Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos | University of Westminster (original) (raw)

Books by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos

Research Handbook on Critical Legal Theory, 2019

Critical theory, characteristically linked with the politics of theoretical engagement, covers th... more Critical theory, characteristically linked with the politics of theoretical engagement, covers the manifold of the connections between theory and praxis. This thought-provoking Research Handbook captures the broad range of those connections as far as legal thought is concerned and retains an emphasis both on the politics of theory, and on the notion of theoretical engagement. The first part examines the question of definition and tracks the origins and development of critical legal theory along its European and North American trajectories. The second part looks at the thematic connections between the development of legal theory and other currents of critical thought such as; Feminism, Marxism, Critical Race Theory, varieties of post-modernism, as well as the various ‘turns’ (ethical, aesthetic, political) of critical legal theory. The third and final part explores particular fields of law, addressing the question how the field has been shaped by critical legal theory, or what critical approaches reveal about the field, with the clear focus on opportunities for social transformation.

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Law and Theory, London: Routledge, 2018, 2018

Routledge Handbook for Law and Theory attempts to reconceptualise legal theory in a material, soc... more Routledge Handbook for Law and Theory attempts to reconceptualise legal theory in a material, socially contextualised, affectively engaged and politically radical way. Its main purpose is to offer a new collective approach to the theory of law, unbound by the grand legal abstractions of pure textuality, strict normativity, universalised judgement , abstract political thinking, theoretically poor doctrinal or empirical work, and decontextualised philosophical inquiry. This volume distinguishes itself from positivist legal theory, most strands of traditional philosophy of law, but also from most forms of by now more or less normalised sociolegal or critical legal theory. This is because the volume represents an attempt to escape the often superficial veneer of interdisciplinarity in legal theory, and seriously situate legal thinking in the open plane of other disciplines as well as non-disciplines (namely, boundaries between disciplines, conceptual advancements that belong to many disciplines at the same time and ethical calls for not settling in a discipline), determined by such new parameters as the post/nonhuman, the anthropocenic, the material, the ontological, the ecological and so on. To this effect, the volume engages with supradisciplinary debates on the areas of spatiality, temporality, materiality, cor-poreality and sensorial studies, anticipating and perhaps even shaping in this way future developments of current legal theory.

Research Methods in Environmental Law - A Handbook , 2017

This timely Handbook brings innovative, free-thinking and radical approaches to research methods ... more This timely Handbook brings innovative, free-thinking and radical approaches to research methods in environmental law. With a comprehensive approach it brings together key concepts such as sustainability, climate change, activism, education and Actor-Network Theory. It considers how the Anthropocene subjects environmental law to critique, and to the needs of the variety of bodies, human and non-human, that require its protection. This much-needed book provides a theoretically informed analysis of methodological approaches in the discipline, such as constitutional analysis, rights-based approaches, spatial/geographical analysis, immersive methodologies and autoethnography, which will aid in the practical critique and re-imagining of Environmental Law.

This book introduces a radically spatialised approach to knowledge creation and innovation. Refle... more This book introduces a radically spatialised approach to knowledge creation and innovation. Reflecting on an array of European urban and regional developments, it offers an updated notion of milieu as the conceptual and material space of knowledge and innovation in line with the interpretative turn in social sciences and humanities. In view of the unwillingness of mainstream economics to accommodate such a trend, the authors pursue a broadly understood hermeneutic approach that expands on the triad of knowledge-space-innovation. The book’s main findings are that space is an essential intermediary in the connection between knowledge and innovation, and that a renewed notion of milieu provides the knowledge-space-innovation triad with both an analytical basis and operational power. It also offers fresh insights into the significance and potential of the knowledge economy. A number of empirical European case studies on various scales (organisations, cities and territories) support the findings and suggest new policy directions.

There can be no justice that is not spatial. Against a recent tendency to despatialise law, matte... more There can be no justice that is not spatial. Against a recent tendency to despatialise law, matter, bodies and even space itself, this book insists on spatialising them, arguing that there can be neither law nor justice that are not articulated through and in space.

Spatial Justice presents a new theory and a radical application of the material connection between space – in the geographical as well as sociological and philosophical sense – and the law – in the broadest sense that includes written and oral law, but also embodied social and political norms. More specifically, it argues that spatial justice is the struggle of various bodies – human, natural, non-organic, technological – to occupy a certain space at a certain time. Seen in this way, spatial justice is the most radical offspring of the spatial turn, since, as this book demonstrates, spatial justice can be found in the core of most contemporary legal and political issues – issues such as geopolitical conflicts, environmental issues, animality, colonisation, droning, the cyberspace and so on. In order to ague this, the book employs the lawscape, as the tautology between law and space, and the concept of atmosphere in its geological, political, aesthetic, legal and biological dimension.

Written by a leading theorist in the area, Spatial Justice: Bodies, Lawscape, Atmosphere forges a new interdisciplinary understanding of space and law, while offering a fresh approach to current geopolitical, spatiolegal and ecological issues.

