Law and Performance

Description

Drawing on the rich field of performance studies, this volume, the most recent contribution to the distinguished Amherst Series in Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, offers fresh insights and a provocative mix of multidisciplinary topics and methodologies to explore the theatricality and performativity of law as more than a metaphor. In considering law through the lens of performance studies, the contributors in this volume emphasize the embodied, affective, and reiterative qualities that move law off the printed page and into the thick world of lived experience. They consider the blurring of lines between performance and the enactment of law, the transformative exchanges between the law and its many and varied stagings, and the impact or resonance of performativity in situations where innocence and guilt may be determined. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Joshua Chambers-Letson, Catherine M. Cole, Ryan Hartigan, Lara D. Nielsen, Julie Stone Peters, Ann Pellegrini, and Karen Shimakawa. Cover Series Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Law and/as Performance Chapter 1. Penitentiary Performances: Spectators, Affecting Scenes, and Terrible Apparitions in the Nineteenth-Century Model Prison Chapter 2. “This Is a Trial, Not a Performance!”: Staging the Time of the Law Chapter 3. Reenactability Chapter 4. Statements before and after Arrests: Performing at Law’s Edge in Apartheid South Africa Chapter 5. Freedom with Silence: Cryptoanalytics and the Differend in the Afterlives of Legal Things Chapter 6. Twelve Notes on Ferguson: Black Performance and Police Power Contributors Index Back Cover