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Explores the aesthetic frames that mediate the sense(s) and experiences of justice
Sensing Justice examines the aesthetic frames that mediate the sensory perception and signification of law and justice in the context of twenty-first-century Spain. What senses do these frames privilege or downgrade? What kind of subjects do they show, construct, and address? What kind of affective and ethical responses do they invite? What kind of judgments do they invite? The book addresses these questions by moving away from the focus on narrative and through a close analysis of selected contemporary Spanish films-such as
Pan's Labyrinth, High Heels, Common Wealth, The Method, No Rest for the Wicked and
Unit 7. By creating new frames of perception and signification, the films analyzed challenge the senses of law and justice traditionally taken for granted and reconfigure them anew. Engaging with legal theory, film studies, aesthetics, and politics, Sensing Justice provides a compelling illustration of how law and justice are multisensory and embodied experiences.
Key Features:
. close analysis of films such as
Pan's Labyrinth, High Heels, Common Wealth, The Method, No Rest for the Wicked and Unit 7. engages with legal theory, film studies, aesthetics, and politics
. approaches law and film as multisensory, embodied practices
. draws on European case studies in a field largely dominated by Anglo-American discourse
Mónica López Lerma is Associate Professor of Spanish and Humanities at Reed College.
List of contents
Acknowledgements; Introduction: Sensing Justice; 1. Framing Aesthetics: Witnessing Francoism in
Pan's Labyrinth; An Aesthetic Approach to Human Rights Cinema; Viewers as Witnesses; Vidal: Franco's "Politics of Revenge"; Mercedes: The "Heroic Memory" of the Resistance; Ofelia: The Two Worlds and the Vigilant Imagination; Conclusion: The Return; 2. Campy Performances: Queering Law in
High Heels; Postmodern Re-Imaginings; The Persecution of the LGBTQ people under Franco; The Significance of the Performance for the Viewer; Law as Mother: Ethics and Justice of Care; Law as Performance: Ethics and Justice of Alterity; Judging Law, Performing Justice; Cinematic Judgment: Ethics of Response; Truth and Justice; Camp Aesthetics: Law as Queer Performance; 3. Dissensus in the Community: Disrupting Neoliberal Affects in
La Comunidad; Spain and the Neoliberal "Politics of Consensus"; The Regime of the All-Visible; Julia and the Consumer Society; The Community of Neighbors and the politics of Consensus; Charlie's Dissensus; Charlie and Julia: A New Community?; 4. The Sound of Protest: Acousmatic Resistance in
El Método; The Grönholm Method: Beyond Panopticism; The Split Screen: Framing the Space of the Visible; The Acousmatic Sound of Protest; 5. Surveilling Terror: Post-Western Topographies in
No Rest for the Wicked; Infinite Justice and the Ethical Turn; The Media and the Securitization of Space; Trinidad and the Politics of the Post-Western; Judge Chacón and the Topography of the Possible; 6. Policing the City: Haptic Visuality in
Grupo; 7. Mapping the City: The Production of Space; The Right to the City; The Construction of the Urban Space as Resistance; Conclusion: Law and Space; Conclusion; Bibliography.
About the author
Mónica López Lerma is Associate Professor of Spanish and Humanities at Reed College. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and a Graduate Certificate in Film Studies from the University of Michigan. She is the co-editor of
Rancière and Law (Routledge, 2018). She was editor-in-chief of
No-Foundations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Law and Justice from 2012 to 2017.
Summary
Sensing Justice examines the aesthetic frames that mediate the sensory perception and signification of law and justice in the context of 21st century Spain.
