Rancière and law

220 Pages·2018·0.921 MB·English

by  Etxabe, Julen, López Lerma, Mónica, Rancière, Jacques

Rancière and Law
T his book is the first to approach Jacques Rancière’s work from a legal perspec-
tive. A former student of Louis Althusser, Rancière is one of the most important
contemporary French philosophers of recent decades: offering an original and
path- breaking way to think about politics, democracy and aesthetics. Rancière’s
work has received wide and increasing critical attention, but no study exists so
far that reflects on the wider implications of Rancière for law and for socio-l egal
studies. Although Rancière does not pay much specific attention to law, and there
is a strong temptation to identify law with what he terms the ‘police order’, much
of Rancière’s historical work highlights the creative potential of law and legal
language, with important legal implications and ramifications. So, rather than
excavate the Rancièrean corpus for isolated statements about the law, this volume
reverses such a method and asks: what would a Rancière-i nspired legal theory
look like? Bringing together specialists and scholars in different areas of law, criti-
cal theory and philosophy, this rethinking of law and socio-l egal studies through
Rancière provides an original and important engagement with a range of con-
temporary legal topics, including constituent power and democracy, legal subjec-
tivity, human rights, practices of adjudication, refugees, the nomos of modernity,
and the sensory configurations of law. It will, then, be of considerable interest to
those working in these areas.
Mónica López Lerma is based at Reed College, USA, and Julen Etxabe is
based at the University of Helsinki, Finland.
Nomikoi: Critical Legal Thinkers
Series editors:
Peter Goodrich
Cardozo School of Law, New York
David Seymour
School of Law, City University , UK
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
Nomikoi: Critical Legal Thinkers presents analyses of key critical theorists whose
thinking on law has contributed significantly to the development of the new
interdisciplinary legal studies. Addressing those who have most influenced legal
thought and thought about law, the aim of the series is to bring legal scholarship,
the social sciences and the humanities into closer dialogue.
Other titles in the series:
Deleuze & Guattari: Emergent Law
Jamie Murray
Bruno Latour: The Normativity of Networks
Kyle McGee
Zizek and Law
Edited by Laurent de Sutter
Roberto Esposito: Law, Community and the Political
Peter Langford
Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality
Jacques de Ville
Hannah Arendt: Legal Theory and the Eichmann Trial
Peter Burdon
Adriana Caravero: Resistance and the Voice of Law
Elisabetta Bertolino
Rancière and Law
Mónica López Lerma and Julen Etxabe
Rancière and Law
Edited by Mónica López Lerma and
Julen Etxabe
First published 2018
by Routledge
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© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Mónica López Lerma and
Julen Etxabe; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Mónica López Lerma and Julen Etxabe to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the
authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
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and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing-i n- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: López Lerma, Mónica, editor. | Etxabe, Julen, editor.
Title: Ranciere and law / by Mónica López Lerma and
Julen Etxabe.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. |
Series: Nomikoi critical legal thinkers
Identifiers: LCCN 2017035344 | ISBN 9781138955134 (hbk) |
ISBN 9781315666563 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Ranciere, Jacques. | Law—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC K230.R358 R36 2018 | DDC 340/.1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017035344
ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 95513- 4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 315- 66656- 3 (ebk)
Typeset in Baskerville
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of contributors viii
Introduction: Rancière and the possibility of law 1
MÓNICA LÓPEZ LERMA AND JULEN ETXABE
PART I
Law without method 15
1 Jacques Rancière and the dramaturgy of law 17
JULEN ETXABE
PART II
From the rights of subjects to the subjects
of rights 43
2 Fight for your rights: refugees, resistance,
and disagreement 45
ARI HIRVONEN
3 Rancière and the legal subject: coming to terms with
non- existence 71
SUSANNA LINDROOS- HOVINHEIMO
4 Rancière, human rights, and the limits of a politics
of process 90
TOM FROST
vi Contents
PART III
Democracy, constitution, and the state 109
5 The constitution of the constitution: democratic
legitimacy and public discourse 111
ERIC HEINZE
6 Rancière and Schmitt: sons of Ares? 129
PANU MINKKINEN
PART IV
Law and aesthetics 149
7 Undoing law: public art as contest over meanings 151
PETR AGHA
8 Representing law ‘in’ the Holocaust or seeking the
unrepresented: undoing the legacy of Nuremberg 166
WAYNE MORRISON
9 Justice between terror and law 187
MÓNICA LÓPEZ LERMA
Index 205
Acknowledgements
This edited volume has been many years in the making; too many to remember
in detail at this belated hour how the idea might have originated in the first place.
P erhaps it had something to do with a workshop with Jacques Rancière in
2011 organized by the graduate students of the Department of Romance and
Literatures at the University of Michigan, where the editors had the chance to
meet and interact with Rancière – and engage in conversation over dinner.
T he idea was certainly in full bloom in Helsinki, where we organized a first
workshop entitled ‘Rancière and the Possibility of Law’ back in June 2013,
thanks to the generous support of the now- defunct Centre of Excellence for the
Foundations of European Law. The next year, a follow- up workshop was orga-
nized by Susanna Lindroos-H ovinheimo at Queen Mary University of London,
where we encountered some old faces and a number of new ones as well. The
editors wish to thank the participants in these workshops who have contributed to
the volume as well as those who, for one reason or another, were not able to make
