Mad Max and Mapping the Monsters in the Networks

Abstract

This chapter examines living in technical legality from the location of the legal scholar. Technical legality means that thinking about law and especially law and technology, has to escape the circularity of the Frankenstein myth, through coming to know the complex networks of technical legality. In this chapter George Miller’s classic Australian post-apocalyptic film Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior provides a map of the functions of a very familiar manifestation of technological humanity, the human-automobile in Australian law, politics and culture. What is shown through this cartography is a way of thinking law and technology that goes beyond the closed metaphysics of the Frankenstein myth. In mapping complexity, complicity, collusions and surprises within the networks of the present, the law scholar-nodes functions as a privileged location whereby the technical legality can be self-reflective; where the effects and affects of the continually changing world are seen. Further, in generating knowledge about the networks of the present, law-scholar-nodes can empower others, other embodied nodes in the networks, the monsters that have come to inherit the Earth, to live well in technical legality.