Deadly Algorithms

In Radical Philosophy deze maand een interessant stuk dat de vraag stelt "Can legal codes hold software accountante for code that kills"? Online is het hier te lezen.

Als algoritmes keuze's maken wie er gedood wordt door een drone, hoe zit dat dan met verantwoordelijkheid? Hoe gaan we juridisch hiermee om?

Het stuk stelt:

Law, which has already expanded the category of ‘legal personhood’ to include non-human actors such as corporations, also offers ways, then, to think about questions of algorithmic accountability.

En vervolgt door te speculeren over de vraag: wat is 'algorithmic legel personhood':

Nonetheless, the stage has already been set for the arrival of a new cast of juridical actors endowed not so much with free will in the classical sense (that would provide the conditions for criminal liability), but intelligent systems which are wilfully free in the sense that they have been programmed to make decisions based upon their own algorithmic logic. 

Tijdens ons Legal Bodies congres hebben we een paar sprekers gehoord die erop wezen dat het toekennen van 'personhood' aan corporaties niet alleen een antropomorfisering van deze (abstracte) instituten met zich mee bracht, maar dat de 'corportation' ging functioneren als model waarlangs we (menselijke) personhood gingen begrijpen.

Ik vraag me af wat de culturele gevolgen van 'algorithmic personhood' zullen zijn - en ik heb sterk het gevoel dat dit al verder doordacht is in de (literaire) sfeer van de SF dan in de juridisch-filosofische sfeer….

Piraten, Kapers, Roofridders

Piraten, Kapers, Roofridders

Seminar Leids Platform voor Literatuur, Recht, Retorica

Frans-Willem Korsten, Yasco Horsman

Lucas / Film- en Literatuurwetenschap

Voorjaar 2014

Piraten, Kapers en Roofridders staan in een complexe relatie in tot de wet: de piraat gold als belichaming van een universeel kwaad waar iedereen jurisdictie over heeft (als hostis humani generis), terwijl een kaperbrief piraterij legitiem maakt in tijden van oorlog. Sociale bandieten en Teutoonse roofridders schiepen dan weer hun eigen soevereine sfeer – soms ingebed in complexe politiek-juridische constructies (zoals het Heilige Roomse Rijk)-  terwijl kartels, cellen en netwerken tijdelijke zones van autonomie pogen te creëren waarin geëxperimenteerd wordt met alternatieve vormen van recht.  De piraat, de kaper en de roofridder zijn (mede daardoor) objecten van intense culturele fascinatie geworden. In een serie van drie bijeenkomsten bespreken wij een reeks van hedendaagse manifestaties van de piraat, de kaper en de roofridder

in het licht van de longue durée van de rechtsgeschiedenis. Waar komt de hedendaagse mediahype rond Anonymous of Kim Dotcom vandaan? Wat willen de Scandinavische piratenpartijen? Waarom imiteert Johnny Depp Keith Richards in een filmserie gebaseerd op een pretparkattractie? 

De bijeenkomsten worden georganiseerd door LUCAS (Leiden University Centre for Arts in Society) en de Opleiding Film- en Literatuurwetenschap, en zijn toegankelijk voor alle belangstellenden. Email y.horsman@hum.leidenuniv.nl of f.w.a.korsten@hum.leidenuniv.nl voor de teksten, en raadpleeg http://rechtbankdrama.blogspot.co.uk voor links naar een stream van de films die we bespreken. De bijeenkomsten zijn op maandagmiddagen (10/2, 17/3, 14/4) van 16:00-18:00 in Lipsius 235C

Voorlopig Programma

Piraten (10/2)

·      Jody Greene, “Hostis Humani Generis,” Critical Inquiry, vol. 34, no. 4 (2008), 683-705;

·      Daniel Heller-Roazen, The Enemy of All: Piracy and the Law of Nations.  Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009 (selectie);

·      Shannon Lee Dawdy and Joe Bonni, “Towards a General Theory of Piracy,” Anthropological Quarterly,  vol. 85, no. 3 (2012), pp. 673-699.

Film: We Are Legion : The Story of Hacktivists (Knappenberger 2012)

Kapers (17/3) 

·      David Starkey, British Privateering Enterprise in the Eighteenth Century. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1990 (selectie);

·      Hakim Bey, “The Temporary Autonomous Zone,” in: Crypto Anarchy, Cyber States and Pirate Utopias, ed. Peter Ludlow. Cambride: MIT Press, 2001;

·      Jonas Staal (ed.) Leaderless Politics: International Pirate Parties. New World Academy, Reader 3/ (2012) (selectie).

