Law as Literature: The Interdisciplinary Endeavour of Oudropo,, and Their Interdisciplinary Play with Text

1 Introduction

The interdisciplinary encounter between the fields of law and literature is founded on the overlap of their common interests, methods, theories, and concepts. The concept of text is one of these common denominators upon which the research field Law and Literature builds itself: Both disciplines produce and deal with texts and are primarily concerned with attributing sense to and with contextualizing these – albeit, needless to say, the final scope and the effect of the reading of texts differ in the two disciplines considerably. What are the characteristics of this concept of text that forms (a large part of) the conceptual foundation of Law and Literature? The present paper seeks to contribute to answering this question by sketching an interdisciplinary concept of text inspired by literary studies. As I will argue, in the context of interdisciplinary research involving literary studies we need an understanding of text which strengthens the net-like, dynamic, and actional character of text – as has been suggested, among others, by Roland Barthes and Julia Kristeva – in combination with practice theories and social semiotics, which help to further consider the special formats and procedures of non-literary texts. In a first step, I will thus present an example of a particularly fruitful and interesting project of law as literature, namely the enterprise of Oudropo,,, a group of legal scholars and authors who re-read and re-write actual legal texts. After illustrating and analyzing their special way of dealing with texts and the very distinctive position of their work in between legal texts and literary procedures and techniques, in a second step, I will switch to the meta-level and go on to reflect on the concept of text which lies at the basis of their work and deduce from it a generally applicable concept of text for the research field of Law and Literature.

2 Applied law as literature: Ouvroir de Droit Potentiel (Oudropo,,)

A particularly interesting example of a law as literature-process and the application of an interdisciplinary concept of text is given by the activities of the French group Oudropo,, (Ouvroir de droit potentiel). It is part of so called OUxPO groups which have their model within the literary ludic group Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle). Oulipo, founded by François Le Lionnais and Raymond Queneau in 1960, is a group of predominantly (but not only) French authors and mathematicians who create their works according to special pre-given rules, so called contraintes. The formal restraint is thus the creative drive. They meet on a regular basis and their members understand themselves as a group, similar to avant-garde movements. Most famously known are without doubt the lengthy works by Georges Perec, who, under the formal restraint of a lipogram, wrote an entire novel without using the letter e (La disparition). Equally famous are Raymond Queneau’s Exercices de style, 99 variations of the same, seemingly banal anecdote. Based on the model of Oulipo, a number of so called OUxPO have been founded that function essentially according to the same principles: They have their manifests or founding statutes, their fixed members, and regular meetings in which they work with and on their respective material (be it literary texts of all kinds, paintings, comics – even cookery ^[1] – and many others) by following a certain, pre-established rule, a contrainte. The guiding principle is a playful encounter with the material, most often texts. In the first step, the material is playfully formed and transformed; only in a second step is the process of attributing meaning started. OUxPO movements thus oscillate between formal restraint (contrainte) and creative freedom.

It may come as a surprise that also law and its texts can be and, indeed, are one of these x within an OUxPO. It was for Paul Fournel, currently president of Oulipo, who confirmed his astonishment but at the same time also delight that such an exotique domain as law forms the basis for an independent OUxPO. ^[2] It is, however, less a surprise than the logical consequence of Oulipo’s own standards and rules, as is underlined by Emmanuel Jeuland, one of the leading figures in the development of Oudropo,,: “Et pourtant! Si l’écriture oulipienne se caractérise par la soumission à des contraintes, le droit n’est-il pas, quant à lui, imprégné de la contrainte.” ^[3]

Oudropo,, is an OUxPO group whose material are legal texts. Their name is thus a clear reference to Oulipo. However, with the two commas following the acronym ‒ which, by the way, must not be omitted – they also seek to symbolize their reference to another important group of forerunners of a transdisciplinary aesthetic play with texts, namely the “pataphysicians.” “La ‘pataphysique” (with an apostrophe at the beginning), co-founded by Alfred Jarry at the end of the nineteenth century, is an absurdist, parodist philosophy and theory of science and the pataphysical authors are among the most important forerunners of the Oulipiens of the twentieth century. The two commas of Oudropo,, are thus “en ommage à l’apostrophe qui precede ‘pataphysique” ^[4] and at the same time also the visualization of a possible constraint, namely the play with punctuational devices.