Law and Ecology: New Environmental Foundations contains a series of theoretical and applied persp... more Law and Ecology: New Environmental Foundations contains a series of theoretical and applied perspectives on the connection between law and ecology, which together offer a radical and socially responsive foundation for environmental law. While its legal corpus grows daily, environmental law has not enjoyed the kind of jurisprudential underpinning generally found in other branches of law. This book forges a new ecological jurisprudential foundation for environmental law - where ‘ecological' is understood both in the narrow sense of a more ecosystemic perspective on law, and in the broad sense of critical self-reflection of the mechanisms of environmental law as they operate in a context where boundaries between the human and the non-human are collapsing, and where the traditional distinction between ecocentrism and anthropocentrism is recast. Addressing current debates, including the intellectual property of bioresources; the protection of biodiversity in view of tribal land demands; the ethics of genetically modified organisms; the redefinition of the 'human' through feminist and technological research; the spatial/geographical boundaries of environmental jurisdiction; and the postcolonial geographies of pollution - Law and Ecology redefines the way environmental law is perceived, theorised and applied. It also constitutes a radical challenge to the traditionally human-centred frameworks and concerns of legal theory.

Niklas Luhmann’s (1927–1998) theory of social systems is notorious for its degree of complexity a... more Niklas Luhmann’s (1927–1998) theory of social systems is notorious for its degree of complexity and abstraction. It has been regularly misread as conservative, overly structural, positivist and disconnected from other contemporary theories; especially the ones influenced by post-structuralism, gender theory, postcolonialism, and spatial and embodied understandings of society. Such misunderstandings help to explain why, particularly in the English-speaking world, reception of Luhmann’s work has been reluctant and uneven. While there is no paucity of introductions, general discussions and handbooks on Luhmann’s work, some of the misattributions and ossified readings persist. Part of the problem is the lack of fruitful critical dialogues between Luhmann’s theory and other theoretical perspectives that would manage to set Luhmann in a new light, away from received readings and originary orthodoxies, and in line with contemporary theoretical developments. The present anthology is an attempt to establish precisely such connections by critically relating Luhmann’s work to a set of other authors and theoretical perspectives – from Jacque Lacan to Jacque Derrida, from Gilles Deleuze to Umberto Eco, and from gender studies to actor-network theory to spatiality – all of which consist of radically new yet relevant areas of research to which Luhmann’s theory has a great deal to contribute.

""Offering a novel, transdisciplinary approach to environmental law, its principles, mechanics an... more ""Offering a novel, transdisciplinary approach to environmental law, its principles, mechanics and context, as tested in its application to the urban environment, this book traces the conceptual and material absence of communication between the human and the natural and controversially includes such an absence within a system of law and a system of geography which effectively remain closed to environmental considerations. This book looks at Niklas Luhmann's theory of autopoiesis. Introducing the key concepts and operations, contextualizing them and opening them up to critical analysis. Indeed, in contrast to most discussions on autopoiesis, it proposes a radically different reading of the theory, in line with critical legal, political, sociological, urban and ecological theories, while drawing from writings by Husserl and Derrida, as well as Latour, Blanchot, Haraway, Agamben and Nancy. It explores a range of topics in the areas of environmental law and urban geography, including: environmental risk, environmental rights, the precautionary principle, intergenerational equity and urban waste discourses on community, nature, science and identity.

The author redefines the traditional foundations of environmental law and urban geography and suggests a radical way of dealing with scientific ignorance, cultural differences and environmental degradation within the perceived need for legal delivery of certainty. ""

"Law and the City" offers a lateral, critical and often unexpected description of some of the mos... more "Law and the City" offers a lateral, critical and often unexpected description of some of the most important cities in the world, including Moscow, Istanbul, Berlin, Singapore, Athens, Mexico City, Toronto, Sydney, Johannesburg: each one from a distinctive legal perspective. An invaluable 'guide' to adopting a different approach to the city and its history, culture and everyday experience, "Law and the City" is not simply an exploration of the relationship between these two spheres. It details: a flourishing of law's spatiality and urban legal locality; and an unfolding of both the juridical urban body and the city's legal dreams, of both the 'urban law' and the 'juridical polis'. Enlightening and at the same time problematising, this volume is an innovative collection of truly global dimensions that will provide compelling reading both for specialists and for critical travellers.

"This is the first book to consider German sociologist Niklas Luhmann's social theory in a critic... more "This is the first book to consider German sociologist Niklas Luhmann's social theory in a critical legal context.

Niklas Luhmann: Law, Society, Justice is a critical description, and at the same time a performative inversion, of the theory of legal autopoiesis as developed by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. This theory is introduced here both in terms of society at large and the legal system specifically. As the basic operations and mechanisms of Luhmannian sociological analysis of the law are used as a platform on which the critical analysis of the book is erected, the work reveals the aporetic structure of autopoiesis. This aligns it with postmodern approaches to law as influenced by post-structuralism, deconstruction, feminist theories, contemporary philosophy and political theory. The main epistemological inversion is that, here, the systemic environment - whatever is not 'of the system' - becomes a space of critique and negation of the existing systemic structures, but only after its prior internalization by the system itself. Thus, through autopoietic processes, the environment advances from outside in, and in this transgressive performance, an autopoietic critique of the structure emerges. The book builds on this transgression and reconstructs the theory malgré soi on the basis of a paradox, where the observer is required to look outside the law in order to find an adequate description of the law.

Niklas Luhmann: Law, Society, Justice thus operates both as an introduction to the relevance of Luhmann's social theory for law, as well as a critical response to autopoiesis. "

Videos by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos

The author of The Book of Water talks to Alexandra Salimba on his fiction book, the challenges of... more The author of The Book of Water talks to Alexandra Salimba on his fiction book, the challenges of writing on the idea of water, and why water is both inside and outside us.

In Greek with English subtitles

To overcome the crises of our time, new ways of thinking, acting and being are urgently needed. T... more To overcome the crises of our time, new ways of thinking, acting and being are urgently needed. This film is dedicated in loving memory of Burns H Weston, tireless advocate for a better world. We regret that two of our contributors, Bronwen Morgan and Anna Grear, were ill on the day of shooting and unable to be included in the film. For information on how to take action and get involved see www.bollier.org/reimagine and/or www.gnhre.org/reimagine.

