Critical Legal Subjectivity
*Call For Papers*

The conference theme for the CLC 2008 is CRITICAL LEGAL STRATEGIES. The notion of a critical legal strategy suggests the presence of a political subject behind the strategy, a subject that is responsible for articulating and launching the strategy, a subject with more or less clearly defined political goals that it seeks to pursue and realise through the strategies it plans to launch.

What is the identity and status of the political subject “behind” the critical legal strategies invoked by the 2008 CLC? What is this political subject standing for? What are the political goals that it pursues? To what extent is this kind of classical modern political subjectivity still possible and desirable in the so-called post-modern times in which we live? Does the CLC still constitute or aspire to constitute a political subjectivity of this kind? Or has it articulated or should it and can it at all articulate and forge a different kind of political engagement that can no longer be described in terms of the notion of subjectivity? How would one describe such other kinds of political engagement? Can one at all speak meaningfully of political strategies in the absence of self-conscious articulations of political subjectivity? Has forfeiture of political subjectivity turned critical legal theory in general and the CLC in particular into a Comfortable Little Cocoon of wacky and witty legal theory that is devoid of any significant political and critical profile?

This stream invites papers that address these and related questions on the two levels of reflection that they evince. The first level concerns the question of the nature of political engagement as such in times that, along with “postmodernity”, can perhaps be described as “post-subjective”. Should this description be embraced at all or should it be resisted?

The second level concerns the impact of this possible turn to post-subjective political engagement on critical theory in general and critical legal theory in particular. If the description of a post-subjective political engagement is to be embraced, can critical theory still aspire to live up to or salvage something from the Horkheimerian understanding of critical theory, that is, critical theory that does not objectify and neutrally observe and analyse its field of inquiry on the basis of an a-priori and a-historical methodological separation of the subject and the object of theoretical inquiry, but actually reconstitutes and transforms its field of inquiry through theoretical inquiry? (Cf. Max Horkheimer Traditionelle und kritische Theorie in Gesammelten Schriften Band 4, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag 1988). Does this understanding of a subject of theoretical inquiry that transforms its object and by implication itself through a dialectic of subject and object still offer an emancipatory promise in a post-subjective age? Or has the notion of a post-subjective age inevitably led theory into a traditional theoretical assumption of a passive subjectivity or, rather, passive non-subjectivity, that observes and study its object and simply adjusts itself systematically to its findings?

In other words, has theoretical inquiry been reduced in our post-subjective age to the quite willing assumption of the role of analysing and remedying the “occasional” systemic disfunctions of a (capitalistic) system, a system that is now generally, in a-priori and a-historical fashion accepted as “simply given”; a system that can therefore no longer be challenged or questioned fundamentally; a system to which the non-subject can only adjust and adapt itself? Social science has changed dramatically since the nineteen sixties and seventies. As Jean-Pierre Garnier has pointed out masterfully (cf. Des chercheurs au secours de l’ordre établi in Le Monde Diplomatique, October 2007), it has forfeited the profile of struggle and resistance for one of perpetual peaceful debate within an increasingly well-financed and therefore comfortable if not luxurious research milieu; it has forfeited the profile of a fundamental emancipatory aspiration for that of an ever-readiness to assist in small and piecemeal systemic adjustments that ensure that the social system as such always remains intact. Against this background, the significance and meaning of research and the “greatness” of researchers are almost invariably measured by the successful bidding and efficient managing of multi-figure research grants that a world of staggering surplus capital is so keen to provide as long as these grants serve the interests of surplus capital. Really at stake here might in fact also be something more insidious than mere research outcomes that serve the interests of capital. Really at stake may also be a matter of pacifying and buying out what used to be real loci of fundamental, existential and experimental resistance, irrespective of the nonsense that must sometimes be solemnly humoured as “research outcomes” for the sake of this surreptitious or underhanded purchase.

The availability of unfathomable capital in the form of research funding has changed and is changing the face of universities and academic institutions day by day. This structural transformation of the theoretical environment surely opens fantastic windows of real opportunity and it would be naïve and short-sighted to simply denounce it. But it also poses potential if not already actual threats to truly critical inquiry to which such critical inquiry should be alert constantly. These and related concerns are thus of essential importance for the future of critical theory and critical legal theory, and thus, for the future of a truly critical CRITICAL LEGAL CONFERENCE. Should you wish to present a paper that aims to address one of these themes and concerns, please send a title and abstract to Johan van der Walt (contact details below) to have it considered for placement in this stream.

Stream Organiser:
Johan van der Walt

Send titles and abstracts to the organising committee by 15 June:
clc@lbss.gla.ac.uk

Johan van der Walt
School of Law
G29 Stair Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ
UK
Tel: +44 (0) 141 330 6619
Fax: ++44 (0) 141 330 4900