Sabarish Suresh | National University of Singapore (original) (raw)

Uploads

Papers by Sabarish Suresh

Law, Culture, and the Humanities , 2024

This article will demonstrate how a constitutive tension between the sovereign decision on the st... more This article will demonstrate how a constitutive tension between the sovereign decision on the state of exception and the norm structured by the rule of law has not just animated legal discourse in the colonial period in India, as exhaustively demonstrated by Nasser Hussain, but has also affected the making of the Indian Constitution, exacerbated by the crisis of partition. This antinomy, on closer inspection, is antinomic merely in form and appearance, for the exception, although understood as outside, and against, the norm, is also lodged deep within it. This article will delineate how a constitutive state of exception structured the exception as the norm and encoded it within the rule of law.

Law and History Review , 2024

This paper will engage with the early colonial maps of the British East India Company to analyze ... more This paper will engage with the early colonial maps of the British East India Company to analyze its representative, as well as creative, functions, delineating how maps represent existing legal relations, entrench hierarchies, and visually transmit projected, and aspired, notions of legal authority and sovereignty. This paper studies the constitutive role of cartography apropos law, territory, and social order, in a specific historical context, by examining the crucial political role played by the British East India Company's cartographic practices and maps in aspiring and imagining the transplantation and establishment of English sovereignty in the Indian subcontinent. This paper will also show how British maps visually entrenched and supplemented unique forms of social hierarchy and marginalization, and legal categories and stratifications, in Indian cities. By analyzing maps, memoirs, cartouches, dedications, ornaments, plans, prospects, and historical manuscripts appertaining to the eighteenth and early nineteenth century operations of the Company, this paper will demonstrate, firstly, that cartography preceded, visually imagined, and set the stage for the coalescence of British sovereignty and the expansion of its law in the Indian subcontinent; secondly, that cartography provided the visual support for social ordering; and thirdly, that maps do not have a singular function. This paper proposes a notion of cartojuridism to capture the myriad ways in which cartography, law, sovereignty, and society intersect and relate with each other.

Research Handbook on Law and Literature , 2022

While legal scholarship has definitely witnessed a spatial turn, the attention to cartography and... more While legal scholarship has definitely witnessed a spatial turn, the attention to cartography and mapping as a crucial component in the constitution of law and the juridical has not been as apparent or specifically attended to in the scholarship on legal geographies. This chapter focuses on the nexus between cartographic practices and the creation of national law. The principal claim is that laws cannot do without maps. Maps constitute an indispensable basis for the coalescence of legal sovereignty. The national territory, as an idiosyncratic political concept, is an intricate admixture of law and cartography. Political cartography and political philosophy have made valiant attempts to adumbrate this specific process of territorialization. A legal engagement with mapping and the creation/reproduction of territory, however, is hardly visible. To that extent, this chapter engages with a cartographic jurisprudence. An effort to read statutes and judicial opinions to unravel how the juridical bases itself upon, makes use of, works with, and works-through, cartography.

This course introduces students to the psychoanalytic method of reading law. Psychoanalysis, whic... more This course introduces students to the psychoanalytic method of reading law. Psychoanalysis, which has witnessed a vast interdisciplinary proliferation over the years, has tremendous potential as a way of reading law. This course deals with (a) using psychoanalysis as a critical and methodological discourse to read law closely, beyond and through the black letter of the legal text and (b) unpacking the methods by which to read symptoms, signs, and tensions within legal texts and judicial decisions. This course will demand intensive and rigorous reading and writing. It will offer students the opportunity to closely read and engage with four kinds of texts: (a) primary material from the genre of clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis; (b) secondary material on the literary and humanistic dimensions of psychoanalysis; (c) Material on psychoanalytic legal theory; and (d) Re-reading constitutional/juridical discourse in India from a psychoanalytic lens. This course will take the form of lectures and discussions. Each session will be devoted to a particular topic or set of topics. Readings are assigned for each session and reading the texts beforehand is mandatory. Some weeks also have recommended texts, films and documentaries which are not mandatory, albeit they are highly useful for the topic and worth the effort. COURSE OBJECTIVE(S) At the end of the course, students will: a. Have a better understanding of psychoanalysis as a literary and humanistic genre

Book Reviews by Sabarish Suresh

Journal of the Indian Law Institute , 2020

A Review of Ronojoy Sen, Articles of Faith: Religion, Secularism and the Indian Supreme Court (Ne... more A Review of Ronojoy Sen, Articles of Faith: Religion, Secularism and the Indian Supreme Court (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019).

