Showing papers in "Law, Culture and the Humanities in 2023"
TL;DR: In this article, the role of humor in relation to the law is discussed, focusing on its ability to serve as a diagnostic tool and even cure; and its weaknesses, limitations, and shortcomings.
Abstract: In this introduction, we outline several approaches to the role humor might play in relation to the law through the six articles contributed to this special issue and through important and more recent theories that have guided discussions of humor. We take up two aspects in particular when addressing the efficacy of humor: its ability to serve as a diagnostic tool and even cure; and its weaknesses, limitations, and shortcomings. Finally, we outline the specific contributions this special issue makes to the study of humor and the law and some new directions for research into humor and the law around affect, ethics, aesthetics, and politics.
TL;DR: The City We Became as mentioned in this paper explores the entanglement of legal personhood with jurisdiction and how the powers of jurisdiction are often exercised in racial directions, by rereading Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and parents involved in Cmty. Sch. No. 1.
Abstract: N.K. Jemisin’s speculative tropes in The City We Became capture a significant legal reality: the entanglement of legal personhood with jurisdiction and how the powers of jurisdiction are often exercised in racial directions. This article juxtaposes her novel with canonical case law, re-reading Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1 in order to show how speculative imaginings intertwine jurisdiction with the racialized legitimation of certain selves. The City We Became critiques the ways in which we overlook these entanglements of personhood and jurisdiction and offers new ways of envisioning collectivity.
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors analyze these events as a conflict about the articulation of postcolonial memory: how should the colonial past be remembered? Through Olson's theory of legality and affect and Marcuse's theories of repressive tolerance, they interpret this conflict as the negotiation of different legalities.
Abstract: Dutch colonizer Jan Pieterszoon Coen is remembered as a hero for establishing the spice monopoly and as a perpetrator who mass-killed the Bandanese population in 1621 in pursuit of that monopoly. After his statue in Hoorn fell off its pedestal in 2011, the municipality decided to restore it in disregard of protesters requesting the statue’s relocation to Westfries Museum. As a compromise, the municipality granted the protest a voice by providing the statue with an updated inscription that acknowledges Coen’s controversial legacy and an accompanying exhibition in Westfries Museum. In this essay, I will analyze these events as a conflict about the articulation of postcolonial memory: how should the colonial past be remembered? Through Olson’s theory of legality and affect and Marcuse’s theory of repressive tolerance, I will interpret this conflict as the negotiation of different legalities.
TL;DR: In this article , the authors explore three interconnected problems: how in modern mass society, the legal gaze works as a device that both traces and tracks the subject within the multitude; how the presence of a radical Other within our midst is troublesome for law and can turn society against itself in auto-immunitary fashion; and, finally, how the legal subject is prevented from speaking precisely by the legal procedures that are supposed to make them vocal, superimposing the legal truth over the truth of the Other.
Abstract: M is one of the most celebrated movies by Fritz Lang. Examining the movie as a ‘jurisprudential text’, the present article will explore three interconnected problems: how in modern mass society, the legal gaze works as a device that both traces and tracks the subject within the multitude; how the presence of a radical Other within our midst is troublesome for law and can turn society against itself in autoimmunitary fashion; and, finally, how the legal subject is prevented from speaking precisely by the legal procedures that are supposed to make them vocal, superimposing the legal truth over the truth of the Other.
TL;DR: In this article , the authors analyze the role of play and chance in the political maverick play with law and its consequences for the Rechtsgefühle of citizens, and they find that the plurality that characterizes culturally and medially determined forms of legality has a counterpart in an equally culturally inspired and mediatized form of totalitarianism.
Abstract: A principal element of law is the unpredictable outcome of its proceedings. This unpredictability has fueled the hopes of many and the fears of equally as many. In recent years populists and other political mavericks have become highly capable at exploiting the element of chance in law, aiming not so much to prove guilt or maintain innocence, but rather to reconfigure the judiciary affectively as a game of winners and losers. Populists’ legal and luysory tactics make it urgent to reconsider the relation between the fields of law and the humanities. By paying more attention to the genres and media of play and game we can better assess the ways in which contemporary actors are playing with law and exploring the limits of the rules of the game. Here, the plurality that characterizes culturally and medially determined forms of legality, as Greta Olson calls it, has a counterpart in an equally culturally inspired and mediatized form of totalitarianism. In analyzing the populist play with law, my guide will be Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, in which he considers law’s origin in play and chance. For Huizinga, play is serious, as is the law. The populist play with law is equally serious, since it may have serious consequences for the Rechtsgefühle of citizens.
