In this essay, I situate Kunal Parker's Common Law, History, and Democracy in America, 1790–1... more In this essay, I situate Kunal Parker's Common Law, History, and Democracy in America, 1790–1900, within a broader set of intellectual currents engaged with questions of time and temporality. Although Parker's book centers on the common law and history and develops specific conceptions of time, in so doing, he invites legal historians and legal scholars to ruminate on the times of law, particularly the temporal relations that law has with itself. Placing Parker in conversation with Henri Bergson and the recent Bergsonian revival in critical theory, I suggest that law has a duration, a formulation that opens other itineraries to consider the dynamic times of law.
The archival turn has followed a long, protracted, and spiraled trajectory through the fields of ... more The archival turn has followed a long, protracted, and spiraled trajectory through the fields of history, historical anthropology, philosophy, and literary studies. Animated by the cultural turn and shaped by the challenges of poststructuralism, subaltern, and postcolonial studies, critics have formulated history's archive not solely as a repository of sources through which to retrieve and/or assemble the past but as an uneven effect of power and a set of contested truth claims through which history itself has been a site of struggle. Law and legal studies, by contrast, have had curiously little to say on the subject. That the archive has been the topic of such vibrant debate and disagreement outside of law but not within it is a problematic that informs this review. This article revisits the spirited and now familiar debates in history and these other fields and asks how these critical engagements—which have yet to fully dislodge the archive as truth or radically change how we ...
Rare Books and Special Collections and Jaya Ravindran at the National Archives of India (Delhi) d... more Rare Books and Special Collections and Jaya Ravindran at the National Archives of India (Delhi) deserve special mention. Many friends and interlocutors asked critical questions and offered feedback that shaped the final product in innumerable ways. Many thanks to Antoinette
On December 17, 1919, Young India, a weekly English-language periodical published in Ahmedabad, I... more On December 17, 1919, Young India, a weekly English-language periodical published in Ahmedabad, India and inaugurated and edited by Mohandas K. Gandhi, printed a fastidious and pointed critique of British imperialism. Entitled Indians Abroad and written by Gandhi, the essay was both a condemnation of the cruelty and neglect that confronted British Indians who traveled and settled outside the subcontinent and an affirmation of their many contributions to the British Empire, including their forced labor.1 Gandhi’s focus was not the white settlement colonies of Australia, New Zealand, or Canada where restrictive immigration policies barring the entry of British-Indian subjects had garnered significant attention and commentary throughout India and the Indian diaspora.2 Rather, his essay was motivated by a similar and growing discontent in Fiji, and
I believe that no country ever stood so much in need of a code of laws as India; and I believe al... more I believe that no country ever stood so much in need of a code of laws as India; and I believe also that there never was a country in which the want might so easily be supplied. I said that there were many points of analogy between the state of that country after the fall of the Mogul power, and the state of Europe after the fall of the Roman empire. In one respect the analogy is very striking. As there were in Europe then, so there are in India now, several systems of law widely differing from each other, but coexisting and coequal. The indigenous population has its own laws. Each of the successive races of conquerors has brought with it its own peculiar jurisprudence: the Mussulman his Koran and the innumerable commentators on the Koran; the Englishman his Statute Book and his Term Reports. As there were established in Italy, at one and the same time, the Roman Law, the Lombard law, the Ripuarian law, the Bavarian law, and the Salic law, so we have now in our Eastern empire Hindoo...
Between 1998 and 2003, Canadian courts were confronted with two cases that have held significant ... more Between 1998 and 2003, Canadian courts were confronted with two cases that have held significant legal and political consequences for Aboriginal peoples. The cases, R v Gladue (1999) and R v Powley (2003) raised pressing questions about Aboriginal identities and the rights and material resources that follow from legal recognition. In one form or another, these cases have generated important legal, political, and theor-etical questions that require some exploration: How has ‘Aboriginality ’ been legally constituted within Canadian jurisprudence? In what ways have these racial-legal defi-nitions changed temporally and geographically? And finally, and most importantly, who can legitimately make claims to Aboriginal identities and to the legal rights and material resources that accompany the law’s recognition of difference? In this article, I historically contextualize these contemporary debates around the juridical construc-tion of Aboriginal identities in Canadian jurisprudence. My su...
