Sean Mulcahy | Monash University (original) (raw)
Papers by Sean Mulcahy
Social & Legal Studies
New drugs with the potential to cure hepatitis C have emerged. There is great optimism within med... more New drugs with the potential to cure hepatitis C have emerged. There is great optimism within medicine about the transformative potential of cure, but this overlooks the entrenched discrimination and stigma associated with both hepatitis C and injecting drug use and the role of law in re/producing it. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders such as policymakers, lawyers, and representatives from peer organisations (N = 30), Latour’s (2013) work on legal veridiction, Fraser and Seear’s (2011) conceptualisation of hepatitis C as a ‘gathering’, and Mol’s (2021) work on being, this paper explores the possibility that legal processes complicate the linear trajectory of progress and transformation cure promises. Our participants’ identify various legal processes that allow hepatitis C to echo or linger in people’s lives after treatment. These processes are remaking hepatitis C, and making perpetual hepatitis C subjects. We argue that we must grapple with these forces in the era of cure.
Contemporary Drug Problems
Global momentum for drug law reform is building. But how might such reform be achieved? Many argu... more Global momentum for drug law reform is building. But how might such reform be achieved? Many argue that human rights offer a possible normative framework for guiding such reform. There has been very little research on whether human rights processes can actually achieve such aims, however. This paper responds to this knowledge gap. It explores how one human rights mechanism—the “parliamentary rights scrutiny process”—deals with alcohol and other drugs. We consider how four Australian parliaments scrutinized proposed new laws that would deal with alcohol and other drugs for their human rights “compatibility.” We find that laws that would limit the rights of people who use alcohol and other drugs were routinely seen as justifiable on the basis that alcohol and other drugs were inherently “unsafe.” Crucially, safety was conceptualized in a gender-neutral way, without regard to the potential role of gender, including specific masculinities, in the production of phenomena such as family v...
https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol24/iss1/19Abstract: What would the law sound like if it was sung? Wh... more https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol24/iss1/19Abstract: What would the law sound like if it was sung? Whilst scholars have explored the relation between music and law, focus on the acoustic and musical dimensions of legal speech is relatively new. Exploring musical adaptations and remixes of legal transcripts, the paper argues that there is a latent musicality to legal speech. Using as case studies Opera Australia's production of 'Lindy' and Donmar Warehouse's production of 'Committee', where legal speech was adapted verbatim from legal transcripts into musical score, the paper investigates what these composers have to say about their jurisprudential source material. Through advancing this notion of latent musicality within legal speech, this paper suggests that legal speech works best when it appeals to its audience in the way that music appeals to its listener in terms of rhythm, pitch, and tone.
This thesis analyses what performance is and what it does in the court, drawing from theatrical p... more This thesis analyses what performance is and what it does in the court, drawing from theatrical performance. In it, I argue that performance plays a constitutive role in the court, that law and performance are intimately entwined and that law is reliant on performance for its production. In so doing, I consider whether theatre and performance studies research and practice can provide new insights into court proceedings. Central to my discussion of legal performance in court is the role of the audience, which becomes a guiding direction of the thesis and points to my interest in how the legal performance is perceived by the public gallery.
The question of why women did not perform on the English Renaissance stage is an enduring one, wh... more The question of why women did not perform on the English Renaissance stage is an enduring one, which is yet to be properly answered. This article examines contemporary legislation and case law to illustrate the regulation of women’s performance throughout the Renaissance. The article engages in a reading of legislation, provides a textual analysis of court records - both the official narrative represented in the court transcripts and the social and political attitudes that underpinned the rulings - and links the law to the position of women and performers in the Renaissance social structure. The author contends that the laws adopted by judges and legislators were not arbitrary, but reinforced dominant concepts of gender, class and status in Renaissance society. It is argued that regulations operated to cast women performers as outsiders who were subject to male controls. The author offers an alternative reading of Renaissance women performers that expounds the diegetic and political...
Law and Humanities, 2017
Law and space is a growing area of scholarship and has prompted Routledge’s new series on ‘Space,... more Law and space is a growing area of scholarship and has prompted Routledge’s new series on ‘Space, Materiality and the Normative’, exploring the interface of law, geography and space. The first book...
