Law and Resistance: Toward a Performative Epistemology of Law (Social Justice)

This book explores a fundamental paradox at the heart of law and resistance: while law emerges from acts of resistance, it systematically denies this origin once established. Taking Michel Foucault’s genealogical analysis of power and resistance as its starting point, the book asks, from below, is there something in the very nature of law - that is, in its discursive and institutional dynamics, in its spatial, material, and temporal coordinates; in its own conceptual categories, claims, mechanisms, and processes - that makes it something more than the mere instrument and armature of power?If those in power can utilize the devices of law and justice to achieve political ends, isn’t there something about these devices that can accommodate fresh articulations?Contending that there are, indeed, discursive, spatial, and temporal resources that can be reconfigured and redeployed as a counter-power and counter-discourse against sovereignty, the book takes as its focus the judicial apparatus;