TL;DR: In this paper , a minor genre often overlooked in the literature addressed to how historical trials are represented, discussed and remediated by cultural texts (such as films, novels, theatrical plays): graphic trial reports, representations of historical trials in the form of comics.
Abstract: This essay studies a minor genre often overlooked in the literature addressed to how historical trials are represented, discussed and remediated by cultural texts (such as films, novels, theatrical plays): graphic trial reports, representations of historical trials in the form of comics. Its focus is on the graphic trial reports published in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in the 1990s, more specifically on the dispatches published in weekly instalments in 1997 and 1998 from the trial of former Vichy functionary Maurice Papon (1910–2007), drawn and written by Riss (Laurent Sourisseau), and later published as Le Procès Papon (2017). By analysing this book’s peculiar sense of humour, the essay proposes to reflect on the following questions: What does it mean to regard criminal proceedings as a comedy? Can laughter constitute a serious response to a trial, one that exposes the larger issues a trial broaches? What is the role of humour in the ‘affective life of law’, the capacity of trials to touch, move and affect the audiences that follow the proceedings in and outside the courtroom?
TL;DR: In this article , the authors consider the role of omniscient narration in the development of the "fellow-servant" rule in the nineteenth century and show how research on narrative might help to clarify aspects of trial strategy and legal doctrine.
Abstract: Research in law and literature often uses the term “narrative” as a shorthand for various kinds of motivated legal reasoning, indicating that facts, doctrines, and the relations among them have been chosen and arranged for a particular purpose. Alternatively, speaking of “narrative” may be a way of conveying that one is concerned with interpretation, and may be a signal that the discussion will focus on images, symbols, representations, or ideologies, even if their narrative features play little or no role in the analysis. This article shows how research on narrative might help to clarify aspects of trial strategy and legal doctrine. The first section considers omniscient narration as a way of understanding the effects of various defense strategies, in a criminal trial. The second section considers the role of omniscient narration in the development of the “fellow- servant” rule in the nineteenth century. The law of evidence provides an especially fruitful area for such investigations, but questions of narrative form and technique can help to clarify many other aspects of forensic argumentation and analysis, in both procedural and substantive contexts.
TL;DR: The Dark Knight as discussed by the authors explores the violent nature of governance as the wielding of fear and compares three different theories of justice to suggest the virtue is best defined by its fostering of social harmony.
Abstract: Christopher Nolan once described The Dark Knight as massively subversive, but scholars have been slow to realize just how accurate that confession was. Nolan’s Batman trilogy shows little interest in propagandizing on behalf of ephemeral partisan politics, but its films deeply engage fundamental political questions. Batman Begins explores the violent nature of governance as the wielding of fear and compares three different theories of justice to suggest the virtue is best defined by its fostering of social harmony. The Dark Knight centers on the question: Who rules? Nolan’s masterpiece sharply critiques democratic legitimacy in favor of something more primal: Those who can rule well should. And The Dark Knight Rises explores the nature of the demagogic class struggle most likely to lead to the collapse of social order. These films are not mere entertainment–they also constitute one of our age’s great meditations on power.
TL;DR: In this article , a close reading of Billy Budd and archival documents related to the adoption of the electric chair is presented to argue that the novella grapples with a fantasy of sovereign power similar to the one that drove execution reform efforts in New York.
Abstract: While Herman Melville was writing Billy Bud, Sailor, political elites in his home state of New York were overhauling their state’s death penalty. Their work culminated in the Electrical Execution Act of 1888. In addition to changing the state’s execution method from hanging to electrocution, the legislation introduced new policies and execution procedures aimed at projecting an image of law as majestic and inexorable in its operation. By bringing new discipline and secrecy to executions, reformers hoped that they could exert greater control over the public’s response to them. Through a close reading of Billy Budd and archival documents related to the adoption of the electric chair, I argue that the novella grapples with a fantasy of sovereign power similar to the one that drove execution reform efforts in New York. Efforts to achieve total control over life and death, Melville suggests, are bound to fail because they require a depersonalization of both the agent and the subject of sovereign power that is unjust and, mercifully, unfeasible. Neither Billy’s death by hanging nor the first execution by electricity in New York had the effects on the public’s responses to executions that elites desired. Ironically, though, the failure of efforts to control the meaning of executions may have made capital punishment more palatable to the public than it otherwise would have been.
