Lex fugit: on acts of legibIlity

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

This chapter debates the production of legal discourse as potentiality in popular culture, addressing the ways in which distinct media formats display “the legal imagination” as a magnet that intervenes in representing the breeches and eventually (re)shaping the legal pacts. By arguing that the law is a porous discourse that interferes in and is affected by structures, narratives and developments across different partitions of the sensible, the chapter takes a non-originalist position, contending that the negotiations between representation and the institution of law, by conflating the letter with the spirit, speak to the changing concerns of different communities over time, geography, ethnicity, gender, religion and age. The case-based argument pivots around representative points of crisis in the legal order, as they work to induce a crisis of legibility; rhetorically support the normative reading of the crisis; simplify and popularize crisis, and finally, convey a denunciatory reading of the crisis.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationLegibility in the age of signs and machines
EditorsPepita Hesselberth, Janna Houwen, Esther Peeren, Ruby de Vos
PublisherBrill
Pages97-112
Number of pages16
Volume33
Edition1
ISBN (Electronic)9789004376175
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2018

Publication series

NameThamyris/Intersecting: Place, Sex and Race
PublisherBrill

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