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Deborah Charles Publications
Abstracts' Library
Authors D
Eve Darian-Smith, "Rabies Rides the Fast
Train: Transnational Interactions in PostColonial Times," Law
and Critique 6/1 (1995), 75-94: This essay examines English reactions
to the building of the Channel Tunnel between England and France as a means
of exploring how law features in redefining relations of identity in the
New Europe. The Tunnel materially and symbolically undermines the "natural"
coastal borders of the British island state, at the same time physically
joining it to the European mainland. I argue that the resulting shifts in
spatial, political and jurisdictional relations are creating a sense of
unease amongst many English people. This is expressed through public exaggerations
of the threat of rabies that supposedly will ride the fast train under the
sea and infiltrate the "clean" British state. In connecting images
of foreigners and disease with England's imperialist history of railway
technology, l conclude by highlighting some of the legal intersections between
postcolonial rhetoric and transnational activities.
Eve Darian-Smith is Assistant Professor Department of Anthropology University
of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106 fax: (805) 893 8707;
tel: (805) 893 8180; e-mail: darian@sscf.ucsb.edu
Margaret Davies, "The Proper: Discourses of Purity", Law and
Critique IX/2 (1998), 147-173: As Derrida has indicated, Western Philosophy
is a 'metaphysics of the proper'. The 'proper' can be described as a configuration
of conceptually-related characteristics, such as self-possession, presence,
purity, singularity, and propriety, many of these terms surfacing at critical
points in Derrida's work. This article elaborates on the notion of the proper
with particular reference to law, legal positivism, and the legal
concepts of property and personality. In addition to the work of
Derrida, a variety of sources are drawn upon, including several literary
works (by Suniti Namjoshi and Kate Grenville), to illustrate
the ways in which the proper structures thinking around the person, law
and ownership. In doing so, the article draws connections between the different
dimensions of the proper, and concludes by considering some of the implications
of Derrida's deconstruction of the proper for legal thinking, especially
in relation to property. e-mail: margaret.davies@flinders.edu.au
Monica den Boer, "Changing Rooms: Deictic References to Space and
Time in Criminal Evidence", Abstract of paper presented at 1994 Bordeaux
IASL conference (unpublished): Space and time function as indispensable
semiotic indicators in the narrative construction of crimes, as they enable
legal-institutional agents to orientate themselves on interrelationships
between actors, goals and actions, and to make judgements about the internal
coherence of the narrative. The paper starts with a definition of deixis,
which is succeeded by an analysis of the ways in which deixis is employed
for the (re-) construction of space and time in criminal evidence. The assumption
is that deictic references in criminal evidence are "boxed in"
due to a parallel process of narrative concatenation and embedding. The
second part deals with contrasting deictic references by defendants and
witnesses. This is followed by an analysis of the ways in which prosecutor
and judge impose spatial and temporal uniformity on the narrative. The final
part of the paper returns to the "boxing-in" of deixis, and deals
with some complex, multi-levelled references to space and time. (Dr Monica
den Boer is Senior Lecturer Justice and Home Affairs at the European Institute
of Public Administration, O.L. Vrouweplein 22, P.O. Box 1229, NL - 6201
BE Maastricht, The Netherlands; Tel: 00-31-43-329 6260; Fax: 00-3143-329
6296; e-mail: MDB@EIPA.NL]
Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, "Psychoanalysis, Speech Acts and the Language
of "Free Speech"", Res Publica IV/1 (1998), 29-50:
This article attacks the approach taken by liberals such as Dworkin to freedom
of expression, arguing that the liberal approach has too long dominated
the field of debate over speech and restrictions on speech. Rather than
seeking a detailed rebuttal of liberal arguments in favour of free speech,
this article explores alternative approaches to speech and language, focussing
in particular on the work of Lacan and JL Austin. Thus, it is argued that
when the role of speech is investigated in this way, it is less seen as
a means to truth, personal autonomy and direct democracy and rather as a
symbolic order which obscures and confuses, as well as performing direct
actions on the subject. e-mail:sionaidh.douglas-scott@kcl.ac.uk
Ian Duncanson, "Unchartered Lands in an
Age of "Accountability", Res Publica lll/1 (1997) 3-34:
Analyses which portray the state and citizenship as existing to protect
the more natural life of the individual/consumer, along with the policies
justified in terms of these analyses, have been subverted by a corporate
politics deploying an economic "logic" which substitutes the relationship
of private business and the customer for that of the state and the citizen.