Public Lecture, University of Melbourne, Faculty of Arts, Centre for International Law and the Hu... more Public Lecture, University of Melbourne, Faculty of Arts, Centre for International Law and the Humanities, December 2013

In this public lecture, Professor Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos deals with airs and sounds and scents, while keeping an eye on the law. His field of enquiry is the concept of atmosphere, namely the interstitial area between sensory and affective occurrences. Atmospheres are legally determined. The law controls affective occurrences by regulating sensory stimulation, guiding thus bodies into corridors of sensory compulsion – an aspect of which is consumerism in capitalist societies.

This is achieved by allowing certain sensory options to come forth while suppressing others, something which is particularly obvious in cases of intellectual property protection that capture the sensorial. Andreas deals with atmosphere in its material, spatial manifestation and in particular through what he has called the ‘lawscape’, namely the fusion of space and normativity. He employs a broadly Deleuzian methodology with insights from radical geography, affective studies, object-oriented ontology, urban and critical legal theory, as well as animal studies.

Spatial Justice as an instance of Law's Interdisciplinarity and the Post-humanist Turn

Published Texts by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2021) McGill GLSA Research Series: The City: An Object or a Subject of Law? , 2021

My recent ethical challenge has been to bring together my academic and my artistic practices. I a... more My recent ethical challenge has been to bring together my academic and my artistic practices. I am a legal academic, as well as a practicing artist. And while law has often been part of what I do as an artist, bringing my art practice into law has been harder. For this chapter, I reflect on the theory of the lawscape, namely the tautology of law and urban space, as well as on atmospherics and spatial justice, through a performance lecture I gave online on the issue of Law and the City.

The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws, Peter Goodrich and Thanos Zartaloudis (eds), London: Routledge, 2020, 2020

This is an imaginary legal draft about eternal human life and the illegality of death. The follow... more This is an imaginary legal draft about eternal human life and the illegality of death. The following legal draft, with few alterations, eventually became the basis for one of the first laws established by the Communities under Aeternity – the others being the regulation of parallelisms, the deep-water striation and the series of cyclonopedic bylaws. While technically not the first law to be passed by the Communities, it is now considered the most important. It is generally acknowledged that Ad Vitam Aeternam has come to characterise the whole subsequent production of laws of constitutional import, as well as localised regulations and policies.

VESPER, 2019

A short story between prose and poem, about slow water, inhospitable mountains, impossible tasks,... more A short story between prose and poem, about slow water, inhospitable mountains, impossible tasks, inane repetition, vast temporalities, screaming superegos and aquatic releases. It is of course a story about Venice. Commissioned for the inaugural issue of VESPER: JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURE, ARTS AND THEORY: 1 SUPERVENICE

Research Handbook on Critical Legal Theory, 2019

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Law and Theory, London: Routledge, 2018, 2018

Research Methods in Environmental Law - A Handbook , 2017

Niklas Luhmann: Law, Society, Justice thus operates both as an introduction to the relevance of Luhmann's social theory for law, as well as a critical response to autopoiesis. "

In Greek with English subtitles

Spatial Justice as an instance of Law's Interdisciplinarity and the Post-humanist Turn

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2021) McGill GLSA Research Series: The City: An Object or a Subject of Law? , 2021

The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws, Peter Goodrich and Thanos Zartaloudis (eds), London: Routledge, 2020, 2020

VESPER, 2019

Andre Kuenkel 2012-2019, 2019

This is a text about Andre Kuenkel's paintngs and the role of time. Time here is an elastic band,... more This is a text about Andre Kuenkel's paintngs and the role of time. Time here is an elastic band, circumventing the surface of the painting, framing the absolute now, linking it to other paintings (there is always another painting, be it in the diptych, in the triptych, in the series, in the collection). Each painting is a future that is never fully formed and that at the same time goes deeper in the palimpsest of each painting. With every dive, a past is brought forth that comes to haunt the surface. Desire and pathos bloom on the skin of the painting like pre-edenic flowers.

Critical Legal Thinking, 2020

The ethics of withdrawal before Covid is a show of a planetary collectivity, where we finally und... more The ethics of withdrawal before Covid is a show of a planetary collectivity, where we finally understand that our bodies are all connected, and that taking precautions in London will mean that more people will survive in the refugee camps or in the less developed world with more fragile health systems.

