Marianne Constable - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Books by Marianne Constable
Edited by Marianne Constable, Leti Volpp and Bryan Wagner For many inside and outside the legal ... more Edited by Marianne Constable, Leti Volpp and Bryan Wagner
For many inside and outside the legal academy, the right place to look for law is in constitutions, statutes, and judicial opinions. This book looks for law in the “wrong places”—sites and spaces in which no formal law appears. These may be geographic regions beyond the reach of law, everyday practices ungoverned or ungovernable by law, or works of art that have escaped law’s constraints.
Looking for Law in All the Wrong Places brings together essays by leading scholars of anthropology, cultural studies, history, law, literature, political science, race and ethnic studies, religion, and rhetoric, to look at law from the standpoint of the humanities. Beyond showing law to be determined by or determinative of distinct cultural phenomena, the contributors show how law is itself interwoven with language, text, image, and culture.
Many essays in this volume look for law precisely in the kinds of “wrong places” where there appears to be no law. They find in these places not only reflections and remains of law, but also rules and practices that seem indistinguishable from law and raise challenging questions about the locations of law and about law’s meaning and function. Other essays do the opposite: rather than looking for law in places where law does not obviously appear, they look in statute books and courtrooms from perspectives that are usually presumed to have nothing to say about law.
Looking at law sideways, or upside down, or inside out defamiliarizes law. These essays show what legal understanding can gain when law is denied its ostensibly proper domain.
Contributors: Kathryn Abrams, Daniel Boyarin, Wendy Brown, Marianne Constable, Samera Esmeir, Daniel Fisher, Sara Ludin, Saba Mahmood, Rebecca McLennan, Ramona Naddaff, Beth Piatote, Sarah Song, Christopher Tomlins, Leti Volpp, Bryan Wagner
Papers by Marianne Constable
Villanova law review, Nov 1, 2015
Philosophy and Rhetoric, 2020
ABSTRACT In the midst of the 2020 pandemic produced by an invisible virus, words bring the world ... more ABSTRACT In the midst of the 2020 pandemic produced by an invisible virus, words bring the world near. Words come in from a threatening outside, even as their use turns those who are inside outward. Speech practices reconfigure work and non-work, while politics, like language, turns inside-out.
Law Text Culture, 2019
If the modern office produces and is managed through written documents or files, as Max Weber fam... more If the modern office produces and is managed through written documents or files, as Max Weber famously argued in his work on bureaucracy, then so too does the office -and increasingly the private citizen -destroy them. Enter the lowly paper shredder, a machine that proliferates waste and serves as the repository of carefully guarded secrets and confidential records, even as it is designed to eliminate the dregs of bureaucratic culture. Until recently, in the United States as elsewhere, paper was the medium of official state law. The 20th-century rise of the paper shredder and its paper trail, as we shall see, thus reveals the material, cultural and economic entanglement of written law with destruction and consumption, security, and privacy, not only in the U.S., it turns out, but worldwide. The trail leads from formal recognition of the paper shredder in a 1909 U.S. patent to its actual manufacture and development as a business machine in Germany twenty-five or so years later, from the shredder's role in defining political moments to its appearance in cartoons that confuse it with fax machines or legal counsel, and from regulations governing the disposition of records to industrywide 'certificates of destruction' that ensure against the dangers of snoopy dumpster divers.
Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Oct 1, 2019
In Crippled America: How to make America great again (2015), Donald J. Trump writes, “The most im... more In Crippled America: How to make America great again (2015), Donald J. Trump writes, “The most important lesson is this—Stand behind your word, and make sure your word stands up'” His next paragraph begins, “I don't make promises I can't keep.” Trump seems to align his word with his promises here, but he immediately follows “I don't make promises I can't keep” with “I don't make threats without following through. Don't ever make the mistake of thinking you can bully me. My business partners and employees know that my word is as good as any contract—and that better go for the other side's word as well” (138). The “word” that “stands up” and “behind” which Trump stands is a weapon of defense against bullying. It is a threat by “me” (Trump) against “you” should your word turn out not to be, like Trump's word, “as good as any contract.” Even if Trump does not explicitly invoke the slang usage of “contract” (i.e., hiring an assassin to kill someone), he “follow[s] through” on his threats against “the other side,” whose word had “better” be as good as his.
