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)

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