Critical theory and legal autopoiesis, 2019

At the heart of Gunter Teubner's work, there is a foundational paradox. The work, as attested in ... more At the heart of Gunter Teubner's work, there is a foundational paradox. The work, as attested in this long-awaited collection of Teubner's texts that span a few decades, is erudite, expansive, involved with the world, and of high theoretical merit. It is populated with references as varied as von Kleist, Derrida, Latour, Kafka, and of course Luhmann; but also global financial markets, Africa and HIV pharmaceuticals, private law and contract, politics, media, protest movements: a kaleidoscope of issues and references that attempt to capture the world, to describe and indeed to change it for the better. Yet at the same time, the work refuses to be captured by the world. It never allows itself to become a simple blueprint, an incontestable theoretical suggestion with pretences of universality, or even a text devoid of deliberate ambiguity, and closed to the contingent and the differently interpreted. The work hardly ever surrenders itself to the world. Rather, it superimposes a layer onto the world, an exegetic membrane that offers both distance and a reassurance that this is how things 'really' are: complex, multiple, closed, engaged in cumbersome internalisations and externalisations, fighting with absences, compulsions and addictions, extreme pressures and deft steerings, riddled with anxiety about identity, limits, otherness. Teubner's world is an apparatus of capture, seductive and indeed optimistic; yet, it offers no space of rest, no finite certainty of how things should or even can possibly carry on. It is often the case that, right when the reader thinks, 'aha, this is what Teubner is getting at', a reversal takes place that unsettles the previous balance, throwing one into yet another perspective, another way of understanding the world-in this way making sure that neither the world nor we as readers would ever freeze in any one, permanent position. This does not mean that we are faced with a form of relativist thinking. Quite the opposite: Teubner is a pragmatist through and through, and he understands well the need for realistic descriptions of society. But in the same vein, he understands too the uselessness of any universal position, the overarching necessity of not succumbing to 'pure' critique without the possibility of simultaneous action, and the supreme reign of paradoxes over conflicts (supreme also by necessity, hence the normative indictment, in Niklas Luhmann's footsteps, of never, whatever happens, question the foundational paradox). The intense flirtation with the paradox, and especially with the observation of deparadoxification, that permeates Teubner's oeuvre, finds full expression in the way the ideas are put forth in the texts included in this collection: in a performatively paradoxical way, the texts often arrive at what could be seen as abrupt conclusions, where matters are left unresolved, in progress, hanging there. All this, despite frequent bullet-pointed directions, suggestions for future solutions, practical recommendations: undoubtedly strong and sound normative directions, which, however, rely on such fine and complex manoeuvring that may never be followed to the letter. Rather than detracting, this adds to the conviction that Teubner's work remains this rare combination of scholarship that is both solid and fleeting, both actionable and highly critical, both practical and evanescent. Beyond and below all this, if one cares to look, one might come upon the crux of Teubner's foundational paradox: on the one hand, the desire to be connected, involved in and engaged with the world; and on the other, an equally strong desire to take leave from the shackles of such connection, and to carry on building upward spires of theoretical inventiveness that keep on spreading layers of different perspectives on top of existing ones. The paradox, to put it in a slightly more author-focussed way, is the delicate coexistence between the craftsman and the visionary, the scholar dedicated to techne and solution-finding on the one hand, and the thinker who wants to immerse himself in the intricacies of a beautiful theory.

Doing Socio-Legal Studies: A guide to theory and methods, Naomi Creutzfeldt, Marc Mason, Kirsten McConnachie (eds), London: Routledge, , 2019

Legal research is increasingly moving beyond the traditional distinctions between socio-legal and... more Legal research is increasingly moving beyond the traditional distinctions between socio-legal and critical legal thinking or law and its context, and towards an emplaced, embodied and material understanding of law. In this chapter, I argue that this move should also be reflected in the way we write. I offer some observations on why these distinctions have already become obsolete in legal essay writing practice, despite the fact that they remain quite unconsciously practiced by most of us, especially when it comes to teaching legal writing to our students. I then suggest a few ways in which legal writing can move even further in this theoretically rich yet emplaced and contextualised direction. Some of the most important steps is to rethink of the essay as truly an essay (i.e., trial, experiment); to take risks by not trying to provide consistence but allow the text to unfold as a true legal body and agent; to reserve a prominent position for the ‘I’ in its affective experiential presence as well as its multiplicity; to embrace the collective front towards a more just law without falling into old distinctions. I conclude by summing up the most important distinctions that we need to overcome, and suggest an ultimate one between law and justice.

Research Handbook on Critical Legal Theory, Emilios Christodoulidis, Ruth Dukes and Marco Goldoni (eds), Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019

Legal aesthetics is increasingly less about looking at law and aesthetics or art together, and ra... more Legal aesthetics is increasingly less about looking at law and aesthetics or art together, and rather about understanding the aesthetic practices the law employs in order to prove itself socially relevant. This is not an isolated legal phenomenon but largely a consequence of a shift in aesthetics as a whole, from the ontology of definition (beauty, art, sublime) to the new ontology of apparition (or staging). This means that the law must stage itself in a consumer-oriented way, to market itself in a socially-engaging way, and to package itself in a media-appetising way in order to legitimise itself and its continuous social role. From the society of discipline (Foucault) to that of control (Deleuze), and now to that of self-staging, the law deals with the need for legitimation by marketing itself as desirable. This legal ‘selfie’, as it were, relies on manipulation of affects to generate an atmosphere in which the law can carry on proving itself relevant. In this chapter, after surveying the established connection between law and art/aesthetics, I engage with the shift from aesthetics of definition to aestheses of immersion, namely immersion into affects that involve sensorial and emotional responses. In order to demonstrate this empirically, I look into the experimental performance ‘No Feedback’ (London 2015) that dealt with issues of atmosphere engineering, distinction as aesthetic choice and aesthesic immersion.

Keywords

Legal Aesthetics
Aestheses
Atmosphere
Affect
Body/Corporeality

in Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (Ed), The Routledge Handbook of Law & Theory, London: Routledge, 2018, 2018

This is an experimental text with three voices. The first one is an autoethnographic study of bei... more This is an experimental text with three voices. The first one is an autoethnographic study of being called on jury service at the Old Bailey, London. The second is a theoretical voice, analysing the theory of the lawscape as I have developed it in my writings, in combination with issues about atmospherics, enclosures, control of bodies and spaces, and temporalities of law. The third voice operates as commentary on the other two and the whole chapter as such, offering an antilogos to the traditional understanding of essay writing, especially for law students but also for academics. This last voice suggests the disruption of the flow of textuality in order for materiality to flood in.

