{"title":"Translating Dark into Bright: Diary of a Post-Critical Year.","authors":"André Dao, Danish Sheikh","doi":"10.1007/s10978-022-09341-2","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This is an account of a reading project that began in February 2020. Australia was burning, a pandemic was simmering, the two of us were early in our PhD journeys at the Melbourne Law School. Already, we felt exhausted by critical theory which seemed to amplify the affects we felt all too intensely. Our reading project began as an attempt to find and inhabit texts that might move beyond critique, that might allow us to find wonder and vitality in legal theory. Taking up the literary critic Rita Felski's invitation to craft a post-critical reading practice, our reading list evolved iteratively to encompass themes and concerns that we identified as possibly correlating with said practice. It evolved too, in conversation with Melbourne, as the city journeyed through different stages of the pandemic. Constantly changing restrictions changed the ways in which we met and conversed, influencing in turn the texts we chose to read and the manner in which we read them. In this account, we pay attention to the time and place of our encounters with these interlocutors, and to the feelings these encounters generated. As such, this article takes the form of a series of (revised) diary entries: first written in 2020, then revisited in the corresponding months of 2021. What we hope emerges from these entries is a sense of how these theoretical texts train us to live in a world undergoing a compounding series of crises - and, perhaps, to imagine that world otherwise. In a more jurisprudential register, we hope that our experiment will identify the methods these texts might give us for (re-)engaging with law in a spirit of wonder and vitality.</p>","PeriodicalId":44360,"journal":{"name":"LAW AND CRITIQUE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9890408/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"LAW AND CRITIQUE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-022-09341-2","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This is an account of a reading project that began in February 2020. Australia was burning, a pandemic was simmering, the two of us were early in our PhD journeys at the Melbourne Law School. Already, we felt exhausted by critical theory which seemed to amplify the affects we felt all too intensely. Our reading project began as an attempt to find and inhabit texts that might move beyond critique, that might allow us to find wonder and vitality in legal theory. Taking up the literary critic Rita Felski's invitation to craft a post-critical reading practice, our reading list evolved iteratively to encompass themes and concerns that we identified as possibly correlating with said practice. It evolved too, in conversation with Melbourne, as the city journeyed through different stages of the pandemic. Constantly changing restrictions changed the ways in which we met and conversed, influencing in turn the texts we chose to read and the manner in which we read them. In this account, we pay attention to the time and place of our encounters with these interlocutors, and to the feelings these encounters generated. As such, this article takes the form of a series of (revised) diary entries: first written in 2020, then revisited in the corresponding months of 2021. What we hope emerges from these entries is a sense of how these theoretical texts train us to live in a world undergoing a compounding series of crises - and, perhaps, to imagine that world otherwise. In a more jurisprudential register, we hope that our experiment will identify the methods these texts might give us for (re-)engaging with law in a spirit of wonder and vitality.
期刊介绍:
Law and Critique is the prime international critical legal theory journal. It has been published for 20 years and is associated with the Critical Legal Conference. Law and Critique covers all aspects of legal theory, jurisprudence and substantive law that are approached from a critical perspective. Law and Critique has introduced into legal scholarship a variety of schools of thought, such as postmodernism; feminism; queer theory; critical race theory; literary approaches to law; psychoanalysis; law and the humanities; law and aesthetics and post-colonialism. Postmodern jurisprudence, law and aesthetics and law and psychoanalysis were pioneered in Law and Critique which remains the most authoritative international source for these schools of thought. Law and Critique is keen to translate and incorporate non-English critical legal thought. More specifically, Law and Critique encourages the submission of articles in the areas of critical legal theory and history, law and literature, law and psychoanalysis, feminist legal theory, critical race theory, law and post-colonialism; postmodern jurisprudence, law and aesthetics; legal phenomenology; and law and autopoiesis. Past special issues include: ''Critical Legal Education''; ''The Gender of Law''; ''Law and Postmodernism''; ''Law and Literature''; ''Law and Post-colonialism'', ''Law and Theatre''; ''Jean-Luc Nancy and Law''; ''Agamben and Law''. Law and Critique is ranked amongst the top 20 per cent of law journals by the Australian Research Council.