Law and the Utopian Imagination

Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, Martha Merrill Umphrey

• Publisher: Stanford Law Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780804790819
• eBook ISBN: 9780804791861
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Jurisprudence
• Index: Law

Law and the Utopian Imagination seeks to explore and resuscitate the notion of utopianism within current legal discourse. The idea of utopia has fascinated the imaginations of important thinkers for ages. And yet—who writes seriously on the idea of utopia today?

The mid-century critique appears to have carried the day, and a belief in the very possibility of utopian achievements appears to have flagged in the face of a world marked by political instability, social upheaval, and dreary market realities. Instead of mapping out the contours of a familiar terrain, this book seeks to explore the possibilities of a productive engagement between the utopian and the legal imagination. The book asks: is it possible to re-imagine or revitalize the concept of utopia such that it can survive the terms of the mid-century liberal critique? Alternatively, is it possible to re-imagine the concept of utopia and the theory of liberal legality so as to dissolve the apparent antagonism between the two? In charting possible answers to these questions, the present volume hopes to revive interest in a vital topic of inquiry too long neglected by both social thinkers and legal scholars.

Index

Absurd, 62–63, 73, 77, 78, 79, 81–82

Adorno, Theodor W.: iconoclastic utopianism, 11; negative dialectics, 61, 62, 74, 75

Agamben, Giorgio, 53–54, 67, 68–69, 81

Alexander the Great, 65

Alphaville (Godard): aesthetics, 173n7; compared to Blade Runner, 168–70, 171–72; language, 161–62; plot, 158–59, 162–63; role of law, 156, 160–61, 163, 170, 171; rule of logic, 18, 160–61, 162, 163; storytelling scene, 162; technology, 158–61, 162–63, 165–68

Anarchism, 30, 36–37, 38–39

Antichrist, 16, 110, 111, 112, 113–14, 115

Antigone, 98–99n56

Apocrypha, 81

Arendt, Hannah, 76, 150–51n52

Aristotle, 66–67, 79

Art, madness and, 72–73, 77–78, 79–80, 81

Artaud, Antonin, 72, 78, 81, 82

Augustine, St., 53, 67–68, 109–10

Badiou, Alain, 66

Barbary Coast pirates, 111

Bellamy, Edward, Looking Backward, 2, 131, 132, 156

Benjamin, Walter: on anarchism, 38–39; Arcades Project, 41–43, 44, 45; cosmology, 45–48, 50; “Critique of Violence,” 25, 26–30, 32–37, 44, 55n1; “A Different Utopian Will,” 44–45; on divine and mythic violence, 25–30, 32, 36–37, 38; on evil, 46; Exposé, 43, 48, 49; “Fate and Character,” 51; on Fourier, 49, 50; influence, 40; legal theory, 12, 13, 24–34, 51–55; “On the Concept of History,” 43–44; Origin of German Tragic Drama, 36, 45–47; political thought, 40; on reality, 13, 40, 47, 50; on revolutions, 45; “The Right to Use Force,” 26, 30–31, 38–39; on Second Commandment, 12–13, 24–26, 34–...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Series Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Contributors
• Law and the Utopian Imagination: An Introduction
• The One and Only Law: Walter Benjamin, Utopianism, and the Second Commandment
• Law, Utopia, Event: A Constellation of Two Trajectories
• “What about Peace?”: Cotton Mather’s Millennium and the Rise of International Law
• Globus terraqueus: Cosmopolitan Law and “Fluid Geography” in the Utopian Thinking of Immanuel Kant and Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
• Dystopian Narratives and Legal Imagination: Tales of Noir Cities and Dark Laws
• Index
• Series List