Sophy Rickett and Judy Aitken (eds), Elephant Atlas: A publication on the exhibition Elephant Atlas, London: LCC, 2018, 2018

The archival spectacle unfolds only for the ones who have the time and dedication to look closely... more The archival spectacle unfolds only for the ones who have the time and dedication to look closely; but even then, it never unfolds fully. Every archive withdraws. In its core, there is an impenetrability that can never be pierced through. The Cuming Museum Collection, however, is a notch more impenetrable than usual. No doubt, one can ask to see the objects in the boxes, look them up numerically in the archive, or browse some of them (1753 to be precise) online. Yet the object pales behind the digital, in its turn doubling up as numerical catenation and rough, carton surfaces. The collection has withdrawn behind a curtain of digits.

in Ilaria Giuliani and Paola Piscitelli (eds), Città, sostantivo plurale, Milano: Feltrinelli, 2019, 2019

Defining the city requires a spanning of matter and meaning, corporeality and abstraction, tangib... more Defining the city requires a spanning of matter and meaning, corporeality and abstraction, tangibility and inaccessibility, humanity and nonhumanity. The most prominent difficulty in defining the city is that, while the city is often considered to be constituted by signs, it continually distances itself from them. Nobody puts this better than Italo Calvino in his description of the city of Tamara: “The entrance to the city is through streets full of signs coming out of the walls. The eye meets no things, but shapes of things that imply other things;...If a building has no signpost or figure on its walls, then its shape and position in the city plan are enough to reveal its function;...Even the merchandise the salesmen spread on their benches have a value, not in themselves but as signs of other things;...The stare runs through the streets as though they were written pages: the city dictates everything that you are supposed to think, it makes you repeat its own words, and while you think that you are actually visiting Tamara, you do nothing else but register the names with which the city defines itself and all its spaces.” While organising itself in terms of its signs, the city deliberately distances itself from them, disabling any enduring coincidence between signified and signifier. The city is located on the boundary between confluence and conflict, projecting itself on this very pulling and pushing with its signifiers. There is an urban revolt against the city’s own textual organisation, thus re-instituting the rupture between its description and its self-description -in other words, its signifiers and signifieds.

Sophie Watson (ed.), Spatial Justice in the City, London: Routledge, 2019, 2019

Spatial justice as a concept seems to be at home in many disciplines, such as geography, sociolog... more Spatial justice as a concept seems to be at home in many disciplines, such as geography, sociology, law, politics, philosophy and so on. Precisely because of this, its nature, definition, context and repercussions are yet to be worked out to a satisfactory degree. The contributions in this volume help advance the discussion, adding context and expanding the modes of defining and experiencing spatial justice. It is remarkable, for example, that spatial justice can inform contexts as varied as the gulf states, british self-defence manuals for women, water religious rituals, post-war housing reclamations, Instagram tags, waste transport and art practices – and likewise be informed by these new contexts. It attests to the richness but also potential vagueness of the concept.

Law, Culture and the Humanities, 2018

Doreen Massey, the iconic political geographer, whose book For Space has influenced the way vario... more Doreen Massey, the iconic political geographer, whose book For Space has influenced the way various disciplines understand space, has largely ignored law in her work. In fact, just as most non-legal scholars she replaces law with politics. Here, I read Massey through law, arguing that often, non-legal writing is characterized by a misapprehension of the law. Through an analysis of her arguments against some understandings of space (such as systemic, negative, closed, textual), I mount a critique against the standard understandings of law (as precisely all these things) and suggest instead a lawscaping way of understanding the connection between law and space, as well as issues of spatial justice and responsibility.

A. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos and V. Brooks (eds), Research Methods in Environmental Law A Handbook, Edward Elgar, 2017, 2017

In an attempt to bring Critical Environmental Law to a discussion with the current planetary chal... more In an attempt to bring Critical Environmental Law to a discussion with the current planetary challenges such as the Anthropocene and climate change, and understand the methodological challenges that such a discussion ensues, I suggest three basic tenets from which environmental law can be examined: grammar, perspective and methodology. Grammar refers to the need for new concepts and ways of connecting the various bodies that participate and consist the environment. To this effect, I suggest some terms, such as continuum/rupture, human/nonhuman/inhuman, as well as geologic immersion and planetary withdrawal. Perspective refers to the way current thinking changes or at least is affected by the Anthropocene. Finally, methodology refers to the way critical environmental law must find ways to seek knowledge and the epistemological presuppositions of the limits of such knowledge. In conclusion, I offer four methodological demands of critical environmental law in order for the latter to adapt methodologically and integrate the Anthropocenic grammar and perspective.

Escenografías de Poder: del estado de excepción a los espacios de excepción/SCENOGRAPHIES OF POWER: FROM THE STATE OF EXCEPTION TO THE SPACES OF EXCEPTION: A Catalogue to the Exhibition, Maite Borjabad López-Pastor (editor/curator), , 2017

Where is Assange? He is the vertigo of virtual freedom, the doyen of transversal movement, the ... more Where is Assange? He is the vertigo of
virtual freedom, the doyen of transversal
movement, the freed up diagonal that reigns
over the virtual as a threat, comeuppance,
justice, truth.
But, where is the “real” Assange, this most
exposed mole of absolute confinement?
His body has become coextensive with the
Ecuadorian Embassy. His room cages him
up: a bat crashing its wings on the iron bars.