However responsible we undertake to be to our texts and their contexts, we can look only with our... more However responsible we undertake to be to our texts and their contexts, we can look only with our own eyes, and interpret only with our own minds, which have been formed by our own history.
That boy actors took female roles in English Renaissance theatre is a widely recognised conventio... more That boy actors took female roles in English Renaissance theatre is a widely recognised convention, but whether boy actors in female roles were merely “taken for granted” by Renaissance audiences or whether the convention drew attention to itself is an unanswered question. This paper, guided by a wide reading of the current critical debate, addresses this critical question of whether boy actors were a subliminal or subversive presence on the English Renaissance stage by analysing their reception by English Renaissance audiences, their feminism, and their erotic connotation.
Law and Humanities, 2021
ABSTRACT Though law in/and/as performance is a burgeoning area of scholarship, with scholars expl... more ABSTRACT Though law in/and/as performance is a burgeoning area of scholarship, with scholars exploring the relation between theatre, music and law, there is substantially less attention paid to the possibilities of dancing the law. In this article, the author identifies three styles of legal dance – (1) dance as legal practice, (2) dance as legal resolution, and (3) dance as legal research – providing case studies of each from amongst contemporary dance practice. Drawing from this legal dance practice and a survey of the existing field of dance and law research, the author asserts then challenges some common dichotomies between dance and law, most predominant of which is the claim that dance is body oriented whereas law is word oriented. Arguing against this common dichotomy, as the curtains close, the author choreographs the beginnings of dance as an embodied jurisprudence – one that moves the discussion of dance and law from metaphor to methodology.
Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal, 2018
This article provides critical reflections on the Conference of the Law, Literature and Humanitie... more This article provides critical reflections on the Conference of the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia, held on 12-14 December 2017 at La Trobe University and the University of Melbourne, Australia. The conference theme of dissents and dispositions ‘invited consideration of the arrangements and rearrangements of the conduct of law and life; of the dispositions of law and jurisprudence, and how these relate to dissents, resistance and transformation.’ Speakers discussed law, literature, public art, visuality, media, gender and sexuality. The various papers collectively raised questions of how the law is, through art and other mediums, arranged and subsequently – sometimes violently and sometimes politely – rearranged, constantly in a process of developing, evolving, never finishing, and always applying its words and touch to new circumstances.
Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal, 2017
Dr Felix Nobis is a senior lecturer with the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash Univers... more Dr Felix Nobis is a senior lecturer with the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash University. He has worked as a professional actor for many years. He previously played an assistant to the Crown Prosecutor in the Australian television series, Janus, which was set in Melbourne, Victoria and based on the true story of a criminal family allegedly responsible for police shootings. He also played an advisor to a medical defence firm in the Australian television series MDA. He is a writer and professional storyteller. He has toured his one-person adaptation of Beowulf (2004) and one-person show Once Upon a Barstool (2006) internationally and has written on these experiences. His most recent work Boy Out of the Country (2016) is written in an Australian verse style and has just completed a tour of regional Victoria. Professor Gary Watt is an academic in the School of Law at the University of Warwick where his teaching includes advocacy and mooting. He also regularly leads rhetoric ...
Alternative Law Journal, 2018
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société, 2019
Whilst the law maintains a right to silence, the sensorial and performative dimensions of that si... more Whilst the law maintains a right to silence, the sensorial and performative dimensions of that silence are seldom considered. This paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach, informed by legal theory and scholarship in the performing arts, such as theatre, performance studies, and music, as a way of understanding how silence plays in the court. The paper offers a typology to navigate the interpretation of silence in legal performance—both verbal and environmental—and to frame discussion of silence’s impact on the legal audience. The author concludes that silence is used and experienced in a similar way in legal and theatrical performance, namely as a means of attunement. The paper contributes new insights into the existing scholarship on acoustic jurisprudence and invites listening to the gaps in speech, the pauses, the background noise, and the silence in the court.
Law and Humanities, 2014
From Professor Watt’s introduction: It is a wonderfully clear account of the claims that may be m... more From Professor Watt’s introduction: It is a wonderfully clear account of the claims that may be made for law and literature and will serve as a fine introduction to readers who are coming to the subject for the first time. It also explains some significant recent developments in the Australian jurisdiction which were new to the editors of this journal and may be new to many readers. One recent development of particular relevance to the theme of this journal, and this issue and part in particular, is the case of the judge who sought to supplement the shortcomings of a technical judgment by appending something approaching a full narrative account. The effort is reminiscent of narrative verdicts in coroners’ courts in the UK, but the attempt to give a voice to the voiceless is even more overt in the Australian example. The Australian case deserves close and sustained scrutiny, and judging from the quality of Sean Mulcahy’s excellent introduction to the matter, he may well be the person to provide it.