In 2013, the professor of law M. Le Cannu founded Oudropo,, at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne out of a seminar of legal theory for doctoral students; soon, other legal scholars and authors joined in. Since that time they have met on a regular basis (today under the direction of Emmanuel Jeuland) working in an Oulipotian manner on legal texts. Oudropo,, defines itself as a non-profit LegalTech: “une legaltech à but non lucratif.” ^[5] The main source of information, and also presentation, is their website, ^[6] on which they announce the next meetings and tasks, provide a list of possible constraints, and also publish their members’ oeuvres. The proclaimed technology is then – in accordance with the activities of Oulipo ‒ the application of certain linguistic procedures to given legal texts in order to produce new legal texts: They (to use their own terminology) create or evidence droit potentiel (“potential law”). Legal texts are thus deprived of their seemingly static dimension and their dynamicity is demonstrated by rewriting them. Their works belong to both spaces: to the space of creativity and to the space of legal theory (“L’Oudropo,, est donc un espace d’inventivité juridique et de théorie du droit” ^[7]). In fact, one could say that their approach is diammetrically opposed to that favoured by Oulipo. Whereas Oulipo applies a restraint to a usually creatively free text genre, namely the literary text, the Oudropiens apply creative freedom to a text genre (the legal text) where there is traditionally none.

As is typical of the foundation of such groups, Oudropo,, also provides a manifest (written in 2014) which gives valuable insight into the self-perspective and the aims of the group. The manifest, not surprisingly, imitates or rather parodies a legal document. The document consists of only two articles, 0 and 2, leaving out 1, whereby Article 0 self-reflexively refers to Article 2:

Article 0. – Le manifeste comporte un article unique nommé article 2 qui apparait avant le postambule et le préambule.

Article 2. – A l’aide d’une contrainte librement choisie, il sera créé du droit: norme, acte, lien, prérogative ou personne juridique. ^[8]

Even though it consists of only two rather brief articles, it provides a short Postambule and a rather lengthy Préambule in which the group’s history is told, its aims and procedures are stated, and they clearly position themselves within the tradition of the Oulipo movement.

The aim of Oudropo,, is threefold: Since they developed out of a students’ seminar and are still hosted at the “Institut de Recherche Juridique de la Sorbonne,” firstly, they have a very didactic impulse. They aim at widening the students’ perspective on law and making them reflect upon their own subjectivity. Secondly, they seek to find new juridical forms and to break with traditional ones, which – needless to say – demonstrates the contingency of formal standards. Thirdly, on a more general level, the group simply want to deepen the understanding of law. As they say: “[…] nous avons créé un OUvroir de DROit POtentiel (OUDROPO,,), non seulement par jeu, mais aussi pour approfondir le droit, offrir une approche pédagogique complémentaire et éventuellement créer de nouvelles forms juridiques.” ^[9] Their creative process works on two centerlines of creation, namely interpretation and composition. On the one hand, they offer new, alternative interpretations to legal texts: “Il s’agirait non seulement de rendre disponible de nouvelles lectures mais, surtout, de s’habituer à ne jamais penser qu’une disposition puisse avoir un seul sens.” ^[10] The second creative process, composition, on the other hand, could be described as the classical OUxPO-procedure: to stabilize a rule according to which a certain material, in this case a legal text, is transformed and rewritten. Of course, composition and interpretation are not two entirely separate processes, since a recomposed text requires also a new interpretation.

