Law and Liminal Landscapes: The Desert, The Sea, The Wilderness

LUCAS / Leiden University Centre for Arts, Literature and Law (CALL)

Seminar Spring 2015

Law and Liminal Landscapes: The Desert, The Sea, The Wilderness

After the 2013-2014 seminar on liminal figures, pirates, privateers and robber barons, this seminar will study three liminal -and perhaps even ‘lawless’- spaces: the desert, the sea and the wilderness. Each session will revolve around a theoretical, a literary and a juridical text that each broaches the question of the relation between law, lawlessness and space.

The series will begin with a general introduction to the relation between law and landscape. Questions that we can discuss are, amongst others: how does the law create spaces? Or how does it shape landscapes? Can we think the world separate from the juridical? Can we, as legal beings, relate to that world? What role do liminal spaces or landscapes play in the coming into being of the law?

Readings include Blanchot, Deleuze, Kipling, Serres, Grotius, as well as excerpts from the Old Testament and three legal cases.

Our sessions will be on/in:

17/2: Lipsius 147: Introduction

17/3: Lipsius 228: Desert

14/4: Lipsius 228: Sea

19/5: Lipsius 228: Wilderness

The seminar is convened by Frans-Willem Korsten, Yasco Horsman and Tessa de Zeeuw (Film and Literary Studies, Leiden University) and is open to all.

Please contact Frans-Willem Korsten (f.w.a.korsten@hum.leidenuniv.nl) or Yasco Horsman (y.horsman@hum.leidenuniv.nl) for further questions or to request the readings.  

Session 1: Introduction – Law and Landscape

Nicole Graham, “Introduction,” in: Lawscape: Property, Environment, Law. London: Routledge, 2011. 1-22.

Shaunnagh Dorsett, “Mapping Territories,” in: Jurisprudence of Jurisdiction, ed. Shaun McVeigh. London & New York: Routledge, 2007. Pp 137-149.

Case: Mabo v Queensland (nr. 2). <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabo_v_Queensland_(No_2)>, en <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1992/23.html>

Session 2: The Desert

Nanette Stahl, “Sinai: Law and Landscape,” in: Law and Liminality in the Bible. Pp. 51-74;

Maurice Blanchot, “Prophetic Speech,” in: The Book to Come. Pp.79 -85.

Case: The Ten Commandments, Bible, “Exodus 19-24”;

[Extra: Geoffrey Hartman, “The Poetics of Prophecy,” in: High Romantic Argument, ed. Lawrence Lipking. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981. 15-40.]

Session 3: The Sea

Grotius, Mare Liberum [1609]; <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Grotius_Hugo_The_Freedom_of_the_Sea_(v1.0).pdf>

Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, “1440. The Smooth and the Striated,” in: A Thousand Plateaus. Publisher [esp. “The Maritime Model”];

Case: R v Dudley and Stephens  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens]

Session 4: The Wilderness

Kipling,  “The Law for the Wolves”, in: The Second Jungle Book. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_jungle>;

The Wilderness Act 1964 <http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-78/pdf/STATUTE-78-Pg890.pdf>;

Michel Serres, “The Natural Contract”, in: The Natural Contract. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.

[Extra: James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers [1823]]