Cornell University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2018
Fordham University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2020
Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, Dec 1, 2017
Law and Social Inquiry-journal of The American Bar Foundation, 1991
Modern Philology, Aug 1, 2012
Carol Jacobs’s Skirting the Ethical consists of a prologue that serves equally as a conclusion an... more Carol Jacobs’s Skirting the Ethical consists of a prologue that serves equally as a conclusion and six freestanding chapters. The collection works incredibly well as a response to the first of three issues raised in its prologue: ‘‘What could such disparate texts . . . as . . . Sophocles’ Antigone, Plato’s Symposium and Republic, Hamann’s ‘Aesthetica in nuce,’ Sebald’s The Emigrants, and Campion’s The Piano, possibly have in common?’’ (xv). Does it really make sense to bring them together? The answer, explained in the prologue and then borne out by the essays, is that each of these works is noted for its ‘‘political and ethical positioning’’ and its ‘‘ethical call’’ (xv). More to the point, however, attending closely to the language of these works, as does Jacobs, shows how the ‘‘literal and letteral tyrannies’’ (xvii) set up in each work give way to challenges and resistances to them. Prescriptions, judgments, institutions, and rules—in language and in politics in these works— are ‘‘skirted’’; they are circumscribed, gendered, never completely graspable nor adequate to the task of mastering ‘‘what is.’’ That this claim is not entirely new in fields of legal and political thought (in which I work) nor even in literary studies does not detract from the brilliance of some of Jacobs’s analyses. Her chapter on Plato’s Republic in particular—at over sixty pages, the longest of the chapters and, like that on the Symposium, not published elsewhere—shows how the discursive practice of the Socratic character and the philosophical movement of the dialogue unfold side by side with the more familiar analogy of the citizen to the polis. The ‘‘repressed’’ (67) parallel between the Republic’s philosophical movement and Socrates’s political claims as to the ‘‘justice’’ of the republic allows Jacobs to consider, in the context of speech, the relations of like and unlike that are crucial to issues of justice and judgment.
Princeton University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2002
History of the present, 2018
American Anthropologist, Dec 1, 2008
From time to time, the American Anthropologist Book Reviews section will host a special book revi... more From time to time, the American Anthropologist Book Reviews section will host a special book review event to offer more extended treatment of a particular piece of scholarship. This month we have made room for one such event, a special "Author Meets Reader" exchange centered around Sally
Encyclopedia of Law & Society: American and Global Perspectives
UC Irvine law review, Jun 1, 2015
Critical Analysis of Law, Mar 14, 2014
This paper proposes understanding law as language. Doing so offers an alternative both to jurispr... more This paper proposes understanding law as language. Doing so offers an alternative both to jurisprudential accounts of law as a system of rules and to sociological accounts of law as effective (or ineffective) social power. Part II shows how approaching law as language takes doctrine and legal texts seriously, as speech acts of claiming that do things, rather than as nounlike rules or their application. Such an approach recognizes that legal actions or events of claiming are "imperfect" in a grammatical sense: practical knowledge of law is incomplete, continual and interruptible, while legal acts occur more and less well under particular conditions. Understanding law this way, part III shows, also enables one to critique narrow approaches to law as "policy" or as exclusively a problem-solving tool or instrument. The paper not only argues that law may be thought of as language then. It ultimately suggests another law: that we are creatures of language.
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Mar 31, 2010
English Language Notes, Sep 1, 2010
Edited by Marianne Constable, Leti Volpp and Bryan Wagner For many inside and outside the legal ... more Edited by Marianne Constable, Leti Volpp and Bryan Wagner
For many inside and outside the legal academy, the right place to look for law is in constitutions, statutes, and judicial opinions. This book looks for law in the “wrong places”—sites and spaces in which no formal law appears. These may be geographic regions beyond the reach of law, everyday practices ungoverned or ungovernable by law, or works of art that have escaped law’s constraints.
Looking for Law in All the Wrong Places brings together essays by leading scholars of anthropology, cultural studies, history, law, literature, political science, race and ethnic studies, religion, and rhetoric, to look at law from the standpoint of the humanities. Beyond showing law to be determined by or determinative of distinct cultural phenomena, the contributors show how law is itself interwoven with language, text, image, and culture.
Many essays in this volume look for law precisely in the kinds of “wrong places” where there appears to be no law. They find in these places not only reflections and remains of law, but also rules and practices that seem indistinguishable from law and raise challenging questions about the locations of law and about law’s meaning and function. Other essays do the opposite: rather than looking for law in places where law does not obviously appear, they look in statute books and courtrooms from perspectives that are usually presumed to have nothing to say about law.
Looking at law sideways, or upside down, or inside out defamiliarizes law. These essays show what legal understanding can gain when law is denied its ostensibly proper domain.
Contributors: Kathryn Abrams, Daniel Boyarin, Wendy Brown, Marianne Constable, Samera Esmeir, Daniel Fisher, Sara Ludin, Saba Mahmood, Rebecca McLennan, Ramona Naddaff, Beth Piatote, Sarah Song, Christopher Tomlins, Leti Volpp, Bryan Wagner
Villanova law review, Nov 1, 2015
Philosophy and Rhetoric, 2020
ABSTRACT In the midst of the 2020 pandemic produced by an invisible virus, words bring the world ... more ABSTRACT In the midst of the 2020 pandemic produced by an invisible virus, words bring the world near. Words come in from a threatening outside, even as their use turns those who are inside outward. Speech practices reconfigure work and non-work, while politics, like language, turns inside-out.