This is a short piece, commissioned as a response to !Mediengruppe
Bitnik's installation 'Delivery for Mr. Assange A LIVE MAIL ART PIECE RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRADICALREALTI ME'

Bartlebooth, 2017

Imagina entrar a un auditorio y ver que alguien está sentado en el asiento que habías reservado. ... more Imagina entrar a un auditorio y ver que alguien está sentado en el asiento que habías reservado. Tienes el ticket para demostrarlo y, es más, ese asiento en concreto es tu favorito en todo el teatro. La pequeña pieza de papel que sostienes es tu garantía para probarlo, y solo necesitas a alguien que medie por ti para conseguir el asiento que te corresponde. Encuentras a un acomodador que confirma las plazas y, al acompañarte al susodicho asiento, le pide el ticket para comprobarlo a la persona que ocupa tu asiento. Pero, ¡espera un momento!, ella tiene un ticket con exactamente el mismo número de asiento que el tuyo. ¿Qué haces?

The Aerocene Reader - Exhibition Road, Studio Tomás Saraceno, Sasha Engelmann, Karina Pragnell (eds), Berlin: Studio Tomas Saraceno,2017, 2017

through an exploration of Tomas Saraceno's project of the Aerocene, I am attempting a definition ... more through an exploration of Tomas Saraceno's project of the Aerocene, I am attempting a definition of 'life' on the basis of simultaneous connectivity (to be a part of) and withdrawal (to stand apart). I am emplying Deleuze's concept of a life in order to understand the singularity of life, and then link it to the responsibility of the Aerocene, namely the self-floating contraption that has been tried out in several parts of the world and recently at Exhibition Road, London. The text is accompanied by a set of photographs by picpoet.

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 'Postmodern Theory of Law', in M. Sellers, S. Kirste (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, 2017

Postmodern theory of law is an umbrella term. It comprises various theoretical and more empirical... more Postmodern theory of law is an umbrella term. It comprises various theoretical and more empirical schools of thought that are defined by 1. an attempt to see the law in its social context, namely not merely as positivist norms that come through the usual annals of legal decision-making (whether national, regional, international, supranational etc.) but also as norms and behaviors that are produced in social interaction; 2. a tendency seriously to engage with interdisciplinarity, and work with the theoretical heritage of continental philosophy, such as postmarxism, deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, literary theory, theories of embodiment and spatiality, art theory and aesthetics, as well as more explicitly political legal strands, such as feminist legal theory, ecology and law, law and economics, postcolonialism, law and race, third world approaches to international law (TWAIL), queer legal theory, law and popular culture, and so on.; and, 3. a strong critique against current neoliberal political and legal regimes, and also strands of legal theory that are either supportive or silently complicit with the above regimes. This is a short Encyclopaedia entry, describing the main points of a Postmodern Theory of Law.

Interalia Online Magazine, 2017

In July 2017, a team of researchers and practitioners came together to embark upon a month-long... more In July 2017, a team of researchers and practitioners came together to embark upon a month-long situated research residency based at Arebyte Gallery in Hackney Wick, East London. Connecting visual, digital and performance art practices with contemporary scientific research, law and urban design, the project – Crowd Control – explored the mechanisms of collective behaviour through observation, simulation and experimentation.

Through studying group dynamics across differing scales and systems, Crowd Control aimed to observe and understand how groups move together, transfer information, make decisions, and respond to their environment. The question of ‘control’ was explored at three levels: within the body (the internal mechanisms that affect individual behaviour – such as stress response and personality); between bodies (the interactions between individuals – such as social cues, sensory communication, and unwritten patterns of behaviour); and beyond bodies (the external factors that set out to permit, persuade or prohibit behaviours – such as urban infrastructure, legal norms or technological interventions).

A. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2017, 'Critical Environmental Law in the Anthropocene', in L. Kotze (ed), Environmental Law and Governance for the Anthropocene (Oxford, Hart), 2017

It is important to embrace the responsibility that comes with the new geological epoch of the Ant... more It is important to embrace the responsibility that comes with the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene, which, in terms of environmental law, requires nothing less than a radical revisiting of its basics tenets. In an attempt to incorporate the Anthropocene to my ongoing project on Critical Environmental Law, I examine it from three angles: grammar, theoretical perspective and methodology. Grammar refers to the need for a new, anthropocenic vocabulary that will deal with the challenges of the Anthropocene. To this effect, I suggest some terms, such as continuum/rupture, human/nonhuman/inhuman, as well as geologic immersion and planetary withdrawal. Theoretical perspective refers to the way current thinking changes or at least is affected by the Anthropocene – indeed, how current environmental legal thinking is turning in order to accommodate the needs of the new epoch. Finally, methodology refers to the way the Anthropocene changes the way we seek knowledge and the epistemological presuppositions of the limits of such knowledge. I offer four theses in the form of suggestions on how Critical Environmental Law needs to adapt methodologically in order to integrate the Anthropocenic grammar and perspective.

Journal of Environmental Law, 2007

Ostensibly a product of a monomaniac textual geneaologist dealing with descriptions of the Goolen... more Ostensibly a product of a monomaniac textual geneaologist dealing with descriptions of the Goolengook forest in Eastern Victoria, Australia, this book is a necessary book. Its genealogy scans countless administrative, regulatory, legal and other texts over a period that begins with the forest&#x27;s ...

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 2008

This is a 'noisy' book: polyphonous, revolutionary, often radical, and a constant &#x27... more This is a 'noisy' book: polyphonous, revolutionary, often radical, and a constant 'irritation' to the structures that it describes. For Pribán, law is noisy, politics is noisy, all systems are noisy: 'noise' is a necessary and welcomed link. Through noise, law links to morality and politics ...

