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Once considered a stepchild of social theory, legal criticism has received a great deal of attention in recent years, perpetuating what has always been an ambivalent relationship. On the one hand, law is praised for being a cultural achievement, on the other, it is criticised for being an instrument of state oppression. Legal criticism's strategies to deal with this ambivalence differ greatly: while some theoreticians seek to transcend the institution of law altogether, others advocate a transformation of the form of law or try to employ counter-hegemonic strategies to change the content of law, deconstruct its basis or invent rights. By presenting a variety of heterogeneous approaches to legal criticism, this volume points out transitions and exhibits irreconcilable differences of these approaches. Without denying the diversity of different forms of critique, they are related to one another with the aim of broadening the debates which all too often are conducted only within the boundaries of the separate theoretical currents.
List of contents
7 - 20 What's Legit? Introduction (Liza Mattutat, Roberto Nigro, Nadine Schiel, Heiko Stubenrauch)23 - 46 Against Law: The 1960s Anti-Juridical Moment in France (Laurent de Sutter)47 - 62 On Thinking and Feeling: The Law of Cultural Heritage (Susanne Krasmann)63 - 94 Intensive Listening: Unfolding the Notion of Justice Through Reading the Work of Lawrence Abu Hamdan (Fares Chalabi)97 - 110 Women in Europe: A Variable Geometry Citizenship (Alisa Del Re)111 - 128 Instituting Revisited: For a Materialistic Conception of the Institution (Paolo Napoli)131 - 156 "...as if it were a thing": A Feminist Critique of Consent (Daniel Loick)157 - 176 Rethinking the Law: Taking Clues from Ubuntu Philosophy (Franziska Dübgen)179 - 196 Specters of Critique: Hauntology and the Ghosts of Law (Peter Goodrich)197 - 216 On the Run from the Law: Alexander Kluge's "Yesterday Girl" as Cinematic Institution of Subsumption (Manuela Klaut)219 - 244 Genealogy, Paradox, Transformation: Basic Elements of a Critique of Rights (Christoph Menke)245 - 262 The Anarchy of Rights: On the Dialectic of Freedom and Authority (Benno Zabel)263 - 292 Deforming Rights: Arendt's Theory of a Claim to Law (Jonas Heller)