Griffith Law Review, 2018
The question of why women did not perform on the English Renaissance stage is an enduring one, wh... more The question of why women did not perform on the English Renaissance stage is an enduring one, which is yet to be properly answered. This article examines contemporary legislation and case law to illustrate the regulation of women's performance throughout the Renaissance. The article engages in a reading of legislation, provides a textual analysis of court records - both the official narrative presented in the court transcripts and the social and political attitudes that underpinned the rulings - and links the law to the position of women and performers in the Renaissance social structure. The author contends that the laws adopted by judges and legislators were not arbitrary, but reinforced dominant concepts of gender, class and status in Renaissance society. It is argued that regulations operated to cast women performers as outsiders who were subject to male controls. The author offers an alternate reading of Renaissance women performers that expounds the diegetic and political possibilities of their performances, and significantly challenges the notion that the Renaissance theatre was an all-male stage.
LGBTQ rights are amongst the most contentious human rights issues of the present day.
From Professor Watt's introduction: It is a wonderfully clear account of the claims that may be m... more From Professor Watt's introduction: It is a wonderfully clear account of the claims that may be made for law and literature and will serve as a fine introduction to readers who are coming to the subject for the first time. It also explains some significant recent developments in the Australian jurisdiction which were new to the editors of this journal and may be new to many readers. One recent development of particular relevance to the theme of this journal, and this issue and part in particular, is the case of the judge who sought to supplement the shortcomings of a technical judgment by appending something approaching a full narrative account. The effort is reminiscent of narrative verdicts in coroners' courts in the UK, but the attempt to give a voice to the voiceless is even more overt in the Australian example. The Australian case deserves close and sustained scrutiny, and judging from the quality of Sean Mulcahy's excellent introduction to the matter, he may well be the person to provide it.
Social & Legal Studies
New drugs with the potential to cure hepatitis C have emerged. There is great optimism within med... more New drugs with the potential to cure hepatitis C have emerged. There is great optimism within medicine about the transformative potential of cure, but this overlooks the entrenched discrimination and stigma associated with both hepatitis C and injecting drug use and the role of law in re/producing it. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders such as policymakers, lawyers, and representatives from peer organisations (N = 30), Latour’s (2013) work on legal veridiction, Fraser and Seear’s (2011) conceptualisation of hepatitis C as a ‘gathering’, and Mol’s (2021) work on being, this paper explores the possibility that legal processes complicate the linear trajectory of progress and transformation cure promises. Our participants’ identify various legal processes that allow hepatitis C to echo or linger in people’s lives after treatment. These processes are remaking hepatitis C, and making perpetual hepatitis C subjects. We argue that we must grapple with these forces in the era of cure.
Contemporary Drug Problems
Global momentum for drug law reform is building. But how might such reform be achieved? Many argu... more Global momentum for drug law reform is building. But how might such reform be achieved? Many argue that human rights offer a possible normative framework for guiding such reform. There has been very little research on whether human rights processes can actually achieve such aims, however. This paper responds to this knowledge gap. It explores how one human rights mechanism—the “parliamentary rights scrutiny process”—deals with alcohol and other drugs. We consider how four Australian parliaments scrutinized proposed new laws that would deal with alcohol and other drugs for their human rights “compatibility.” We find that laws that would limit the rights of people who use alcohol and other drugs were routinely seen as justifiable on the basis that alcohol and other drugs were inherently “unsafe.” Crucially, safety was conceptualized in a gender-neutral way, without regard to the potential role of gender, including specific masculinities, in the production of phenomena such as family v...
https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol24/iss1/19Abstract: What would the law sound like if it was sung? Wh... more https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol24/iss1/19Abstract: What would the law sound like if it was sung? Whilst scholars have explored the relation between music and law, focus on the acoustic and musical dimensions of legal speech is relatively new. Exploring musical adaptations and remixes of legal transcripts, the paper argues that there is a latent musicality to legal speech. Using as case studies Opera Australia's production of 'Lindy' and Donmar Warehouse's production of 'Committee', where legal speech was adapted verbatim from legal transcripts into musical score, the paper investigates what these composers have to say about their jurisprudential source material. Through advancing this notion of latent musicality within legal speech, this paper suggests that legal speech works best when it appeals to its audience in the way that music appeals to its listener in terms of rhythm, pitch, and tone.