Conservative governments in thrall to corporate politics are recreating
the symptoms which were a prelude to fascism. To go beyond an insufficient
liberalism in Anglophone societies might involve examining 17th century
English radicalism, the Marx of On the Jewish Question and some aspects
of Chartism. It will certainly require the public sponsorship of and wide
access to independent agencies of knowledge: education, publishing, adjudication.
It will require the repoliticisation - the recognition that these are political
goods - of goals like the disinterested adjudicationof personal quarrels
and the reinstallation of political disputes: the recognition that the latter
have not been overtaken by a metapolitical logic. fax: +61 3 9882 9527;
e-mail: i.duncanson@latrobe.edu.au
Baudouin Dupret, "La Typification des Atteintes aux Bonnes Moeurs:
Approache Praxeologique d'une affaire égyptienne", International
Journal for the Semiotics of Law / Revue Internationale de Sémiotique
Juridique Vol. XI no.33 (1998), 275-301: Cet article se situe dans le
cadre plus large d'une recherche sur les figurations de la moralité
dans le contexte judiciaire égyptien. Dans un premier temps, il entend
revenir sur les développements de la psychologie cognitive en matière
de catégorisation et sur ceux de la théorie juridique de la
qualification. Dans un deuxième temps, il vise à démontrer
qu'il n'y a pas lieu de déduire l'existence d'une dichotomie radicale
entre sens commun du droit et savoir technique juridique, leur différenciation
tenant davantage à la question de leur pragmatique qu'à celle
de leur sémantique. Le propos est illustré à l'aide
d'un matériau tiré d'une affaire de viol collectif survenue
en janvier 1985, au Caire.
Baudouin Dupret, "La Définition Juridique des Appartenances.
La typification narrative de l'action identitaire devant les juridictions
suprêmes d'Egypte et d'Israël", International Journal
for the Semiotics of Law / Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique
Vol. X no.30 (1997), 261-291: Visions of the other are implicitely embedded
in the identity constructs which interaction leads many actors to mobilize.
Illustrated by two cases decided by the Supreme Court of Israel and the
Cairo Court of Appeal, this article attempts to examine how judicial institutions
are induced to pronounce on questions dealing with the definition of membership,
its modalities and its legal consequences. The analysis of such narrative
typifications of actions asserting identity is conducted by drawing upon
two theoretical materials: on the one hand, the notion of legal repertoire
and the game of occasional substantialisation of preexisting normative forms;
on the other hand, works in legal semiotics dealing with legal narrativity.
Two types of conclusion emerge, the one focusing on the narrative modes
of legal construction, their constitution, their coherence, and their conflictuality,
the other turning on the functionality and modalities of the mobilisation
of law in interactive processes of identity construction.
Des visions de l'altérité se retrouvent implicitement
dans les constructions identitaires que l'interaction conduit des acteurs
à mobiliser. Prenant l'exemple de jurisprudences de la Cour suprême
d'Israël et de la Cour d'appel du Caire, cet article tente d'examiner
comment des institutions judiciaires sont amenées à se prononcer
sur des questions touchant à la définition de l'appartenance,
à ses modalités et à ses conséquences juridiques.
L'analyse de cette typification narrative de l'action identitaire est menée
à l'aide de deux matériaux théoriques: d'une part,
la notion de répertoire juridique, avec ce qu'elle suppose comme
jeu de substantialisations ponctuelles de formes normatives préexistantes;
d'autre part, des travaux de sémiotique juridique touchant à
la narrativité du droit. Des conclusions de deux types en ressortent:
les unes portent sur les modes narratifs de construction juridique, leur
constitution, leur cohérence et leur conflictualité, tandis
que les autres touchent davantage à la fonctionnalité et aux
modalités de mobilisation du droit dans les processus interactionnels
de construction identitaire. e-mail: dupas@dvlp.ucl.ac.be
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