Law Text Culture, 2019
If the modern office produces and is managed through written documents or files, as Max Weber fam... more If the modern office produces and is managed through written documents or files, as Max Weber famously argued in his work on bureaucracy, then so too does the office -and increasingly the private citizen -destroy them. Enter the lowly paper shredder, a machine that proliferates waste and serves as the repository of carefully guarded secrets and confidential records, even as it is designed to eliminate the dregs of bureaucratic culture. Until recently, in the United States as elsewhere, paper was the medium of official state law. The 20th-century rise of the paper shredder and its paper trail, as we shall see, thus reveals the material, cultural and economic entanglement of written law with destruction and consumption, security, and privacy, not only in the U.S., it turns out, but worldwide. The trail leads from formal recognition of the paper shredder in a 1909 U.S. patent to its actual manufacture and development as a business machine in Germany twenty-five or so years later, from the shredder's role in defining political moments to its appearance in cartoons that confuse it with fax machines or legal counsel, and from regulations governing the disposition of records to industrywide 'certificates of destruction' that ensure against the dangers of snoopy dumpster divers.
Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Oct 1, 2019
In Crippled America: How to make America great again (2015), Donald J. Trump writes, “The most im... more In Crippled America: How to make America great again (2015), Donald J. Trump writes, “The most important lesson is this—Stand behind your word, and make sure your word stands up'” His next paragraph begins, “I don't make promises I can't keep.” Trump seems to align his word with his promises here, but he immediately follows “I don't make promises I can't keep” with “I don't make threats without following through. Don't ever make the mistake of thinking you can bully me. My business partners and employees know that my word is as good as any contract—and that better go for the other side's word as well” (138). The “word” that “stands up” and “behind” which Trump stands is a weapon of defense against bullying. It is a threat by “me” (Trump) against “you” should your word turn out not to be, like Trump's word, “as good as any contract.” Even if Trump does not explicitly invoke the slang usage of “contract” (i.e., hiring an assassin to kill someone), he “follow[s] through” on his threats against “the other side,” whose word had “better” be as good as his.
Cornell University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2018
Fordham University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2020
Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, Dec 1, 2017
Law and Social Inquiry-journal of The American Bar Foundation, 1991
Modern Philology, Aug 1, 2012
Carol Jacobs’s Skirting the Ethical consists of a prologue that serves equally as a conclusion an... more Carol Jacobs’s Skirting the Ethical consists of a prologue that serves equally as a conclusion and six freestanding chapters. The collection works incredibly well as a response to the first of three issues raised in its prologue: ‘‘What could such disparate texts . . . as . . . Sophocles’ Antigone, Plato’s Symposium and Republic, Hamann’s ‘Aesthetica in nuce,’ Sebald’s The Emigrants, and Campion’s The Piano, possibly have in common?’’ (xv). Does it really make sense to bring them together? The answer, explained in the prologue and then borne out by the essays, is that each of these works is noted for its ‘‘political and ethical positioning’’ and its ‘‘ethical call’’ (xv). More to the point, however, attending closely to the language of these works, as does Jacobs, shows how the ‘‘literal and letteral tyrannies’’ (xvii) set up in each work give way to challenges and resistances to them. Prescriptions, judgments, institutions, and rules—in language and in politics in these works— are ‘‘skirted’’; they are circumscribed, gendered, never completely graspable nor adequate to the task of mastering ‘‘what is.’’ That this claim is not entirely new in fields of legal and political thought (in which I work) nor even in literary studies does not detract from the brilliance of some of Jacobs’s analyses. Her chapter on Plato’s Republic in particular—at over sixty pages, the longest of the chapters and, like that on the Symposium, not published elsewhere—shows how the discursive practice of the Socratic character and the philosophical movement of the dialogue unfold side by side with the more familiar analogy of the citizen to the polis. The ‘‘repressed’’ (67) parallel between the Republic’s philosophical movement and Socrates’s political claims as to the ‘‘justice’’ of the republic allows Jacobs to consider, in the context of speech, the relations of like and unlike that are crucial to issues of justice and judgment.
Princeton University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2002
History of the present, 2018
American Anthropologist, Dec 1, 2008
From time to time, the American Anthropologist Book Reviews section will host a special book revi... more From time to time, the American Anthropologist Book Reviews section will host a special book review event to offer more extended treatment of a particular piece of scholarship. This month we have made room for one such event, a special "Author Meets Reader" exchange centered around Sally
Encyclopedia of Law & Society: American and Global Perspectives
UC Irvine law review, Jun 1, 2015
Critical Analysis of Law, Mar 14, 2014
This paper proposes understanding law as language. Doing so offers an alternative both to jurispr... more This paper proposes understanding law as language. Doing so offers an alternative both to jurisprudential accounts of law as a system of rules and to sociological accounts of law as effective (or ineffective) social power. Part II shows how approaching law as language takes doctrine and legal texts seriously, as speech acts of claiming that do things, rather than as nounlike rules or their application. Such an approach recognizes that legal actions or events of claiming are "imperfect" in a grammatical sense: practical knowledge of law is incomplete, continual and interruptible, while legal acts occur more and less well under particular conditions. Understanding law this way, part III shows, also enables one to critique narrow approaches to law as "policy" or as exclusively a problem-solving tool or instrument. The paper not only argues that law may be thought of as language then. It ultimately suggests another law: that we are creatures of language.
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Mar 31, 2010
English Language Notes, Sep 1, 2010
