Literature, Rhetoric and Law: Liminal Cases

Seminar Leiden Platform for Literature, Rhetoric and Law (spring 2013):

“Literature beyond Legal Limits / Literatuur op de Grens van het Recht”

Organized by Frans Willem Korsten /Yasco  Horsman, LUCAS, Leiden)

Location: Lipsius Building  003:  http://www.hum.leidenuniv.nl/lucas/agenda/platform-seminars.html

The Leiden “Literature, Rhetoric and Law Platform”  will convene four times next semester and study how throughout history literature and law have coped with liminal cases: characters, figures,  themes, phenomena, or events that question the borders and limits of central judicial concepts such as ‘person’, ‘nature’, ‘society’, ‘life’. We will deal with the issue of the law’s limits by confronting a literary text or film with a theoretical or philosophical essay. These are a play by Aristofanes (Lysistrata), a romance by Chrétien de Troyes (The Story of the Grail, aka Perceval), and a movie by Inarritu (Amores Perros). We will read theoretical texts by Hannah Arendt, Claire Colebrook, Pauline Westerman and Rosi Braidotti.

Participation is free. You can register with Eloe Kingma (nica-fgw@uva.nl) and get an electronic reader or by contacting Yasco Horsman y.horsman@hum.leidenuniv.nl. So far the meetings were in Dutch but if English-speaking students want to participate, we will switch to English.

Place: to be announced

Program:

Monday, February 18 (17-19:00): The Limits of Personhood  Aristophanes, Vrouwenstaking – Lysistrata).

• Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition. [Excerpt] Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998 [1958]. 22-37.
• Hannah Arendt, On Revolution [Excerpt]. London: Penguin Books, 1991 [1963]. 98-114.
• Keith Breen, ‘Law Beyond Command: An Evaluation of Arendt’s Understanding Law, ‘ In: Marco Goldoni and Christopher McCorkindale (eds), Hannah Arendt and the Law. Oxford: Hart.

Monday,  March 11 (17-19:00): The Limits of Nature and Society (Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval)

• Pauline Westerman, ‘Aquinas’s Variations on a Divine Theme,’
• ‘Grotius’ Humanization of Natural Law’, in: The Disintegration of Natural Law Theory.

Monday, April 22 (17-19:00) The Limits of Life and Death (Amores Perros (Inarritu, 2010))

• Claire Colebrook, ‘Legal Theory after Deleuze,’
• Rosi Braidotti, ‘Locating Deleuze’s Eco-philosophy between BIO/ZOE-Power and Necro-politics’. In: Marco Goldoni & Christopher McCorkindale (eds), Hannah Arendt and the Law.

Monday, May 13 (17-19:00): Concluding session: Conclusions, Questions, Riddles, Plans, etc.