Disputes and the Differend: Literary Strategies to Say the Unspeakable
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François Ost
François Ost is Full Professor at the University Saint-Louis, Brussels. He is the president of the group FNRS Law and Literature. His publications include
Raconter la loi. Aux sources de l’imaginaire juridique (2004),Sade et la loi (2005),Shakespeare. La Comédie de la Loi (2012). Since 2004 he has been a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux Arts de Belgique.
Abstract
How do voice and power connect, in law? More precisely: given that in many cases one of the parties to a dispute does not share the language or the code of the court, and that the verdict will therefore do violence to him (this is the meaning of “differend,” as distinct from an ordinary legal dispute), how do the voices of the victims speak? The aim of this paper is to develop, with the aid of numerous literary examples, a typology of the various modulations of these voices, all the way from silence up to a shout, taking in along the way such things as: delirious ramblings, the oratorio, the petition, and literary sublimation. What are the limits of the “literary corpus” which we have in mind here? What about all the documents produced by the victims in cases of differend? Can we not regard them as a form of “outsider art,” of “judicial style”?
About the author
François Ost is Full Professor at the University Saint-Louis, Brussels. He is the president of the group FNRS Law and Literature. His publications include Raconter la loi. Aux sources de l’imaginaire juridique (2004), Sade et la loi (2005), Shakespeare. La Comédie de la Loi (2012). Since 2004 he has been a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux Arts de Belgique.
©2015 by De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Voices of Power/Power of Voices
- Voices of Spectators and Audience Power
- “There Were No Longer Any Laws”: Voices of Authority, Complicity, and Resistance in Totalitarian Dystopias and Holocaust Imaginings
- Caesar’s Body in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: Sacralization and De-sacralization of Power
- Legal Oracularism and Theological Prophetism. Fleshly Silences Across Memories and Traditions
- “What Is Royalty Without a Voice?” The Performance of Power in The King’s Speech
- Is There Voice Without Law? On The Road
- Voice, Incarnation and the United States Supreme Court
- Disputes and the Differend: Literary Strategies to Say the Unspeakable
- The Working Class Goes to the Movies: Labour Law and Thatcherism in British Films
- War in Words: The Tricycle Theatre’s Re-voicing of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry
- Research
- Legal Systemology and the Geopolitics of Roman Law: A Response to Stuart Elden’s Critique of Carl Schmitt’s Spatial Ontology
- Speech and Graphomena: The Power of Apuleius’ Words in Court and in Translation
- Book Review
- Mireille Hildebrandt and Jeanne Gaakeer: Human Law and Computer Law: Comparative Perspectives
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Voices of Power/Power of Voices
- Voices of Spectators and Audience Power
- “There Were No Longer Any Laws”: Voices of Authority, Complicity, and Resistance in Totalitarian Dystopias and Holocaust Imaginings
- Caesar’s Body in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: Sacralization and De-sacralization of Power
- Legal Oracularism and Theological Prophetism. Fleshly Silences Across Memories and Traditions
- “What Is Royalty Without a Voice?” The Performance of Power in The King’s Speech
- Is There Voice Without Law? On The Road
- Voice, Incarnation and the United States Supreme Court
- Disputes and the Differend: Literary Strategies to Say the Unspeakable
- The Working Class Goes to the Movies: Labour Law and Thatcherism in British Films
- War in Words: The Tricycle Theatre’s Re-voicing of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry
- Research
- Legal Systemology and the Geopolitics of Roman Law: A Response to Stuart Elden’s Critique of Carl Schmitt’s Spatial Ontology
- Speech and Graphomena: The Power of Apuleius’ Words in Court and in Translation
- Book Review
- Mireille Hildebrandt and Jeanne Gaakeer: Human Law and Computer Law: Comparative Perspectives
