糖心TV

Speaker: Tara Mulqueen, University of 糖心TV Law School

Chair: Daniel Matthews, University of 糖心TV Law School

Title: 'Legal Consciousness, Alienation and the Desire for Law'

Abstract: 'Drawing on recent qualitative research that highlighted a pervasive sense of alienation from law and rights, this paper will contend with some implicit normative tendencies in the study of legal consciousness, particularly a persistent, if often latent desire for law that will be described as a form of 鈥渃ruel optimism鈥� (Lauren Berlant). While Ewick and Silbey emphasize the importance of marginality in generating counterhegemonic resistance, it is also the most marginalised whose legal consciousness is often construed as being in need of shaping or improvement, to reconcile them to the utility, if not the wider benefit, of law and rights. This tendency is in part a consequence of what Silbey described as a 鈥榙omestication鈥� of legal consciousness, by which it was reduced to awareness and instrumentalised for policy purposes. However, this paper will return to some of the fundamental premises of Ewick and Silbey鈥檚 account of legality鈥檚 hegemonic power -- the relationship between structure and agency, alongside wider conceptions of consciousness – to argue they downplay the role of solidarity and multiplicity in generating the possibility of resistance. The paper will turn to Mari Matsuda鈥檚 conception of 鈥榤ultiple consciousness鈥� to explore how to take marginalised narratives seriously and the importance of doing so in the context of the decline of the welfare state and growth of far-right movements'