Stanley Park is the third largest urban park in North America. Located in downtown Vancouver, Bri... more Stanley Park is the third largest urban park in North America. Located in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia (BC), the 960-acre park was opened by civic authorities in 1888, only two years after the city was incorporated. From early on, Stanley Park became a popular leisure space for Vancouver’s ‘citizens’ and visitors alike. Today, as one of the most frequented tourist destinations in BC, the park remains an important attraction, offering a variety of year round recreational opportunities and drawing approximately 8 million visitors annually (Grant & Dickson 2003, Steele 1985, 1993). Importantly, Stanley Park also occupies a significant geographic and symbolic space in Vancouver’s imaginary. Often described as ‘the foremost symbol of Canada’s most beautiful city’ (Steele 1985: 7), the park is celebrated in Imperial Legacies (Post)Colonial Identities tourist books, brochures, and on visitor websites as a ‘virgin forest’ that reflects a uniquely ‘natural west coast atmosphere,’ inc...
Archives and historical records are central to histories of law and legality. Themes and debates ... more Archives and historical records are central to histories of law and legality. Themes and debates in legal history have been shaped, and in some cases even determined by the availability of and access to archival sources. Despite growing critiques of archives as partial, incomplete, and uneven sites of power/ knowledge, ‘the archive’ continues to operate as a site of retrieval and recuperation in legal history. This chapter builds on and expands the author’s earlier work on ‘law’s archive’. which explored how law writes its authority and legitimacy through a double logic of violence: the violence of law and the violence of the archive. In this chapter, this argument is reconsidered through the ocean as legal archive. Oceans productively materialize the tensions between what can be known and unknown of the past. They invite other artefacts, imaginaries, and possibilities for writing legal history, especially those of transatlantic slavery.
In this essay, I situate Kunal Parker's Common Law, History, and Democracy in America, 1790–1... more In this essay, I situate Kunal Parker's Common Law, History, and Democracy in America, 1790–1900, within a broader set of intellectual currents engaged with questions of time and temporality. Although Parker's book centers on the common law and history and develops specific conceptions of time, in so doing, he invites legal historians and legal scholars to ruminate on the times of law, particularly the temporal relations that law has with itself. Placing Parker in conversation with Henri Bergson and the recent Bergsonian revival in critical theory, I suggest that law has a duration, a formulation that opens other itineraries to consider the dynamic times of law.
The archival turn has followed a long, protracted, and spiraled trajectory through the fields of ... more The archival turn has followed a long, protracted, and spiraled trajectory through the fields of history, historical anthropology, philosophy, and literary studies. Animated by the cultural turn and shaped by the challenges of poststructuralism, subaltern, and postcolonial studies, critics have formulated history's archive not solely as a repository of sources through which to retrieve and/or assemble the past but as an uneven effect of power and a set of contested truth claims through which history itself has been a site of struggle. Law and legal studies, by contrast, have had curiously little to say on the subject. That the archive has been the topic of such vibrant debate and disagreement outside of law but not within it is a problematic that informs this review. This article revisits the spirited and now familiar debates in history and these other fields and asks how these critical engagements—which have yet to fully dislodge the archive as truth or radically change how we ...
Rare Books and Special Collections and Jaya Ravindran at the National Archives of India (Delhi) d... more Rare Books and Special Collections and Jaya Ravindran at the National Archives of India (Delhi) deserve special mention. Many friends and interlocutors asked critical questions and offered feedback that shaped the final product in innumerable ways. Many thanks to Antoinette
On December 17, 1919, Young India, a weekly English-language periodical published in Ahmedabad, I... more On December 17, 1919, Young India, a weekly English-language periodical published in Ahmedabad, India and inaugurated and edited by Mohandas K. Gandhi, printed a fastidious and pointed critique of British imperialism. Entitled Indians Abroad and written by Gandhi, the essay was both a condemnation of the cruelty and neglect that confronted British Indians who traveled and settled outside the subcontinent and an affirmation of their many contributions to the British Empire, including their forced labor.1 Gandhi’s focus was not the white settlement colonies of Australia, New Zealand, or Canada where restrictive immigration policies barring the entry of British-Indian subjects had garnered significant attention and commentary throughout India and the Indian diaspora.2 Rather, his essay was motivated by a similar and growing discontent in Fiji, and
I believe that no country ever stood so much in need of a code of laws as India; and I believe al... more I believe that no country ever stood so much in need of a code of laws as India; and I believe also that there never was a country in which the want might so easily be supplied. I said that there were many points of analogy between the state of that country after the fall of the Mogul power, and the state of Europe after the fall of the Roman empire. In one respect the analogy is very striking. As there were in Europe then, so there are in India now, several systems of law widely differing from each other, but coexisting and coequal. The indigenous population has its own laws. Each of the successive races of conquerors has brought with it its own peculiar jurisprudence: the Mussulman his Koran and the innumerable commentators on the Koran; the Englishman his Statute Book and his Term Reports. As there were established in Italy, at one and the same time, the Roman Law, the Lombard law, the Ripuarian law, the Bavarian law, and the Salic law, so we have now in our Eastern empire Hindoo...
Between 1998 and 2003, Canadian courts were confronted with two cases that have held significant ... more Between 1998 and 2003, Canadian courts were confronted with two cases that have held significant legal and political consequences for Aboriginal peoples. The cases, R v Gladue (1999) and R v Powley (2003) raised pressing questions about Aboriginal identities and the rights and material resources that follow from legal recognition. In one form or another, these cases have generated important legal, political, and theor-etical questions that require some exploration: How has ‘Aboriginality ’ been legally constituted within Canadian jurisprudence? In what ways have these racial-legal defi-nitions changed temporally and geographically? And finally, and most importantly, who can legitimately make claims to Aboriginal identities and to the legal rights and material resources that accompany the law’s recognition of difference? In this article, I historically contextualize these contemporary debates around the juridical construc-tion of Aboriginal identities in Canadian jurisprudence. My su...
Stanley Park is the third largest urban park in North America. Located in downtown Vancouver, Bri... more Stanley Park is the third largest urban park in North America. Located in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia (BC), the 960-acre park was opened by civic authorities in 1888, only two years after the city was incorporated. From early on, Stanley Park became a popular leisure space for Vancouver’s ‘citizens’ and visitors alike. Today, as one of the most frequented tourist destinations in BC, the park remains an important attraction, offering a variety of year round recreational opportunities and drawing approximately 8 million visitors annually (Grant & Dickson 2003, Steele 1985, 1993). Importantly, Stanley Park also occupies a significant geographic and symbolic space in Vancouver’s imaginary. Often described as ‘the foremost symbol of Canada’s most beautiful city’ (Steele 1985: 7), the park is celebrated in Imperial Legacies (Post)Colonial Identities tourist books, brochures, and on visitor websites as a ‘virgin forest’ that reflects a uniquely ‘natural west coast atmosphere,’ inc...
Archives and historical records are central to histories of law and legality. Themes and debates ... more Archives and historical records are central to histories of law and legality. Themes and debates in legal history have been shaped, and in some cases even determined by the availability of and access to archival sources. Despite growing critiques of archives as partial, incomplete, and uneven sites of power/ knowledge, ‘the archive’ continues to operate as a site of retrieval and recuperation in legal history. This chapter builds on and expands the author’s earlier work on ‘law’s archive’. which explored how law writes its authority and legitimacy through a double logic of violence: the violence of law and the violence of the archive. In this chapter, this argument is reconsidered through the ocean as legal archive. Oceans productively materialize the tensions between what can be known and unknown of the past. They invite other artefacts, imaginaries, and possibilities for writing legal history, especially those of transatlantic slavery.
s concept of plasticity has influenced and inspired scholars from across disciplines. The contrib... more s concept of plasticity has influenced and inspired scholars from across disciplines. The contributors to Plastic Materialities-whose fields include political philosophy, critical legal studies, social theory, literature, and philosophy-use Malabou's innovative combination of post-structuralism and neuroscience to evaluate the political implications of her work. They address, among other things, subjectivity, science, war, the malleability of sexuality, neoliberalism and economic theory, indigenous and racial politics, and the relationship between the human and non-human. Plastic Materialities also includes three essays by Malabou and an interview with her, all of which bring her work into conversation with issues of sovereignty, justice, and social order for the first time.
s concept of plasticity has influenced and inspired scholars from across disciplines. The contrib... more s concept of plasticity has influenced and inspired scholars from across disciplines. The contributors to Plastic Materialities-whose fields include political philosophy, critical legal studies, social theory, literature, and philosophy-use Malabou's innovative combination of post-structuralism and neuroscience to evaluate the political implications of her work. They address, among other things, subjectivity, science, war, the malleability of sexuality, neoliberalism and economic theory, indigenous and racial politics, and the relationship between the human and non-human. Plastic Materialities also includes three essays by Malabou and an interview with her, all of which bring her work into conversation with issues of sovereignty, justice, and social order for the first time. Thursday, 4th June 2015, 6:30pm Blackwell's Holborn, London, WC1V 6EP Order online: www.combinedacademic.co.uk Order by telephone: call Marston on +44 (0)1235 465500 UK postage £2.95 for first book and 50p for each one thereafter, Europe postage £4.50 for first book and £1.50 for each one thereafter. * Price subject to change Sign up to receive new book information and special offers at www.combinedacademic.co.uk
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Papers by Renisa Mawani