The Revolution (LAW-DS-THEREV-23)

LAW-DS-THEREV-23

Description

The idea of ‘the revolution’ plays an important role, both in the foreground and in the background, in contemporary radical political thought and activism. It expresses impatience with egalitarian reformism, hope for more radical change, and confidence in the possibility of a society without oppression, exclusion, and extraction. In this seminar we will centre the revolution, by addressing revolutionary thought in critical and normative discourses about law, society, and the state. We will discuss revolutionary socialist, anarchist, Black, and feminist thought, both classical and contemporary, including key texts from Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Frantz Fanon, Hannah Arendt, Angela Davis, and Chiara Bottici. Core themes will include: the aims of revolution (overcoming capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and structural racism); the means of revolution (the question of violence; the theory and practice of transformative change); what comes after the revolution (the place of law, the state, property, coercion, democracy, and community in a post-revolutionary society, in particular the idea of abolition); and what is already happening (transformative projects and communities inside and outside the law). For PhD researchers in law, the potential direct relevance for their own projects is threefold: questioning the naturalness, inevitability, and legitimacy of structural features of positive law; thinking radical, transformative change in law; and reflecting on the relationship between scholarship and activism.

First, Second & Third Term: registration from 25 to 28 September.