This thesis analyses what performance is and what it does in the court, drawing from theatrical p... more This thesis analyses what performance is and what it does in the court, drawing from theatrical performance. In it, I argue that performance plays a constitutive role in the court, that law and performance are intimately entwined and that law is reliant on performance for its production. In so doing, I consider whether theatre and performance studies research and practice can provide new insights into court proceedings. Central to my discussion of legal performance in court is the role of the audience, which becomes a guiding direction of the thesis and points to my interest in how the legal performance is perceived by the public gallery.
The question of why women did not perform on the English Renaissance stage is an enduring one, wh... more The question of why women did not perform on the English Renaissance stage is an enduring one, which is yet to be properly answered. This article examines contemporary legislation and case law to illustrate the regulation of women’s performance throughout the Renaissance. The article engages in a reading of legislation, provides a textual analysis of court records - both the official narrative represented in the court transcripts and the social and political attitudes that underpinned the rulings - and links the law to the position of women and performers in the Renaissance social structure. The author contends that the laws adopted by judges and legislators were not arbitrary, but reinforced dominant concepts of gender, class and status in Renaissance society. It is argued that regulations operated to cast women performers as outsiders who were subject to male controls. The author offers an alternative reading of Renaissance women performers that expounds the diegetic and political...
Law and Humanities, 2017
Law and space is a growing area of scholarship and has prompted Routledge’s new series on ‘Space,... more Law and space is a growing area of scholarship and has prompted Routledge’s new series on ‘Space, Materiality and the Normative’, exploring the interface of law, geography and space. The first book...
However responsible we undertake to be to our texts and their contexts, we can look only with our... more However responsible we undertake to be to our texts and their contexts, we can look only with our own eyes, and interpret only with our own minds, which have been formed by our own history.
That boy actors took female roles in English Renaissance theatre is a widely recognised conventio... more That boy actors took female roles in English Renaissance theatre is a widely recognised convention, but whether boy actors in female roles were merely “taken for granted” by Renaissance audiences or whether the convention drew attention to itself is an unanswered question. This paper, guided by a wide reading of the current critical debate, addresses this critical question of whether boy actors were a subliminal or subversive presence on the English Renaissance stage by analysing their reception by English Renaissance audiences, their feminism, and their erotic connotation.
Law and Humanities, 2021
ABSTRACT Though law in/and/as performance is a burgeoning area of scholarship, with scholars expl... more ABSTRACT Though law in/and/as performance is a burgeoning area of scholarship, with scholars exploring the relation between theatre, music and law, there is substantially less attention paid to the possibilities of dancing the law. In this article, the author identifies three styles of legal dance – (1) dance as legal practice, (2) dance as legal resolution, and (3) dance as legal research – providing case studies of each from amongst contemporary dance practice. Drawing from this legal dance practice and a survey of the existing field of dance and law research, the author asserts then challenges some common dichotomies between dance and law, most predominant of which is the claim that dance is body oriented whereas law is word oriented. Arguing against this common dichotomy, as the curtains close, the author choreographs the beginnings of dance as an embodied jurisprudence – one that moves the discussion of dance and law from metaphor to methodology.
Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal, 2018
This article provides critical reflections on the Conference of the Law, Literature and Humanitie... more This article provides critical reflections on the Conference of the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia, held on 12-14 December 2017 at La Trobe University and the University of Melbourne, Australia. The conference theme of dissents and dispositions ‘invited consideration of the arrangements and rearrangements of the conduct of law and life; of the dispositions of law and jurisprudence, and how these relate to dissents, resistance and transformation.’ Speakers discussed law, literature, public art, visuality, media, gender and sexuality. The various papers collectively raised questions of how the law is, through art and other mediums, arranged and subsequently – sometimes violently and sometimes politely – rearranged, constantly in a process of developing, evolving, never finishing, and always applying its words and touch to new circumstances.
Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal, 2017
Dr Felix Nobis is a senior lecturer with the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash Univers... more Dr Felix Nobis is a senior lecturer with the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash University. He has worked as a professional actor for many years. He previously played an assistant to the Crown Prosecutor in the Australian television series, Janus, which was set in Melbourne, Victoria and based on the true story of a criminal family allegedly responsible for police shootings. He also played an advisor to a medical defence firm in the Australian television series MDA. He is a writer and professional storyteller. He has toured his one-person adaptation of Beowulf (2004) and one-person show Once Upon a Barstool (2006) internationally and has written on these experiences. His most recent work Boy Out of the Country (2016) is written in an Australian verse style and has just completed a tour of regional Victoria. Professor Gary Watt is an academic in the School of Law at the University of Warwick where his teaching includes advocacy and mooting. He also regularly leads rhetoric ...
Alternative Law Journal, 2018
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société, 2019
Whilst the law maintains a right to silence, the sensorial and performative dimensions of that si... more Whilst the law maintains a right to silence, the sensorial and performative dimensions of that silence are seldom considered. This paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach, informed by legal theory and scholarship in the performing arts, such as theatre, performance studies, and music, as a way of understanding how silence plays in the court. The paper offers a typology to navigate the interpretation of silence in legal performance—both verbal and environmental—and to frame discussion of silence’s impact on the legal audience. The author concludes that silence is used and experienced in a similar way in legal and theatrical performance, namely as a means of attunement. The paper contributes new insights into the existing scholarship on acoustic jurisprudence and invites listening to the gaps in speech, the pauses, the background noise, and the silence in the court.
Law and Humanities, 2014
From Professor Watt’s introduction: It is a wonderfully clear account of the claims that may be m... more From Professor Watt’s introduction: It is a wonderfully clear account of the claims that may be made for law and literature and will serve as a fine introduction to readers who are coming to the subject for the first time. It also explains some significant recent developments in the Australian jurisdiction which were new to the editors of this journal and may be new to many readers. One recent development of particular relevance to the theme of this journal, and this issue and part in particular, is the case of the judge who sought to supplement the shortcomings of a technical judgment by appending something approaching a full narrative account. The effort is reminiscent of narrative verdicts in coroners’ courts in the UK, but the attempt to give a voice to the voiceless is even more overt in the Australian example. The Australian case deserves close and sustained scrutiny, and judging from the quality of Sean Mulcahy’s excellent introduction to the matter, he may well be the person to provide it.
Griffith Law Review, 2018
The question of why women did not perform on the English Renaissance stage is an enduring one, wh... more The question of why women did not perform on the English Renaissance stage is an enduring one, which is yet to be properly answered. This article examines contemporary legislation and case law to illustrate the regulation of women's performance throughout the Renaissance. The article engages in a reading of legislation, provides a textual analysis of court records - both the official narrative presented in the court transcripts and the social and political attitudes that underpinned the rulings - and links the law to the position of women and performers in the Renaissance social structure. The author contends that the laws adopted by judges and legislators were not arbitrary, but reinforced dominant concepts of gender, class and status in Renaissance society. It is argued that regulations operated to cast women performers as outsiders who were subject to male controls. The author offers an alternate reading of Renaissance women performers that expounds the diegetic and political possibilities of their performances, and significantly challenges the notion that the Renaissance theatre was an all-male stage.
LGBTQ rights are amongst the most contentious human rights issues of the present day.
From Professor Watt's introduction: It is a wonderfully clear account of the claims that may be m... more From Professor Watt's introduction: It is a wonderfully clear account of the claims that may be made for law and literature and will serve as a fine introduction to readers who are coming to the subject for the first time. It also explains some significant recent developments in the Australian jurisdiction which were new to the editors of this journal and may be new to many readers. One recent development of particular relevance to the theme of this journal, and this issue and part in particular, is the case of the judge who sought to supplement the shortcomings of a technical judgment by appending something approaching a full narrative account. The effort is reminiscent of narrative verdicts in coroners' courts in the UK, but the attempt to give a voice to the voiceless is even more overt in the Australian example. The Australian case deserves close and sustained scrutiny, and judging from the quality of Sean Mulcahy's excellent introduction to the matter, he may well be the person to provide it.