 Film: Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (Johan Grimonprez, 1995)

Roofridders (14/4) 

·      Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959 (selectie);

·      Angelo Revisto, “The Economic Miracle and Its Discontents: Bandit Films in Spain and Italy,” Film Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 2 (1996), pp. 30-40;

·      Rolf Sprandel, “Das Raubrittertum und die Entstehung des oeffentlichen Strafrechts,” Saeculum 57 (2006), pp. 61-76.

Toneelstuk: Jean-Paul Sartre, Le diable et le bon dieu (1951)

Call for Papers mini-conference 22-23 Feb Leiden - Legal Bodies

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

 

LEGAL BODIES: CORPUS / PERSONA / COMMUNITAS

22-23 February 2014 (saturday & sunday) – Leiden

 

Two-afternoon conference / musical event

In May 2013 LUCAS (Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society) and Cultuur?Barbaar! (Leiden platform for art, music and cultural theory), will host a three-dayinternational conference on the various ways in which literary and artistic texts have represented, interrogated or challenged juridical notions of ‘personhood.’ (More detailed information on the topic can be found in the Call for Papers)

A two-day conference in February, devoted to the same topic, will precede the conference. The aim of this event is to offer students and young scholars an opportunity to present their ideas on this topic to an audience in a 10 minute paper. Participating is a significant opportunity to gain experience in preparing and presenting a paper in the context of an academic conference. It is also a pleasant way to meet kindred spirits.

The conference itself is organized as a cooperation between the University of Leiden and the Leiden cultural initiative “Verrassend Winkelweekend.” The conference will take place in several small shops in the shopping area of Leiden and will be interspersed with musical performances by several local singer/songwriters and experimental artists. The purpose of this conference is to take academic discussion outside the university walls and to offer a more general interested audience the opportunity to participate in the discussion.

All speakers of the conference will be invited to the Cultuurbarbaartje pre-party on the evening of the first day (Saturday 22^nd of February): a mini-festival that serves as a teaser for the major Cultuur?Barbaar! festival in May 2014, and about which more information will appear on the website soon.

MA-students of Literary Theory and other relevant studies are enthusiastically invited to send in a 300 word abstract for a 10 minute presentation to Gerlov van Engelenhoven and Looi van Kessel (LUCAS/C?B!): cultuurbarbaarfestival@wordpress.com

For more detailed information about the topic of the conference, see here

Deadline: 3 February 2014

Piraten, Kapers, Roofridders: de data

We hebben alvast drie data geprikt voor de platformbijeenkomsten van het komende semester.

Maandag 10/2:  Piraten
Maandag 17/3: Kapers
Maandag 14/4: Roofridders

Tijdstip: 16:00-18:00.

Locatie: Lipsius 235C

Legal Bodies (CFP)

Legal Bodies: Corpus / Persona / Communitas

CFP

15-16-17 May 2014

LUCAS (the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society) will host a three-day conference on the various ways in which literary and artistic texts have interrogated, historically and/or conceptually, the modes of juridical ‘personhood’.  The guiding assumption behind our conference is that ‘personhood’ is not a (biologically) given property of human beings, but that it is produced, assigned or codified by various discursive regimes, such as those of law, medicine, politics, religion, and education. During the conference we will study how literature, art and culture form domains in which the implications and scope of legal questions of personhood can be thought through or challenged.

The symposium broaches the question of personhood on three different levels, or with regard to three themes: those of the body, of the legally defined individual, and of forms of ‘corporate-ness’ or community (city, monastery, company, corporation, etc.).

For the first theme, questions to be addressed include: From which discourses did notions of bodily integrity emerge, and which social and political phenomena challenged these notions? Can we still think of the body in terms of property? Can we still think of bodies as separate entities, or unified wholes?

As for the second theme, questions include: What literary and rhetorical figures made it possible to think of legal personhood in antiquity, the middle ages and the modern era? How do these relate to modern forms of subjectivity? Can they relate to animal subjectivity, or biotechnological forms of subjectivity?

As for the third theme questions include: How did art and literature represent legal entities such as the medieval city, the seventeenth century trade company or the nineteenth century corporation? What is the conceptual development that can be traced in the history of, for instance, corporate personhood? Are there moments of rupture, where the notion changes radically or fundamentally?

Our explicit purpose is to work diachronically and to use the three themes to establish a cross-disciplinary dialogue.

The conference will be organized in cooperation with NICA (the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis) and was made possible by LUCAS, the Leiden University Fund and NICA.

For more information on LUCAS and NICA, see

http://www.hum.leiden.edu/lucas/

http://www.nica-institute.com/

http://hum.leiden.edu/lucas/news-events/legal-bodies-corpus-persona-communitas.html