Escrevendo além das distinções

Legal research is increasingly moving beyond traditional distinctions between socio-legal and critical legal thinking, black letter law and legal context analysis, “practical” law and “theoretical” justice, “objective” and “subjective” modes of writing and so on. Large parts of new legal research are moving towards an emplaced, embodied and material understanding of law that is both about the law itself and its theoretical and social context. In this chapter, I argue that this move should also be reflected not just in what we write but also in the way we write. I offer some observations on why these distinctions have already become obsolete in legal writing practice, despite the fact that they are unconsciously still practiced by most of us. I then suggest a few ways in which legal writing can move further in this theoretically rich yet emplaced and contextualised direction. Some of the most important steps are: to rethink of the essay as truly an essay (i.e., trial, experiment); to take risks by not striving for consistence above all but by allowing the text to unfold as a body in itself and a legal agent; to reserve a prominent position for the “I” in its affective, multiple presence; and to embrace the collective urge towards a more just law. I conclude by summing up the most important distinctions that we need to overcome, and by revisiting perhaps the ultimate distinction between law and justice

What’s missing from legal geography and materialist studies of law? Absence and the assembling of asylum appeal hearings in Europe

This is the final version. Available on open access from Wiley via the DOI in this recordData availability statement: Due to the ethical and legally sensitive nature of the research, ethnographic notes taken in court could not be made openly available. Appellant interviewees were not asked for their permission to share their interview transcripts in an online open archive because of concerns that they could misunderstand what was being asked for, or feel obliged to agree but subsequently feel less able to conduct free conversation in research interviews as a result, thereby negatively impacting on the quality of the data generated. Additional details relating to, and data resulting from, to a survey taken during observations of British asylum appeals between 2013 and 2016 are available from the UK Data Archive (persistent identifier: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852032).There is an absence of absence in legal geography and materialist studies of the law. Drawing on a multi‐sited ethnography of European asylum appeal hearings, this paper illustrates the importance of absences for a fully‐fledged materiality of legal events. We show how absent materials impact hearings, that non‐attending participants profoundly influence them, and that even when participants are physically present, they are often simultaneously absent in other, psychological registers. In so doing we demonstrate the importance and productivity of thinking not only about law's omnipresence but also the absences that shape the way law is experienced and practiced. We show that attending to the distribution of absence and presence at legal hearings is a way to critically engage with legal performance.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)European Research Council (ERC

Making Different Differences: Representation and Rights in Sexuality Activism

This paper argues that current iterations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) rights are limited by an overreliance on particular representations of sexuality, in which homosexuality is defined negatively through a binary of homosexual/heterosexual. The limits of these representations are explored in order to unpick the possibility of engaging in a form of sexuality politics that is grounded in difference rather than in sameness or opposition. The paper seeks to respond to Braidotti’s call for an “affirmative politics” that is open to forms of creative, future-oriented action and that might serve to answer some of the more common criticisms of current LGBTI rights activism

Mapping utopias: a voyage to placelessness

I have a map which indicates clearly and beyond any doubt the way to Utopia. I start the journey with a survival kit of paradigmatic egalities, noumenal legalities, and nervous ideals. However, the more I move into the uncartographied space, the more I realise that my survival kit is changing, to the point of becoming porous and permeable. The journey to Utopia is condensed to a log of phenomenological bracketing, where the immersion to the Lebenswelt equals the loss of oneself, and where the descent from the Transcendental to the Natural proves to be as meaningful as the escalating bracketing from the Natural to the Transcendental. The negation of Utopia (ou-topos) displaces not only my Utopia but also my egocentric quest for identity: the 'I' becomes 'me' before it vanishes, space becomes place, intentionality turns back to itself and retraces its path. The more I approach my destination, the more negation devours distance. When I finally arrive to the designated point, where, according to the map, lies Utopia, the only thing I discover is a map, identical to the one I hold, that indicates, clearly and beyond any doubt, the way to Utopia

The suspension of suspension: settling for the improbable

Using Amélie Nothomb's Stupeur et Tremblements, a novel that appeared in 1999 and shook the waters of the francophone literary world, this article analyzes the relation between love and law in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. In order to "fulfill" love, which is defined here more in the form of caritas and justice than erotic love, one has to suspend the legal, since the relation is one of mutually exclusive circularity. For this, the author engages in a critique of Derrida's "Force of Law," pointing to the omission of the circular and the internal from Derrida's analysis of the relation between justice and law. To address this, inspiration is drawn from Luhmann's ideas on love and law and the notion of suspension of suspension is introduced, which is defined as the perpetual possibility of internalized ignorance of the external other, whether the dyad refers to ethics and faith, law and love, or self and amorous subject

Knowledge-creating Milieus : firms, cities, territories

This book brings a radically spatialised approach to knowledge creation and innovation. It reintroduces an updated notion of milieu as the conceptual and material space of knowledge and innovation, and takes the reader on a journey through various theoretical approaches to knowledge creation, and how these reflect on an array of European urban developments. Innovation is now considered the main drive behind development, whether in firms, cities or territories, and spatialised knowledge creation its necessary premise. So far, economics have proven ill-equipped to provide the triangulation knowledge-space-innovation with a consistent analytical basis. This is largely due to the discipline’s unwillingness to grapple with the ‘interpretative turn’ which has radically changed, not only humanities and social sciences, but also enterprise praxes and organisational studies. After casting doubts on whether economics is capable of filling such a gap, the book explores the potentialities of a broadly understood hermeneutic approach to knowledge and innovation. The main outcomes are: (i) space is an essential intermediate in the connection between knowledge and innovation, (ii) a renewed notion of milieu provides the triad knowledge-space-innovation with analytical basis and operational power, and (iii) a fresh insight becomes possible on the significance and potentialities of the knowledge economy. A number of empirical investigations on European cases at various scales – organisations, cities, territories − challenge the above statements and suggest directions for policies in the post-modern economy

Discussion panel guest at the screening of Helen Knowles' film 'The Trial of SuperdebtThunderbot’

Discussion of the film 'The Trial of SuperdebtThunderbot’, drawing on issues of technology, art, law and the posthuman