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Literature for legal philosophy course fall 1999
Psychoanalysis and law
1. (07/09) Introduction
2. (14/09) Michel Foucault, The history of sexuality, Pantheon 1978. Chs 1
and 2: 'We other Victorians' and 'The repressive hypothesis'. In: Paul
Rabinow, The Foucault Reader (Pantheon 1984), 292-329
* How speaking about sexuality became constitutive for western
subjectivity
2. (21/09) Drucilla Cornell, The imaginary domain; Routledge 1995. Chs 1
and 5: 'Living together: psychic space and the demand for sexual equality',
and 'Conclusion: why law?,' 3-30 and 231-238
* Importance of the imaginary domain, the moral space necessary for the
evalution of our sexual difference as free and equal persons, for the
constitution of (legal) subjects
3. (28/09) Stephen A. Mitchell and Margaret J. Black, Freud and beyond. A
history of modern psychoanalytic thought; Basic 1995. Chs. 1 and 7:
'Sigmund Freud and the classical psychoanalytical tradition' and
'Contemporary Freudian revisionists: Otto Kernberg, Roy Schafer, Hans
Loewald, and Jacques Lacan', 1-22 and 170-205.
* Introduction to basic psychoanalytic notions of Freud and Lacan.
4. (05/10) David S. Caudill, 'Freud and Critical Legal Studies: contours of
a radical socio-legal psychoanalysis', in: Jerry D. Leonard (ed.), Legal
studies as cultural studies. SUNY 1995, 21-84 (text 21-49, notes 49-84)
* Psychoanalytic insights used for an 'external' critique of law
5. (12/10) Pierre Legendre, 'The other dimension of law', in: Peter
Goodrich, David Gray Carlson (eds.), Law and the postmodern mind. Essays on
psychoanalysis and jurisprudence. University of Michigan press 1998, 175-
192
* The normative enterprise of legality can only be understood critically in
terms of its essentially mythological fabrication of the human subject as a
subject of law.
6. (19/10) Michel Rosenfeld, 'The identity of the constitutional subject',
in: Goodrich/Carlson, 143-175.
* Creation of the legal subject as an exercise of negation, metaphor and
metonymy
7. (26/10) Alain Pottage, 'A unique and different subject of law', in:
Goodrich and Carlson, 13-51
* Irigaray and Levinas: rights as markers of a new model of sexuate
subjectivity
8. (02/11) Nicola Lacey, Unspeakable subjects. Oxford: Hart 1998. Ch. 4:
'Unspeakable subjects, impossible rights: sexuality, integrity and criminal
law', 98-124
* Criminal law and feminist critiques of (sexual) dualism: Irigaray,
Butler; Drucilla Cornell ('imaginary domain') and Jennifer Nedelsky on
sexual autonomy.
9. (09/11) Drucilla Cornell, At the heart of freedom; Princeton university
press 1998. Chapter 2: 'Freed up: privacy, sexual freedom, and liberty of
conscience', 33-65
* Individualism and the moral and psychic space needed for orientation as
sexuate beings
10.(16/11) Nicola Lacey, ch. 5: 'Community in legal theory', 125-164
Liberalism-communitarianism debate; the communitarian longing for primal
unity; feminism versus communitarian conservatism; ('interpretive')
community in Dworkin and Fish; beyond community?: Cornell, Goodrich,
*
Levinas; otherness: Cornell, Benhabib, Douzinas & Warrington.
11.(23/11) Nicola Lacey, ch. 6: 'Closure and critique in feminist
jurisprudence', 167-187.
* Discussion and critique of Carol Smart, MacKinnon/Dworkin, Roberto Unger,
and Drucilla Cornell.
12.(30/11) Nicola Lacey, ch. 7: 'Feminist legal theory beyond neutrality',
188-220
* Contextualisation: Gilligan; primacy of sex difference: Drucilla Cornell,
esp use of Lacan; Irigaray's ‚criture f‚minine.
13.(07/12) Slavoj Zizek, 'Why does the law need an obscene supplement?';
in: Goodrich and Carlson, 75-97
* Obedience requires distance; therefore, nothing is more subversive than
literal following of decrees. Obedience therefore also needs the unwritten
rules produced by the original lawless violence that founded the rule of
law itself.
14.(14/12) Final session: review and evaluation.
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