How does this laboratory of potential law actually work? Just like Oulipo, they have fixed, open meetings on a regular basis – as can be seen from the announcement and invitation via twitter. ^[11]

The date, place, and above all the constraint which is being dealt with are published beforehand on their website. The website also provides a list of potential and of constraints that have been previously applied in alphabetical order, and usually also gives an example and a realization for each constraint. ^[12] One of those listed on the website is the: “Consonne comme contrainte.” ^[13] Using this particular constraint means to either switch consonants or to leave one or more out entirely. If we apply this technique on the first article of the French constitution from 1958: “La France est une République indivisible, laïque, démocratique et sociale,” we get the following result: “Ra Flance est une lépubrique indivisibre, raïque, démoclatique et sociare.” ^[14] In this case, the consonsants ‘r’ and ‘l’ are exchanged with each other. This constraint helps to play with the sound of language and treats the text only as form, as sound, and completely ignores the level of content. Moreover, since a particular constraint is discussed and applied during the meetings, many of the oudropian texts are the result of a collective and dialogical creation. The act of interpretation is also a collective one, since the resulting texts are again discussed within the group and the different versions of meaning which can be generated out of it are made visible. Another branch seems to concentrate less exclusively on merely verbal texts but, rather, focuses on images, the relation word–image and, above all, the sometimes arbitrary and contingent legal rule a picture or an image might transmit. ^[15]

In order to make their characteristic identity as a group whose members are selected and have a special competence, but also conviction, even more plausible and complete, they even offer an online certificate (a so called “diplôme Sitaire”) which consists of three levels of difficulty: Having passed the first level, you receive the “OuDroPlume”; having successfully completed the second level, you receive an “OuDroPlôme”; and after the successful completion of the third level you are the proud owner of the “OuDroPalmes.” On each level one creates one’s own oudropian text. If the text of the third level is accepted, it is published on the website and the respective person can become a member of Oudropo,,. ^[16]

As can be quite easily deduced from my explanations so far, playfulness, that is, the ludic element, has a very important part in the motivation and aims of the group members and above all of the group’s leadings figures. Not only the above mentioned certification for the re-creation of legal texts is a good example of this strongly self-ironic element, so also is the fact that the editor of their, as yet, only published book, “sous la direction scientifique de Camille Porodou,” is in fact a non-existing person. Looking for this person on the internet gives no satisfying result, apart from an announcement for the presentation of their book at a book fair where it reads enigmatically: “Venez nous voir sur notre stand! […] de savoir si Camille Porodou allait venir?!” ^[17] On their website, Camille Porodou is listed as one of Les membres éclaireurs; the commentary on this person, however, starts with the words: “La rencontre n’a pas eu lieu.” ^[18] This non-encounter is then described in greater detail and we are told the life story of Porodou. She is described as sort of their patron, as a person who, after a number of accidental encounters with law “[…] influença le discours du droit, plaçant l’humain au cœur de celui-ci, mais à travers une forme indéfinie et ne coïncidant avec aucune réalité fixe.” ^[19] Camille is seen as the personification of a workshop for potential law, mainly by her direct, naive, and thus human approach to law and legal matters. This results in the following:

L’humain comme source permet de penser le droit en dehors de toute transcendance, de tout système clos ayant sa propre logique hermétique aux interactions humaines et gardé par ses idoles. Camille est alors le choix de l’humain, de l’irréductible indétermination humaine qui façonne le droit et la vie, car le droit sans la vie est la mort, et la vie sans le droit n’est pas. ^[20]

Porodou apparently stands for a sort of vitalization of law and for a closer contact of law with (everyday) common life. Reading further we find a list of members, among which there is also a subcategory of “membre fantôme” where Camille Porodou is listed. A “ghost member” is described as a “membre qui a cessé d’exister ou qui n’a jamais existé mais qui a encore un effet.” ^[21] At this point, the fictiveness and merely symbolic value of Camille Porodou is finally made evident. However, in order to clarify this point, the engaged reader has to read and browse carefully through their book and website in order to collect the respective hints. At the one side of the spectrum, the references to Porodou are extremely real, namely as the editor of their volume, and at the other end, of course, extremely fictional, as a phantom.

