In a tribute to the intellectual legacy of Peter Fitzpatrick, this article explores the poiesis of modern law, as a constitutive ambivalence distilled in the affinity between law and literature. Reading with Fitzpatrick, the resolution of the contradictions of this law in myth depends, paradoxically, upon its fundamental irresolution. Reflecting upon the profound significance of his revelation of the mythology of modern law and its scholarly reverberations, I consider the constitutive tensions of this law as exemplified in the relation between (...) praxis and poiesis, the operative function of the former dependent upon the creative unfolding of the latter. The alchemy of autopoiesis, by which law boldly proclaims itself law, is made explicit in the eschatology of its archive and the formation of its sovereign subject in negation. Revealing the literary dimensions of this law, the conceit of autonomy is nonetheless subject to the subversive substitutions of the supplement. Pressing yet further, the autopoiesis of law is found to be enfolded within a generative sympoiesis, constituted by the movement between its apposite dimensions. Ultimately, extending Fitzpatrick’s rendering of the irresolution of modern law as decolonial, I explore the possibilities afforded by a reading of the fundamental mutuality of myths, and the decolonial conviviality of poiesis. (shrink)

This paper studies “environmental personhood” legislation as a transitional concept. A transitional concept is one whose originating context sets parameters for its pragmatic functioning even as the eventual coherence of this functioning entails deep change in this originating context. By more explicitly thematizing environmental personhood as a transitional concept, we can acknowledge worries about its entanglement with a rights paradigm emphasizing private property and human exceptionalism while still exploring how it might contribute towards deeper ecological transformation. The paper introduces Nuu-chah-nuulth (...) philosopher E. Richard Atleo’s notion of ‘phase connectors’ as a heuristic for thinking transitional tensions in environmental personhood especially in terms of the gap between its present operative strategy and possible future effects on wider imaginaries. Indeed, this gap indicates how environmental personhood’s transitional potential is entangled with challenging dominant presuppositions in what Anna Grear calls ‘law’s onto-epistemic imaginary’. Using Atleo’s heuristic and drawing on a range of sources, the paper thinks through some of the prominent fault lines and volatile dynamics of environmental personhood as a transitional concept. After establishing these critical tensions, it considers how its conceptualization in domains beyond legislative or academic articulations may or may not help induce ethico-phenomenological changes in constitutive imaginaries. Though such popular presentations are frequently reductive, understanding why and how is important if theorists can contribute to the construction of creative alternatives. (shrink)

The Anthropocene has been observed as an opportunity to generate new legal imaginaries capable of revising incumbent assumptions of legal and political thought. What opportunities do such ambitions afford for communication between geological and legal thought? Responding to Birrell & Matthews attempt to ‘re-story a lawfor, rather thanof, the Anthropocene,’ I wish to describe some ways in which the Anthropocene Working Group, who are pursuing formalisation of the Anthropocene as an official geological unit, are involved in a similar exercise of (...) re-storying geology. The Anthropocene theme is brought to bear as a geological reality through material practices of measurement and correlation, as well as through the invocation of previous judgements of the evaluative committees associated with the formalisation of new geological unit. This effort amounts to a redefinition of the practices of geological observation, i.e. what counts as geologically relevant and why. In keeping with the theme of an ‘ethics of encounter’, as encouraged by Birrell and Matthews, this article suggests that the AWG’s effort provides a model with which the elaboration of ‘laws for the Anthropocene’ might correspond. (shrink)