it in its final form.
We would not wish to forget the unselfish task of those who anonymously
reviewed the various chapters; they must remain unnamed, though they certainly
know who they are. Dylan Holmes deserves to be mentioned for his invaluable
editorial assistance.
Finally we would also like to thank Colin Perrin at Routledge for his enthusi-
astic reception to our proposal for this volume and, in particular, Peter Goodrich
and David Seymour, the series editors of N omikoi: Critical Legal Thinkers , for their
encouragement, support, and patience throughout.
Contributors
Petr Agha is Director of the Centre for Law and Public Aff airs (CeLAPA),
Institute of State and Law, Czech Academy of Sciences and Senior Lecturer at
the Faculty of Law, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic. In the past he
worked in the Secretariat of the Government Council of the Czech Republic
for Human Rights (2003–2006), where he acted as a secretary of the Com-
mittee against Racism, and the Committee against Discrimination of Women.
Later he worked as an advisory to the vice minister responsible for human
rights issues. He has edited a monograph entitled H uman Rights between Law and
Politics , published by Hart Publishing (2017).
Julen Etxabe is Docent in Legal Theory at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and
worked as a Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (2014–2017).
His book, The Experience of Tragic Judgment , was published in 2013 by Routledge. He
has also edited several books, including L iving in a Law Transformed: Encounters with the
Works of James Boyd White (with Gary Watt, Michigan Publishing, 2014) and Cultural
History of Law in Antiquity (forthcoming from Bloomsbury). He was co-e ditor in chief
of No- Foundations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Law and Justice (2012 to 2017).
Tom Frost is Lecturer in Legal Theory at the University of Sussex (UK). He is
the editor of G iorgio Agamben: Legal, Political and Philosophical Perspectives (Rout-
ledge 2015). He was previously a Lecturer in Law at Newcastle University from
2010 to 2013. He is currently working on a monograph entitled L aw, Relational-
ity and the Ethical Life: Agamben and Levinas, to be published with Routledge.
Eric Heinze is Professor of Law and Humanities, Queen Mary University of Lon-
don (UK). He has also worked with the International Commission of Jurists and
UN Sub- Commission on Human Rights in Geneva and on private litigation before
the United Nations Administrative Tribunal in New York. His books include H ate
Speech and Democratic Citizenship (2016), The Concept of Injustice (2013), T he Logic of Con-
stitutional Rights (2005), T he Logic of Liberal Rights (2003), T he Logic of Equality (2003),
Sexual Orientation: A Human Right (1995) (Russian translation 2004), and the collection
Of Innocence and Autonomy: Children, Sex and Human Rights (2000). He is currently co-
authoring a book with Gavin Phillipson, entitled D ebating Hate Speech .
Contributors ix
Ari Hirvonen is Adjunct Professor in Legal Philosophy and Theory at Helsinki
University, Finland, where he acts as the Vice Dean in Research of the Faculty
of Law. He was a senior member in the Centre for Excellence in the Founda-
tions of European Law and Polity. He has written extensively on psychoanaly-
sis, political theory, continental philosophy, and phenomenology of law. He is
the editor of Law and Evil: Philosophy, Politics, Psychoanalysis (with Janne Porttikivi,
2010) and Polycentricity: Multiple Scenes of Law (1998).
Susanna Lindroos-H ovinheimo works as Senior Lecturer in Jurisprudence at
the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research focuses on legal theory and
EU law. Previously she worked as Lecturer in Law at Queen Mary University of
London, where she taught jurisprudence and legal theory. She is the author of
Justice and the Ethics of Legal Interpretation (Routledge, 2012). Lindroos-H ovinheimo
leads the three-y ear research project The Political Foundations of Privacy Regu-
lation 2017–2019 on the philosophical underpinnings of EU privacy law.
Mónica López Lerma is Visiting Associate Professor at Reed College (Port-
land, Oregon, USA). She is currently working on a monograph entitled Sensing
Justice: Aesthetics, Politics and Law through Spanish Contemporary Cinema (to be pub-
lished with Edinburgh University Press). Her work has appeared in a number
of international journals, including R evue interdisciplinaire d’études juridiques; South-
ern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal; Politica Comun; Conserveries Memorielles ;
and Journal of Law and Social Research. Her essay ‘Aesthetic Irruptions: Politics
of Perception in Alex de la Iglesia L a Comunidad ’ appeared in Rancière and Film ,
edited by P. Bowman (Edinburgh University Press, 2013). She was co-e ditor of
No- Foundations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Law and Justice (2012–2017) .
Panu Minkkinen is Professor of Jurisprudence at the Faculty of Law of the
University of Helsinki, Finland. From 2004 to 2011 he was Professor of Legal
Theory at the University of Leicester, UK. He was previously Deputy Director
and Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and served a three-
year term as Director of the Finnish Institute in London, a charitable trust
advancing cultural and academic co- operation between Finland and the UK
and Ireland. His books include S overeignty, Knowledge, Law (Routledge, 2009);
Järjen lait (Tutkijaliitto, 2002); and T hinking Without Desire (Hart, 1999).
Wayne Morrison is Professor of Law, Queen Mary University of London, UK,
and Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand. He was Direc-
tor of the University of London’s LLB for external/international students from
1999 to 2009 and has travelled and worked globally. His research and publica-
tions span criminological and legal theory, including topics traditionally outside
the canon, such as genocide and methods of representation and remembrance.
He is the author of Criminology, Civilisation and the New World Order (Routledge,
2006, Spanish edition 2012) and T he Politics of the Common Law (with Gearey
and Jago, 1st ed. 2009, 2nd ed. 2013).