Birkbeck Law Review Annual conference 2019
'Dystopias here and now: Critical thought at the ends of time'
11-12 October 2019
Keynote speakers
Chiara Bottici
'The Art of Change Opera: An Ongoing Libretto'
Abstract: In this talk I will discuss the libretto that I wrote for Jean-Baptiste Barriere's philosophical opera "The art of change", which will premiere in New York City in Fall 2019. The opera describes the vicissitudes of a society that has decided to apply the principle of accelerated change to all and every aspect of social life. In the course of the main narrative shifts, such a society may or may not turn out to be the one we are currently living in. This is an ongoing libretto, meaning that it will involve a collective and open writing process. In this talk, I will present the libretto project and then discuss the way in which this form of metaphysical humorism can actually work as important philosophical tool to illuminate the paradoxes of the reality we live in.
Chiara Bottici is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. She obtained her PhD from the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) and taught at the University of Frankfurt before joining The New School for Social Research. She has written on myth, imagination, ancient and early modern philosophy, the Frankfurt School, psychoanalysis, feminism, contemporary social and political philosophy.
Patricia Tuitt
'Law and Dystopian Non-Violence'
Abstract: A particular challenge to critical legal theory is posed by the close and uncomfortable proximity between utopian and dystopian visions of society. Here I examine this problematic in the context of theories/philosophies which have provided the intellectual justifications for alternative dispute resolution (ADR). For a significant section of the UK population, ADR operates as a form of legal dystopia wherein they are divested of all capacity to challenge state violence and/or to pursue basic social and economic entitlements. Arguing that the criteria which determines which individuals should be effectively deprived of legal capacity are demonstrably, although not exclusively, racial in character, my task is to identify the various shifts in thinking/standpoint which critical legal scholarship would have needed to invent to avoid perversion of the utopian vision of a society in which disputes between individuals are resolved peaceably and cooperatively without recourse to law. I aim to achieve this objective through a close reading of a sample of works which have engaged with Walter Benjamin’s idea of “non-violence”.
Patricia Tuitt is a legal academic whose research covers the fields of refugee law, critical race and postcolonial legal theory and the European Union. Her many publications include the monograph, Race, Law, Resistance (2004) and the article, Walter Benjamin, Race and the Critique of Rights (2019). She is co- editor of Crime Fiction and the Law (2016). Formerly Professor and Dean of the School of Law at Birkbeck, University of London (2009–2017), she now directs an online academic resource in her name (patriciatuitt.com). Recent publications on her website include: The UK’s General Strike: Brexit and Critiques of Violence (2017) and Academic Judgement and the Force of Law (2018).
Sarah Keenan
'From historical chains to derivative futures: Title registries as time machines'
Abstract: For centuries, transferring ownership of land under common law was a slow, complex process requiring the construction of a chain of paper deeds evidencing multiple decades of prior possession. In 1858, colonist Robert Torrens developed a new system for the transfer of land in South Australia, where the land was understood by colonial powers as ‘new’ and without history. With the intention of making land a liquid asset, Torrens’ system of title registration shifted the legal basis of title from a history of prior possession to a singular act of registration. Analysing the structure and effects of title registration, engaging with interdisciplinary work on time, and taking H.G Wells’ iconic time travel novella as a point of departure, I argue that title registries can usefully be understood as time machines. Like the machine H.G Wells imagined, title registries use fiction to facilitate fantastical journeys in which the subject is radically temporally dislocated from the material constraints of history. As with time machines, it tends to be a transcendental white male subject who is most likely to survive this dislocation. With digitisation, registries are becoming faster than ever before, producing new possibilities for title travel. While based on fiction, the impacts of title registries are very much real, facilitating humanity’s arrival at racist, dystopic landscapes in the here and now.
Dr Sarah Keenan is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London, and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Race and Law. Dr Keenan completed her BA/LLB(Hons) at the Australian National University and her PhD at the University of Kent Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality. She has worked as the associate for Justice Margaret Wilson of the Supreme Court of Queensland and as a solicitor at Prisoners' Legal Service before coming to academia. She has previously held academic posts at SOAS and the University of Oxford Brookes.
