Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Newman, Saul

Titel

Anarchism and Law: Towards a Post-Anarchist Ethics of Disobedience

Ist Teil von

• Griffith law review, 2012-01, Vol.21 (2), p.307-329

Ort / Verlag

Nathan, Qld: Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Taylor & Francis

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This article uses the political philosophy of anarchism to critically interrogate the limits of legal authority, showing that the law's claim to unconditional obedience ultimately is unjustified. Here I turn to Walter Benjamin to unmask the violent foundations of legal authority, and to explore critical and radical responses to this - through Georges Sorel's notion of the 'proletarian general strike', and through Benjamin's related notion of 'divine violence', both of which I interpret in a distinctly anarchist way. However, I argue that this deconstruction of the ontological foundations of the law can be turned back on anarchism itself. Anarchism bases its critique of political and legal authority on a kind of organic substratum, one that is scientifically verifiable and morally legitimate, providing the immanent ground for communal relations beyond the law. As an alternative to this foundationalist approach, I propose what might be called an ontological anarchism, which unsettles all established orders. I develop from this an anarchist or, more precisely, post-anarchist, political and ethical project involving an ongoing contestation of legal authority and the coercive practices of state power.