Legal pluralism as co-presence

Abstract

This paper aims to offer a contribution for the debate on how to decolonize sociolegal thinking by discussing possibilities of decolonizing legal pluralism.  Avoiding the endless debate about what is law, and focused on the need to disobey modern epistemological hierarchies, I use a cartographic metaphor – law as map - to argue that legal centralism is not only a fiction, but a Eurocentric instrument that limits political imagination. Law, in its plurality, is an indicator of the world’s possibilities. Legal pluralism must be more than a marginal field, but a core instrument to expand legal and political possibilities. After addressing the role of modern law as an instrument that legitimizes capitalism, I claim that we need to move ahead from modern dichotomies that fail to decolonize science. Finally, using notes from fieldwork in East-Timor and Mozambique, I reflect as a feminist woman on how to learn from unfamiliar legal maps.