Mariana Valverde's new book is an important one. It does something that only recently has been sy... more Mariana Valverde's new book is an important one. It does something that
only recently has been systematically attempted in legal theoretical research:
it tries to think of time and space together.1 It reclaims a role for time within
the ambits of legal geography, but it does not do so at the expense of space.
Valverde is a committed spatio-legal scholar who has regularly, whether
explicitly or not, included temporality in her work, and in this book she
addresses these considerations in a variety of discussions, ranging from a re-
reading of early feminist scholarship, to courtroom analysis, to the Canadian
justice system.

WORKSHOP: 'The Space of Biopolitics.' Tuesday, 04th July 2017, 11:00 to 16:00 Oxford Brookes Un... more WORKSHOP: 'The Space of Biopolitics.'

Tuesday, 04th July 2017, 11:00 to 16:00

Oxford Brookes University - The Green Room, Headington Hill Hall, Headington Campus, Headington Hill site.

http://www.brookes.ac.uk/HSS/Events/-The-Space-of-Biopolitics%E2%80%8B--Symposium/

"Our contemporary world is witness to spatial re-configurations on an unprecedented scale: the enforcement of borders and internment camps, the displacement of populations on a scale not seen since the world wars. Towns and cities creak and groan under the pressures of outdated infrastructure, regional inequalities increase societal tensions and create new forms of politics, and the individual biological body is increasingly forced into precarious forms of existence.

The workshop seeks to interrogate the ‘space’ of this amorphous, and yet discrete, subject of biopolitics that shapes our current world from the perspectives of the Anthropocene, jurisdiction, urban design, or atmospheric living, among others, and drawing on varying academic backgrounds such as law, architecture, politics, and philosophy."

There is no registration required and the event is open to all. A full programme is yet to be confirmed.

clloyd@brookes.ac.uk
akotsakis@brookes.ac.uk

Sophy Rickett (ed.), ELEPHANT ATLAS, London: Studio by the Elephant, UAL: LCC, 2018

A text on the Cuming Collection Archive that comprises art, anthropology, geology, and many other... more A text on the Cuming Collection Archive that comprises art, anthropology, geology, and many other kinds of objects collected by the Cuming Family, exposed since 1906 but recently having to go on storage because of the 2013 fire in Walworth Town Hall, London. Ever since, the collection can only be seen in boxes or some of it online. The text is part of an exhibition catalogue to raise awareness of the collection. The text deals with issues of digitalisation and spectacularisation, archives and withdrawal, issues of collection and time, the posthuman, objects and representation.

The following legal draft, with few alterations, eventually became the basis for one of the first... more The following legal draft, with few alterations, eventually became the basis for one of the first laws established by the Communities under Aeternity – the others being the regulation of parallelisms, the deep-water striation and the series of cyclonopedic bylaws. While technically not the first law to be passed by the Communities, it is now considered the most important. It is generally acknowledged that Ad Vitam Aeternam has come to characterise the whole subsequent production of laws of constitutional import, as well as localised regulations and policies.

International Journal of Law in Context, 2015

&amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;quot;This is the first book to consider German soc... more &amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;quot;This is the first book to consider German sociologist Niklas Luhmann&amp;amp;amp;#x27;s social theory in a critical legal context. Niklas Luhmann: Law, Society, Justice is a critical description, and at the same time a performative inversion, of the theory of legal autopoiesis as developed by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. This theory is introduced here both in terms of society at large and the legal system specifically. As the basic operations and mechanisms of Luhmannian sociological analysis of the law are used as a platform on which the critical analysis of the book is erected, the work reveals the aporetic structure of autopoiesis. This aligns it with postmodern approaches to law as influenced by post-structuralism, deconstruction, feminist theories, contemporary philosophy and political theory. The main epistemological inversion is that, here, the systemic environment - whatever is not &amp;amp;amp;#x27;of the system&amp;amp;amp;#x27; - becomes a space of critique and negation of the existing systemic structures, but only after its prior internalization by the system itself. Thus, through autopoietic processes, the environment advances from outside in, and in this transgressive performance, an autopoietic critique of the structure emerges. The book builds on this transgression and reconstructs the theory malgré soi on the basis of a paradox, where the observer is required to look outside the law in order to find an adequate description of the law. Niklas Luhmann: Law, Society, Justice thus operates both as an introduction to the relevance of Luhmann&amp;amp;amp;#x27;s social theory for law, as well as a critical response to autopoiesis. &amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;quot;

Absent Environments Theorising Environmental Law and the City Absent Environments oﬀers a novel t... more Absent Environments Theorising Environmental Law and the City Absent Environments oﬀers a novel transdisciplinary approach to environ-mental law, its principles and its mechanics, as tested in its contextual applica-tion to the urban environment. The book traces the ...

Journal of Law and Society, 2015

Thought, Law, Rights and Action in the Age of Environmental Crisis, 2015

Hybrid Forms of Governance, 2011

International Journal of Law in Context, 2010

Tradução do texto "Who is afraid of Space? Law, Geography and Spatial Justice" de Andreas Philipp... more Tradução do texto "Who is afraid of Space? Law, Geography and Spatial Justice" de Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos.

