there are now about 100...
Police unilaterally abandon all Blockupy personal exclusion orders
The unsustainable unconstitutionality of the total shutdown of Blockupy is beginning to manifest itself. This evening (15 May) the Police HQ in Frankfurt declared that all person-specific exclusion orders relating to the Blockupy protests on 16-19 May, which banned...
Right to a pleasant shopping experience trumps right to demonstrate
The Blockupy Alliance have indicated their intention to appeal the decision of the Frankfurt Administrative Court yesterday in which but for two exceptions the total ban on protest declared by the Frankfurt authorities for 16–19 May was upheld. “If you read the...
Administrative Court upholds Blockupy-ban
The Administrative Court in Frankfurt has today (14 May) confirmed the general Blockupy-ban issued by Frankfurt's public order councillor Markus Frank. Likewise, the Occupy camp in Willy-Brandt Platz may also be 'temporarily' cleared away. The court did provide for...
Total Blockupy ban met with 14 May protest
The complete ban on any form of Blockupy protest, the proposed clearing of the peaceful Occupy camp, the Frankfurt council's stonewalling manner, and now the setting up of an exclusion zone (see picture) for named individuals across inner Frankfurt has forced party...
“We have fought hard to ensure that the event is prohibited”: Councillor Markus Frank (CDU)
"All Germans shall have the right to resist any person seeking to abolish this constitutional order, should no other remedy be possible." Basic Law Art.20(4). After a five-hour administrative court hearing today (Sat. 12 May 2012) Frankfurt am Main's Public Order...
As expected, Frankfurt Blockupy-ban used to clear Occupy camp
The activists must "temporarily" evacuate their camp in front of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt next week. The reason for this declaration of Frankfurt's Public Order Administration is the upcoming Blockupy protests - the one's the same administration have...
Stop the neo-liberal crisis politics – dispossess the beneficiaries!
New international call to Blockupy from attac academic advisors and others. Reposted from www.stop-neoliberal-crises-politics.org (in DE, FR, IT, ES there): We are experiencing the deepest crisis of capitalism since the great depression of the 30s – and the European...
Elections in Greece and France
The Eight of May was the Fête de la Victoire in France. It was also the day of François Hollande’s first public appearance as president-elect. The right-wing Le Figaro featured photographs of ‘deux presidents sous l’Arc de Triomphe’, in which Sarkozy managed to look...
Authorities define “violence” as any restriction of capital flows
As debate spilled over into a shouting match in the Hessian State Parliament concerning the effective ban of Blockupy protests this 16-19 May in Frankfurt am Main, the administrative decision that effected this ban has come to light. The key finding being that: The...
Blockupy Frankfurt!
MOBILIZATION- create digital and paper mobilization materials! post these online and share the links. - spread existing mobilization materials (send us your address so we can mail you printed flyers and stickers, and here are links to what we already have:...
Blockupy in Frankfurt: Die Linke seek to overturn Blockupy ban
The City of Frankfurt has attempted to close down demonstations planned for 16-19 May in the city's banking district by requiring that any public order discussions prior to general approval only be entered into if organisers guarantee that no violence or other illegal...
Institutional Xenophobia against Immigrants in Spain
Faced with the difficulty of explaining how the image of immigrants has been constructed by the migratory policies in the majority of receiving countries (as certainly is the case in the USA and the EU), many of us have turned on more than one occasion to the metaphor...
Argentina’s Expropriation of Repsol’s YPF (A Reversal of Fortune): Understanding the Decolonial Turn in Latin America
Far from being an implausible paradox, the difference between what is happening in Europe and in Latin America lies at the epicenter of a 500-year long farce: coloniality. In a monumental reversal of fortune, the peoples of Latin America are deconstructing coloniality...
Delinking, Decoloniality & Dewesternization: Interview with Walter Mignolo (Part II)
Christopher Mattison: To continue our earlier discussion about Bolivia in relation to “refunding” or “decolonizing”—you’ve stated on a number of occasions that capitalism or socialism, as they are currently constituted, are not the answers? One of the alternatives that you offer to this issue is “delinking.” Could you expand on what you mean by delinking in this particular instance and how it integrates into modes of dewesternization and the various layers of decolonization? ¶ Walter Mignolo: Let me first re-state that the world is currently moving towards both rewesternization and dewesternization. The political ambition of the US (announced by Hillary Clinton in Honolulu and followed up by President Obama) is to mold the Pacific into the American Century. This is in line with President Obama’s politics of regaining world leadership for the US, which was severely shaken by the presidency of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Obama’s famous discourse in Cairo was one of the first moves in this direction. The turn to the Pacific was the second. However, this move came too late because of the growing confidence of the remaining world, most specifically in the Pacific.
Trouble in the Garden: Critical Legal Studies & the Crisis
By modest reckoning 2012 is the fourth year since the Great Recession began. Over the last four years the victories won by socialist and trade unionist movements over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (universal health care, access to education,...
Notes on the ‘Loss of Sovereignty’
A standard justification for the cuts to public services, the policy of prioritising the repayment of private speculator debts over funding for hospitals and schools, the policy of converting private speculator debt into sovereign debt, is that ‘we’ have lost our...
The New Irish Constitution
Following the Irish Government's decision to modify the constitution of 1937 following a new constitutional convention, the Ice Moon Blog - which has contacts in the highest places in the Irish State - has been able to obtain a secret government memo with a full...
Debt as a Mode of Governance
Capitalism has complete control over life: it has “biopolitical” control. In the primitive society, debt is charged through the primitive inscription, or coding, on the body. Blood-revenge and cruelty address a non-exchangist power. In the despotic society, all debts become infinite debts to the divine ruler. In capitalism, all debts finally break free from the sovereign and become infinite by conjoining flows. With capitalism, debt is continuous and without limit: student debt, credit card debt, mortgage debt, medical debt. Whereas in the primitive system debt is incurred through inscription and, in despotism, exercised by divine law, in capitalism “the market-eye keeps a watch over everything”. In other words, the market-eye becomes the new normal that constitutes the biopolitical control around a weightless, infinitely circulating, immortal debt. We now live in the era of debt in which it is the soul of the individual that is imprisoned […]
When They Make a Battlefield of Her Choice: The Harassment of Women and the Right to Protest
When I first noticed their banner as I walked by Bedford Square, in London, I didn't think too much about it. It registered as a depressing example of the public expression of a position I had strong opposition to, not much more. It wasn't until sometime later that I...
KEY CONCEPTS
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SERIES / SYMPOSIA
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