Law, Culture, and the Humanities , 2024

This article will demonstrate how a constitutive tension between the sovereign decision on the st... more This article will demonstrate how a constitutive tension between the sovereign decision on the state of exception and the norm structured by the rule of law has not just animated legal discourse in the colonial period in India, as exhaustively demonstrated by Nasser Hussain, but has also affected the making of the Indian Constitution, exacerbated by the crisis of partition. This antinomy, on closer inspection, is antinomic merely in form and appearance, for the exception, although understood as outside, and against, the norm, is also lodged deep within it. This article will delineate how a constitutive state of exception structured the exception as the norm and encoded it within the rule of law.

Law and History Review , 2024

This paper will engage with the early colonial maps of the British East India Company to analyze ... more This paper will engage with the early colonial maps of the British East India Company to analyze its representative, as well as creative, functions, delineating how maps represent existing legal relations, entrench hierarchies, and visually transmit projected, and aspired, notions of legal authority and sovereignty. This paper studies the constitutive role of cartography apropos law, territory, and social order, in a specific historical context, by examining the crucial political role played by the British East India Company's cartographic practices and maps in aspiring and imagining the transplantation and establishment of English sovereignty in the Indian subcontinent. This paper will also show how British maps visually entrenched and supplemented unique forms of social hierarchy and marginalization, and legal categories and stratifications, in Indian cities. By analyzing maps, memoirs, cartouches, dedications, ornaments, plans, prospects, and historical manuscripts appertaining to the eighteenth and early nineteenth century operations of the Company, this paper will demonstrate, firstly, that cartography preceded, visually imagined, and set the stage for the coalescence of British sovereignty and the expansion of its law in the Indian subcontinent; secondly, that cartography provided the visual support for social ordering; and thirdly, that maps do not have a singular function. This paper proposes a notion of cartojuridism to capture the myriad ways in which cartography, law, sovereignty, and society intersect and relate with each other.

Research Handbook on Law and Literature , 2022

While legal scholarship has definitely witnessed a spatial turn, the attention to cartography and... more While legal scholarship has definitely witnessed a spatial turn, the attention to cartography and mapping as a crucial component in the constitution of law and the juridical has not been as apparent or specifically attended to in the scholarship on legal geographies. This chapter focuses on the nexus between cartographic practices and the creation of national law. The principal claim is that laws cannot do without maps. Maps constitute an indispensable basis for the coalescence of legal sovereignty. The national territory, as an idiosyncratic political concept, is an intricate admixture of law and cartography. Political cartography and political philosophy have made valiant attempts to adumbrate this specific process of territorialization. A legal engagement with mapping and the creation/reproduction of territory, however, is hardly visible. To that extent, this chapter engages with a cartographic jurisprudence. An effort to read statutes and judicial opinions to unravel how the juridical bases itself upon, makes use of, works with, and works-through, cartography.

This course introduces students to the psychoanalytic method of reading law. Psychoanalysis, whic... more This course introduces students to the psychoanalytic method of reading law. Psychoanalysis, which has witnessed a vast interdisciplinary proliferation over the years, has tremendous potential as a way of reading law. This course deals with (a) using psychoanalysis as a critical and methodological discourse to read law closely, beyond and through the black letter of the legal text and (b) unpacking the methods by which to read symptoms, signs, and tensions within legal texts and judicial decisions. This course will demand intensive and rigorous reading and writing. It will offer students the opportunity to closely read and engage with four kinds of texts: (a) primary material from the genre of clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis; (b) secondary material on the literary and humanistic dimensions of psychoanalysis; (c) Material on psychoanalytic legal theory; and (d) Re-reading constitutional/juridical discourse in India from a psychoanalytic lens. This course will take the form of lectures and discussions. Each session will be devoted to a particular topic or set of topics. Readings are assigned for each session and reading the texts beforehand is mandatory. Some weeks also have recommended texts, films and documentaries which are not mandatory, albeit they are highly useful for the topic and worth the effort. COURSE OBJECTIVE(S) At the end of the course, students will: a. Have a better understanding of psychoanalysis as a literary and humanistic genre

Journal of the Indian Law Institute , 2020

A Review of Ronojoy Sen, Articles of Faith: Religion, Secularism and the Indian Supreme Court (Ne... more A Review of Ronojoy Sen, Articles of Faith: Religion, Secularism and the Indian Supreme Court (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019).