Exemplarity, Singularity and Generality. Remarks made between Law and Literature
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Angela Condello
Angela Condello is Temporary Lecturer at Roma Tre and Director of LabOnt Law at the University of Torino. She got a J.D. and a doctorate in legal philosophy at Roma Tre with a thesis on analogical thinking. She worked (2013) and currently cooperates with the Human Rights Committee of the Italian Senate. In 2014 she was Junior Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities “Recht als Kultur.” In 2015 she was awarded a Fernand Braudel Fellowship to conduct research on exemplarity at the EHESS (Paris). From 2014 to 2016 she was a Guest Professor (Law and Humanities) at the Law School of the University of Ghent. She teaches Law and Humanities at Roma Tre. She is a member of the following boards: Law Text Culture, Law and Literature, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, Rivista di Estetica. She is Managing Editor of
Brill Research Perspectives in Art and Law . In 2016 she was awarded a Jean Monnet Project.
Abstract
In this paper I argue (i) that the relationship between individual case and general norm shows interesting similarities between law and literature; (ii) that the emergence of one case as exemplary reflects the identity of the community in which the case emerged. (i) Paradigmatic cases are sources of normativity and they become normative by raising questions of precedent and repeatability: they perform the functions of a model and produce a split that involves singularity and law, accidental and necessary. (ii) There is a prescriptive force in exemplary cases and the passage from the case to the example is ethical from the start. The prescriptive force is performed in a context of which the exemplary case is the touchstone. The classification of a case as exemplary involves socio-identity-making processes of recognition that assimilate or differentiate human communities and fields of knowledge. Exemplarity thus shows how both law and literature can function as “identity-making” discourses.
About the author
Angela Condello is Temporary Lecturer at Roma Tre and Director of LabOnt Law at the University of Torino. She got a J.D. and a doctorate in legal philosophy at Roma Tre with a thesis on analogical thinking. She worked (2013) and currently cooperates with the Human Rights Committee of the Italian Senate. In 2014 she was Junior Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities “Recht als Kultur.” In 2015 she was awarded a Fernand Braudel Fellowship to conduct research on exemplarity at the EHESS (Paris). From 2014 to 2016 she was a Guest Professor (Law and Humanities) at the Law School of the University of Ghent. She teaches Law and Humanities at Roma Tre. She is a member of the following boards: Law Text Culture, Law and Literature, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, Rivista di Estetica. She is Managing Editor of Brill Research Perspectives in Art and Law. In 2016 she was awarded a Jean Monnet Project.
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Special Focus – Law & Literature over the Last Decades in Italy: an Introduction
- Administrative Law Without Public Interest?
- A “Narrative” of the Individual-Community Relationship through the “Lenses” of Criminal Law: Three Sketches of Mystification
- A New Italian Family Law?
- Resource, Enemy or Refugee? Depiction of the Foreigner and Models of Immigration Criminal Law
- Labour Between Law and Literature: Historical Similarities and Critical Propositions on the Present
- Walking Tours, Subjective Maps, and Spatial Justice: Urban and Non-Urban Spaces in Contemporary Italian Literature
- Forgotten Man Indifferent Nation Contemporary National Storytelling and the Disoriented Citizen
- What Are “Common Goods” (beni comuni)? Pictures from the Italian Debate
- Research
- A Revenger’s Tragedy
- Exemplarity, Singularity and Generality. Remarks made between Law and Literature
- Book Reviews
- Book Review
- Book Review
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Special Focus – Law & Literature over the Last Decades in Italy: an Introduction
- Administrative Law Without Public Interest?
- A “Narrative” of the Individual-Community Relationship through the “Lenses” of Criminal Law: Three Sketches of Mystification
- A New Italian Family Law?
- Resource, Enemy or Refugee? Depiction of the Foreigner and Models of Immigration Criminal Law
- Labour Between Law and Literature: Historical Similarities and Critical Propositions on the Present
- Walking Tours, Subjective Maps, and Spatial Justice: Urban and Non-Urban Spaces in Contemporary Italian Literature
- Forgotten Man Indifferent Nation Contemporary National Storytelling and the Disoriented Citizen
- What Are “Common Goods” (beni comuni)? Pictures from the Italian Debate
- Research
- A Revenger’s Tragedy
- Exemplarity, Singularity and Generality. Remarks made between Law and Literature
- Book Reviews
- Book Review
- Book Review
