Hieros anthropos – an inquiry into the practices of archaic Greek supplication

This article examines the earliest literary evidence of ancient supplication practices in the archaic Greek Homeric epic tradition. It does so from a philological, linguistic, ritualist and theoretical perspective without however separating these elements as distinct and it aims to articulate a non-legalistic approach to the earliest evidence, as well as a hypothesis with regard to the sacredness of suppliants in archaic Greece before supplication became juridically regulated in Classical Greece by certain forms of law

The Dismantler

A short story about the pitfals of a new law, the General Act for the Dismantling of Normalising Power and Structures of Privilege, and, more philosophically, about the problems of institutionalizing progressive politics through law. Published in The Cabinat of Imaginary Laws, by Peter Goodrich and Thanos Zartaloudis: Returning to the map of the island of utopia, this book provides a contemporary, inventive, addition to the long history of legal fictions and juristic phantasms. Aimed at an intellectual audience disgruntled with the negativity of critique and the narrowness of the disciplines, this book will appeal especially to theorists, literati, lawyers, scholars and a general public concerned with the future of decaying laws and an increasingly derelict legal system

The Profanation of Revelation: On Language and Immanence in the Work of Giorgio Agamben

This essay seeks to articulate the many implications which Giorgio Agamben’s work holds for theology. It aims therefore to examine his (re)conceptualizations of language, in light of particular historical glosses on the ‘name of God’ and the nature of the ‘mystical’, as well as to highlight the political task of profanation, one of his most central concepts, in relation to the logos said to embody humanity’s ‘religious’ quest to find its Voice. As such, we see how he challenges those standard (ontotheological) notions of transcendence which have been consistently aligned with various historical forms of sovereignty. In addition, I intend to present his redefinition of revelation as solely the unveiling of the ‘name of God’ as the fact of our linguistic being, a movement from the transcendent divine realm to the merely human world before us. By proceeding in this manner, this essay tries to close in on one of the largest theological implications contained within Agamben’s work: the establishment of an ontology that could only be described as a form of ‘absolute’ immanence, an espousal of some form of pantheism (or perhaps panentheism) yet to be more fully pronounced within his writings

Asylum, refugee and immigration law studies: a critical supplement

Book synopsis: The book is designed to provide an overview of the development, meaning, and nature of international refugee law. The jurisprudence on the status of refugees, loss and denial of the refugees status, non-refoulement, asylum, problems and challenges of refugee protection, the law of return and the right of return, critical refugees and immigration law, and the role of international organizations in protection of refugees is revisited in the context of contemporary realities. The relationship between armed conflict, climate change, and human right violations induced refugees and the existing international refugee regime emerging will be succinctly highlighted and analysed in the book. This lucidly written and timely book will be immensely helpful to anyone grappling with the demonstrated inadequacies of international refugee law in real life situations today and desirous of the reorientation of its meaning and scope to cater for the changing needs and shared expectation of the international community in the 21st century

The Case of the Hypocritical

This paper analyzes the idea of critique as an idea, in relation to the problematic fiction of legal foundations. In doing so, it refers to the work of Giorgio Agamben and Jean-Luc Nancy. In particular, Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of the lapsus of right (jus) is explored in relation to the fiction of a Law of law and the notion of the Right to have rights. The paper argues for the conception of an immanent critique of law that seeks to have done with foundational judgments as primary to critique. To have done with judgment as primary is crucial as judgment is the way in which philosophies of law have attempted to establish their own justification while claiming that such a ground or justification comes from an external source. Instead, what is to be reconceived and in a preliminary way is that critique and its concepts are intimate to their problems and vice versa

Without Negative Origins and Absolute Ends: A Jurisprudence of the Singular

This paper is a preparatory analysis for a jurisprudence of the singular. Through a critical analysis of the negativity and the absolving character of the transcendental metaphysics of law and justice it reads mainly through M. Heidegger, Heraclitus, G. Agamben and J-L. Nancy a realignment of the questioning of justice that takes its provisional name in ‘dike’, at the point where the routes of ontology, the juridical and the political intersect and reveal the pseudo-propriety of their presuppositions. Without the transcendental dialectical discourse of the origin and its absolving-absolute ‘ends’, this paper re-poses the urgency of thinking the singular-multiple ‘right’ otherwise