The Phenomenology of Modern Legal Discourse: The Juridical Production and the Disclosure of Suffering (Routledge Revivals)

Originally published in 1998, The Phenomenology of Modern Legal Discourse recovers the suffering which is concealed as lawyers, judges and other legal officials resignify a harm through the special vocabulary and grammar which constitutes legal language. At the moment of re-signification, an untranslatable gap erupts between the knowers’ special language and the embodied meanings of the non-knower. The Phenomenology claims that the gap can be unconcealed if the knowers of the special language reconsider their assumptions about legal meaning, the body and desire. With a broad grasp of diverse problematics from the legal procedures, legal discourses and legal theory of three jurisdictions to exemplify his claims, the author interweaves arguments which draw from Edmund Husserl’s and Maurice Merleau Ponty’s insights about meaning. The author's effort demonstrates how one may unconceal lived laws through a re-reading of the role of the experiential body in legal signification. The author’s effort to retrieve the embodiment of legal meaning de-stabilizes deep assumptions of contemporary lawyers and legal theorists. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Original Title Page Original Copyright Page Table of Contents Series Preface Preface Introduction: The Problematic of Modern Legal Discourse The problematics of modern legal discourse Argument: the juridical production of the concealment of suffering Argument: the retrieval of the concealed meanings Problematics of the study of the legal sign Problematics of studies of the semiotics of the legal sign The phenomenology of legal language Chapter 1: The Paradigms of Legal Consciousness and Legal Language Laws as legal consciousness The problematic of legal consciousness The problematic of a transparent language Legal recognition as concealment: a human rights case Exclusion by inclusion Chapter 2: The Transformation of Meaning into a Modern Legal Genre The genre-like character of legal discourse The displacement of a primary genre Acculturation into a professional law school The phenomenon of resignification of a witness's utterance The act of assimilation The narrative as the displacing medium Chapter 3: The Silence of Suffering The phenomenon of a differend The search for an authoritative sign The resignification of Mr Hirabayashi The silence of Mr Hirabayashi's environing world The non-recognition of the particular other: the case of Davis Inlet The sanitized pain during a recession The disembodiment of a meant world Chapter 4: Does the Knower Face External Constraints? Posited constraints The absent foundation The Spirit of the Laws The "facts" as givens The concealment of phusis in the external object The non-knower as a represented object The naivety in the belief of an external object: the belief in an emergency The knower's embodiment of represented facts Chapter 5: The Retrieval of the Knower's Environing World The embodiment of a meant object: the case of Viscount Haldane The concealed interpretive act The interpreter's embodiment of meaning: a lesson from Brown v. Board of Education The self-image of the interpreter: the case of Mr Justice Holmes The retrieval of the interpreter's 'environing world' The environing world Embodied meanings as action Interpretation through an environing world Chapter 6: The Idealism of a Modern Legal Discourse Is the foundation of legal discourse accessible? Is the non-knower an invisible author? The idealism of the secondary play The violence of the modern legal discourse The idealization of the non-knower's story Meaning as social–cultural praxis The non-knower's unfulfilled meant objects The tragedy of unfulfilled meant objects The situs of social critique The collapse of the lawyer's play Chapter 7: Consciousness of the Absent Final Object The final object Consciousness of the particular other through the mind The problematic of the paradigm of legal consciousness Chapter 8: The Retrieval of the Dialogic Relation The infusion of meaning The opening Oedipus Rex The deferral of the face-to-face relation Desire in a dialogic relation A multiplicity of bodies Consumption versus the production of signs Understanding through dialogue Conclusion: Living Laws The meant object Narrative versus discourse Dialogue as the social The recognition of the particular other The authority of the unconcealed dialogic relation Bibliography Index