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors examine the discursive conditions that make war legal and legitimate, and suggest ways in which improved communication can make war more legitimate and more legal in the absence of formal declarations of war.
Abstract: This paper examines the discursive conditions that make war legal and legitimate. In the Post-World War II period, when countries do not declare war, the gap between legality and legitimacy has widened, and wars are often neither. While other studies of war-declaring typically focus on the relations between states, this paper focuses on relations between citizen and government. In the absence of discursive declarations of war, it is unclear whether citizens are able to consent to war-making decisions. The paper surveys communicative blockages and suggests areas in which improved communication could make war legal and legitimate.
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors consider the legal effects of emotion and affect and ask what consequences they should have for the people involved, i.e., a show trial in the positive sense that as a performance shows and tells that it has read well what is brought before the court.
Abstract: In this article I aim to rise to the bait thrown my way by Greta Olson where she posits ( From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect, p.121) that law-and-affect scholarship is anti-narrative, and provocatively imagines that I would shake my head and chuckle, asking what one is to do with the questions asked by scholarship on emotion and affect in actual legal practice. As one spending most of her time in judicial practice I am not only firmly convinced of the importance of narrative in law, what is more, I often have to steep myself in the legal effects of emotion and affect and ask what consequences they should have for the people involved. I will therefore consider the trial as a performance, i.e., a show trial in the positive sense that as a performance shows and tells that it has read well what is brought before the court.
TL;DR: In her book From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect, Greta Olson argues for an expansive view of the legal, which encompasses both one's Rechtsgefühl and the sociocultural normative settings one is surrounded by as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In her book From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect, Greta Olson argues for an expansive view of the legal, which encompasses both one’s Rechtsgefühl and the sociocultural normative settings one is surrounded by. Acknowledging the existence of “a variety of competing nomoi” (Olson, From Law and Literature, p.7), i.e., diverse normative environments within a given legal order, notions of law as legality, and affect as law’s new Other are conceptualized as projects fostering legal pluralism. Yet, is such a pluralistic, diversified notion of legality able to challenge those normative legal-cultural conditions which still privilege cis, male, heterosexual, White, able-bodied, propertied non-immigrants? Agreeing with Roger Cotterrell that “[l]aw’s interpretive communities now reflect the patterned differentiation of the social” ( Law, p.100), and Olson’s claim that “ideas about law are negotiated outside of the courtroom, the parliament, or even the governmental office where law and legal ordinances are directly translated into everyday life experience” ( From Law and Literature, p. 20), this article examines how legality may speak back to law, in its professionalized, dogmatic sense, and to legal orders, and analyzes in which ways an understanding of law as legality may affect LGBTQIAP* rights activism. This critical queer theoretical perspective thus challenges Olson’s nomoi by approaching the limitations of legal affects for trans and queer legal subjects. By analyzing the design and logic behind two recent cases of anti-trans bills in the U.S., Arkansas’ HB 1570 (‘Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act’) and Idaho’s HB 500 (‘Fairness in Women’s Sports Act’) from a cultural studies perspective, this article examines how an expanded understanding of law as legality may affect the gendered, cis-ed, and heteronormative nature of the U.S.’s dominant legal order(s).
TL;DR: The relationship between superheroes and the law has most commonly been treated in terms of vigilantism or in relation to the concept of sovereignty as mentioned in this paper , however, the tendency has been to explore the concept in relation with its fundamental spatial organisation.