RESUMO: O presente texto apresenta ao público brasileiro, a partir da tradução do
seu original em inglês, a discussão corrente na Inglaterra e em outros países do mundo a respeito da chamada espacialização do direito e das pesquisas que têm explorado as importantes relações entre tempo, espaço e produção do direito e do poder. O texto do Professor Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos – que nasceu na Grécia, doutorou-se em Birkbeck, e atualmente leciona na Universidade de Westminster -, é central a esse debate que vem desde as chamadas geografias jurídicas críticas até as ontologias objectuais, a teoria da autopoiesis e as
teorias sociojurídicas críticas, dar em enfoque profundamente inter e transdisciplinar. No texto ora traduzido o autor apresenta as bases de sua teoria do direito em diálogo com a ideia de espacialização, e lança o desafio de repensarmos a teoria da justiça a partir das variáveis introduzidas por essas categorias.

PALAVRS-CHAVE: Giro Espacial do Direito. Espaço. Justiça.

Taste usually occupies the bottom of the sensorial hierarchy, as the quintessentially hedonistic ... more Taste usually occupies the bottom of the sensorial hierarchy, as the quintessentially hedonistic sense, too close to the animal, the elemental and the corporeal, and for this reason disciplined and moralised. At the same time, taste is indissolubly tied to knowledge. To taste is to discriminate, emit judgement, enter an unstable domain of synaesthetic normativity where the certainty of metaphysical categories begins to crumble. This second title in the ‘Law and the Senses’ series explores law using taste as a conceptual and ontological category able to unsettle legal certainties, and a promising tool whereby to investigate the materiality of law’s relation to the world. For what else is law’s reduction of the world into legal categories, if not law’s ingesting the world by tasting it, and emitting moral and legal judgements accordingly? Through various topics including coffee, wine, craft cider and Japanese knotweed, this volume explores the normativities that shape the way taste is felt and categorised, within and beyond subjective, phenomenological and human dimensions. The result is an original interdisciplinary volume – complete with seven speculative ‘recipes’ – dedicated to a rarely explored intersection, with contributions from artists, legal academics, philosophers, anthropologists and sociologists.

Vision traditionally occupies the height of the sensorial hierarchy. The sense of clarity and pur... more Vision traditionally occupies the height of the sensorial hierarchy. The sense of clarity and purity conveyed by vision, allows it to be explicitly associated with truth and knowledge. The law has always relied on vision and representation, from eye-witnesses to photography, to imagery and emblems. The law and its normative gaze can be understood as that which decrees what is permitted to be and become visible and what is not. Indeed, even if law’s perspectival view is bound to be betrayed by the realities of perception, it is nonetheless productive of real effects on the world.

This first title in the interdisciplinary series ‘Law and the Senses’ asks how we can develop new theoretical approaches to law and seeing that go beyond a simple critique of the legal pretension to truth. This volume aims to understand how law might see and unsee, and how in its turn is seen and unseen. It explores devices and practices of visibility, the evolution of iconology and iconography, and the relation between the gaze of the law and the blindness of justice. The contributions, all radically interdisciplinary, are drawn from photography, legal theory, philosophy, and poetry.

TOUCH (Law and the Senses Series), 2020

Described by Aristotle as the most vital of senses, touch contains both the physical and the meta... more Described by Aristotle as the most vital of senses, touch contains both the physical and the metaphysical in its ability to express the determination of being. To manifest itself, touch makes a movement outwards, beyond the body, and relies on a specific physical involvement other senses do not require: to touch is already to be active and to activate. This fundamental ontology makes touch the most essential of all senses. This volume of 'Law and the Senses' attempts to illuminate and reconsider the complex and interflowing relations and contradictions between the tactful intrusion of the law and the untactful movement of touch. Compelling contributors from arts, literature and social science disciplines alongside artist presentations explore touch's boundaries and formal and informal 'laws' of the senses. Each contribution unveils a multi-faceted new dimension to the force of touch, its ability to form, deform and reform what it touches. In unique ways, each of the several contributions to this volume recognises the trans-corporeality of touch to traverse the boundaries on the body and entangle other bodies and spaces, thus challenging the very notion of corporeal integrity and human being.

Direito e Praxis, 2021

A pesquisa jurídica vem se movendo cada vez mais além das distinções tradicionais entre pensament... more A pesquisa jurídica vem se movendo cada vez mais além das distinções tradicionais entre pensamento sócio-jurídico e pensamento jurídico crítico; texto seco da lei e análise do contexto jurídico; direito “prático” e justiça “teórica”; modos de escrita “objetivo” e “subjetivo” e assim por diante. Grande parte da nova pesquisa jurídica se move em direção a um entendimento localizado, corporificado e material do direito, que trata tanto da própria lei quanto de seu contexto teórico e social. Neste capítulo, argumento que esse movimento também deve se refletir não apenas no que escrevemos, mas também no modo como escrevemos. Ofereço algumas observações sobre por que essas distinções já se tornaram obsoletas na prática jurídica da escrita, apesar de ainda serem inconscientemente praticadas pela maioria de nós. Sugiro, então, algumas maneiras pelas quais a escrita jurídica pode avançar ainda mais nessa direção teoricamente rica, ainda que inserida e contextualizada. Algumas das etapas mais importantes são: repensar o ensaio como verdadeiramente um ensaio (ou seja, tentativa, experimento); correr riscos, não buscando a consistência acima de tudo, mas permitindo que o texto se desdobre como um corpo em si mesmo e como um agente jurídico; reservar uma posição de destaque para o "eu" em sua presença afetiva e múltipla; e abraçar o desejo coletivo de um direito mais justo. Concluo resumindo as distinções mais importantes que precisamos superar e revisitando talvez a distinção derradeira entre direito e justiça.