Thu
16
Mar
Seminars and Conferences
Law and Politics, or the Politics of Law (EVENT CANCELLED)
Beyond Inhabitation Lab seminar cycle
As an ideal of liberal democracy, rule of law presents itself as a metapolitical zone of neutral expertise. Yet the more the law escapes politics, the more the politics enters law in a host of problematic ways. Can the law become more open about its own political premises without losing its legitimacy? How can progressives effectively engage with the law without compromising their political agendas? To which extent legal fictions can be a vehicle for a better society? Based on my research on how social movements use law and legal argumentation, as well as on legal and political theory, the talk will explore the difficult relationship between law and politics.
Speaker:
Joanna Kusiak is a Junior Research Fellow at the Department of Geography and King’s College at the University of Cambridge. Her article titled "Legal technologies of primitive accumulation: Judicial robbery and dispossession-by-restitution in Warsaw", which analyses how legal engineering can neutralize political dissent, won the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research’s 2019 Best Article Prize. Her current work explores the strategic potential of exploiting legal technicalities for emancipatory urban endeavours. She is also an activist with Berlin’s initiative Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen.
As an ideal of liberal democracy, rule of law presents itself as a metapolitical zone of neutral expertise. Yet the more the law escapes politics, the more the politics enters law in a host of problematic ways. Can the law become more open about its own political premises without losing its legitimacy? How can progressives effectively engage with the law without compromising their political agendas? To which extent legal fictions can be a vehicle for a better society? Based on my research on how social movements use law and legal argumentation, as well as on legal and political theory, the talk will explore the difficult relationship between law and politics.
Speaker:
- Joanna Kusiak - Junior Research Fellow at the Department of Geography and King’s College at the University of Cambridge
Joanna Kusiak is a Junior Research Fellow at the Department of Geography and King’s College at the University of Cambridge. Her article titled "Legal technologies of primitive accumulation: Judicial robbery and dispossession-by-restitution in Warsaw", which analyses how legal engineering can neutralize political dissent, won the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research’s 2019 Best Article Prize. Her current work explores the strategic potential of exploiting legal technicalities for emancipatory urban endeavours. She is also an activist with Berlin’s initiative Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen.