Law in crisis
Subtitle: the ecstatic subject of natural disaster
By: Ruth A. Miller.
Series: The cultural lives of law; Cultural lives of law
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 238
ISBN-13: 9780804762564
Subjects: Law -- Philosophy; Subjectivity; Natural disasters -- Law and legislation; Law -- Political aspects
Description: Taking natural disaster as the political and legal norm is uncommon. Taking a person who has become unstable and irrational during a disaster as the starting point for legal analysis is equally uncommon. Nonetheless, this book makes the unsettling case that the law demands an ecstatic subject and that natural disaster is the endpoint to law. Developing an idiosyncratic but compelling new theory of legal and political existence, the book challenges existing arguments that, whether valedictory or critical, have posited the rational, bounded self as the normative subject of law.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Writing about disaster : metaphors in crisis; title: The gift of life : blood, organs, and viruses; title: Respect in death : ghouls and corpses; title: Seismic space : camps, cemeteries, squares, and monuments.