For further details on the conference, including the Call for Contributions, see here.
Chiara Bottici
'The Art of Change Opera: An Ongoing Libretto'
Abstract: In this talk I will discuss the libretto that I wrote for Jean-Baptiste Barriere's philosophical opera "The art of change", which will premiere in New York City in Fall 2019. The opera describes the vicissitudes of a society that has decided to apply the principle of accelerated change to all and every aspect of social life. In the course of the main narrative shifts, such a society may or may not turn out to be the one we are currently living in. This is an ongoing libretto, meaning that it will involve a collective and open writing process. In this talk, I will present the libretto project and then discuss the way in which this form of metaphysical humorism can actually work as important philosophical tool to illuminate the paradoxes of the reality we live in.
Chiara Bottici is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. She obtained her PhD from the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) and taught at the University of Frankfurt before joining The New School for Social Research. She has written on myth, imagination, ancient and early modern philosophy, the Frankfurt School, psychoanalysis, feminism, contemporary social and political philosophy.
Patricia Tuitt
'Law and Dystopian Non-Violence'
Abstract: A particular challenge to critical legal theory is posed by the close and uncomfortable proximity between utopian and dystopian visions of society. Here I examine this problematic in the context of theories/philosophies which have provided the intellectual justifications for alternative dispute resolution (ADR). For a significant section of the UK population, ADR operates as a form of legal dystopia wherein they are divested of all capacity to challenge state violence and/or to pursue basic social and economic entitlements. Arguing that the criteria which determines which individuals should be effectively deprived of legal capacity are demonstrably, although not exclusively, racial in character, my task is to identify the various shifts in thinking/standpoint which critical legal scholarship would have needed to invent to avoid perversion of the utopian vision of a society in which disputes between individuals are resolved peaceably and cooperatively without recourse to law. I aim to achieve this objective through a close reading of a sample of works which have engaged with Walter Benjamin’s idea of “non-violence”.
Patricia Tuitt is a legal academic whose research covers the fields of refugee law, critical race and postcolonial legal theory and the European Union. Her many publications include the monograph, Race, Law, Resistance (2004) and the article, Walter Benjamin, Race and the Critique of Rights (2019). She is co- editor of Crime Fiction and the Law (2016). Formerly Professor and Dean of the School of Law at Birkbeck, University of London (2009–2017), she now directs an online academic resource in her name (patriciatuitt.com). Recent publications on her website include: The UK’s General Strike: Brexit and Critiques of Violence (2017) and Academic Judgement and the Force of Law (2018).
Sarah Keenan
'From historical chains to derivative futures: Title registries as time machines'
Abstract: For centuries, transferring ownership of land under common law was a slow, complex process requiring the construction of a chain of paper deeds evidencing multiple decades of prior possession. In 1858, colonist Robert Torrens developed a new system for the transfer of land in South Australia, where the land was understood by colonial powers as ‘new’ and without history. With the intention of making land a liquid asset, Torrens’ system of title registration shifted the legal basis of title from a history of prior possession to a singular act of registration. Analysing the structure and effects of title registration, engaging with interdisciplinary work on time, and taking H.G Wells’ iconic time travel novella as a point of departure, I argue that title registries can usefully be understood as time machines. Like the machine H.G Wells imagined, title registries use fiction to facilitate fantastical journeys in which the subject is radically temporally dislocated from the material constraints of history. As with time machines, it tends to be a transcendental white male subject who is most likely to survive this dislocation. With digitisation, registries are becoming faster than ever before, producing new possibilities for title travel. While based on fiction, the impacts of title registries are very much real, facilitating humanity’s arrival at racist, dystopic landscapes in the here and now.
Dr Sarah Keenan is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London, and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Race and Law. Dr Keenan completed her BA/LLB(Hons) at the Australian National University and her PhD at the University of Kent Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality. She has worked as the associate for Justice Margaret Wilson of the Supreme Court of Queensland and as a solicitor at Prisoners' Legal Service before coming to academia. She has previously held academic posts at SOAS and the University of Oxford Brookes.
For further details on the conference, including the Call for Contributions, see here.