Abstract: In both Comics Studies and Cultural Legal Studies, questions about the relationship between superheroes and the law have most commonly been treated in terms of vigilantism or in relation to the concept of sovereignty. With regard to sovereignty, though, the tendency has been to explore the concept in relation to its fundamental spatial organisation. In this article, however, I would like to consider law and sovereignty in relation to time. In particular how they are linked to the regulation and control of stories that recount histories and with that determine how identities and the legal and normative frameworks that support them are imagined in the future. To do this the article firstly introduces the work of Robert Cover and his definition on nomos as a normative universe in which we dwell. To this I add the work of Scott Richard Lyons to talk about expressions of ‘rhetorical sovereignty’ in two superhero comics: Captain America: Truth: Red, White and Black, and Blue Marvel. These are read as examples of legal storytelling that seek to change the mode of public discourse; challenge dominant (racist) representations, and reset the debate in the search for and application of justice.
TL;DR: The authors argue that humour is a thermostat that senses public uneasiness and slowly activates social change, highlighting how sex workers employed unrefined bawdy humour to unearth their neglected rights and move towards more adequate rights.
Abstract: The vulnerability of sex workers in the porn industry is a heated debate within feminism. The UK 2014 Audiovisual Media Services Regulations and 2017 Digital Economy Act, which burden the production of online pornography, provoked sex workers’ Face-Sitting and Kink Olympixxx protests. This paper investigates how throughout these protests, humour communicates sex workers’ discomfort on this legislation. Arguing that humour is a thermostat that senses public uneasiness and slowly activates social change, this paper examines the two protests highlighting how sex workers employed unrefined bawdy humour to unearth their neglected rights and move towards more adequate rights.
TL;DR: This paper propose the notion of literary accountability as a conceptual device to recenter the debate around the normative objectives of human rights accountability, offer modalities for ensuring some form of responsibility attribution, and operate within the paradigm of legal accountability to push the boundaries of this paradigm.
Abstract: Human rights are increasingly described as in crisis. One reason for this is that existing legal accountability mechanisms cannot adequately deal with intricate and multilayered human rights violations that occur in vastly complex social contexts. Thus, if human rights are to continue to offer a widely accepted framework for thinking about (social) justice, we urgently need to revisit the very notion of human rights accountability in ways that allow for better protection as well as for a more ambitious normative project. This requires re-focusing the debate about human rights accountability on questions of human rights normativity. This article explores which roles literature can play in this regard. It proposes the notion of literary accountability as a conceptual device to (a) recenter the debate around the normative objectives of human rights accountability, (b) offer modalities for ensuring some form of responsibility attribution, notably where other accountability venues are closed or deemed insufficient, and (c) operate within the paradigm of legal accountability to push the boundaries of this paradigm. What each of these three manifestations of literary accountability have in common is that they foreground the need for a more forward-looking and multi-dimensional approach to accountability that seeks to reconnect the normative reality of human rights on one hand, with their imbrication in the concrete worlds of law, politics, and practicalities on the other.
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors examine the Netflix true crime series When They See Us (2019) as a form of popular legality and argue that the show criticizes structural racism in the US criminal justice system and emphasizes this critique on a level of affect.
Abstract: This article examines the Netflix true crime series When They See Us (2019) as a form of “popular legality” (Olson 2022). I argue that the show criticizes structural racism in the US criminal justice system and emphasizes this critique on a level of affect. More precisely, it is through an affective engagement of the audience with the show’s protagonists that When They See Us highlights how Black and Latinx communities are discriminated by US law and the criminal justice system. It thereby not only depicts African American and Latinx legal identities as marginalized by the law and legal system, but makes viewers able to feel them to be so. In addition, I argue that the show negotiates issues of testimonial injustice as one form of discrimination against People of Color in the US legal system. This negotiation of testimonial injustice also primarily takes place on a level of affect by inviting the audience to feel the effects that testimonial injustice has on the show’s protagonists.
TL;DR: In this article , a special issue on "Towards Legality and Affect" is devoted to Greta Olson's recent challenges to the discipline of Law and Literature in From Law & Literature to Legality & Affect (Oxford UP 2022).
Abstract: The contributions to this special issue on “Towards Legality and Affect” engage with Greta Olson’s recent challenges to the discipline of Law and Literature in From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect (Oxford UP 2022). They grapple with Olson’s reconceptualization of legality and her emphasis on the role of affect by way of case studies that include diverse media and transnational perspectives.