In general, their texts and website are a mixture of real, factual information and a number of self-ironic, playful, fictional, possibly also deceiving elements. In the informative, factual paragraph on the working methods and procedures of Oudropo,, we find a reference to a footnote. Instead of a comment or a bibliographic reference we get the following comment in the footnote: “Le note [31] est une note fantôme.” ^[22] The ludic element and the playfulness is thus a basic aim in their approach to law and their encounter with the textual material. In their manifest it is stated, somewhat parenthetically, that they founded Oudropo,, “not only for play,” but also to deepen their understanding of law. Playfulness and a ludic drive are thus put on the same level of interest and importance as learning. Oudropo,, is situated in an in-between space of the aesthetic and non-aesthetic and oscillates between the realms of seriousness and playfulness. However, these two must not be considered as antagonists since – as is well known – a play, in order to be played successfully, must be encountered with a serious attitude and, we must add with respect to Oudropo,, and OUxPO movements in general, vice versa. As Astrid Poier-Bernhard has pointed out in her substantial study on constraint-based literature, the aim of a constraint is the potentiality and she defines the work of the Oulipians as “eine lebensphilosophische Praxis, die dem ‘Möglichen’ oder ‘dem Spiel der Möglichkeiten’ den ersten Platz einräumt”. ^[23]

Creation and potentiality are, thus, also the key concepts of Oudropo,,. They create themselves, they create their texts, and they also create a story around themselves by inventing their fictive founding figure Camille Porodou. The group has a highly aesthetic and also fictional claim, on the one hand, and on the other, they are, of course, highly ‘real’ and ‘factual’: You can meet (most of) the members, you can attend their meetings, which are usually held at the university, often within the setting of a seminar, you can contribute with your own suggestions on constraints, produce your own texts. And, of course, the material they start with is actual law. Very consciously, they put themselves in a space of ambivalence. In talking and thinking about Oudropo,,, both the following aspects have to be taken into account and seen in their interplay: the textual, combinatory approach to legal texts, and the self-reflection and self-staging of the group.

To what extent is Oudropo,,, then, of interest in the context of the research field of Law and Literature? First and foremost, the founding and still most active figures of Oudropo,, position their work explicitly within the realm of Law and Literature; what they do is, in their words, “‘droit et littérature’ appliqué” ^[24] and they seek to contribute to transdisciplinary research. Needless to say, they want to resist positivist readings of law ^[25] and try to offer an alternative to economic tendencies within legal studies: “Lutter contre un certain discours managérial de créativité en droit.” ^[26]

In a contribution to Oudropo,,, one of its members, interestingly, describes Oulipo, because of its law-abiding form, as a “literature as law” and Oudropo,, as “literature from law.” ^[27] Whether or not we are willing to agree with this differentiation, Oudropo,, is without doubt a very fruitful and, one must also admit, rare example of law as literature. It operates also here on two levels: on the object level by creating new legal texts, that is by treating legal texts with literary/aesthetic methods, but also on a meta-level by offering a reflection on the textual status of law, of the properties and special dimensions of these texts, by laying bare their arbitrariness and by implicitly questioning legal methods of textual production and reading. Oudropo,, thus serves as a nearly perfect exemplification of an interdisciplinary concept of text which stands at the basis of the encounter between law and literature but still has not been satisfactorily defined.

3 Text as an inter- and multidisciplinary concept

Before going into detail on the parameters and theories of an interdisciplinarily applicable concept of text, I will begin with a few general remarks on essential characteristics of the notion of text. ‘Text’ is per se a very widely used term; it is not only part of our everyday language but, above all, a fundamental term of a number of disciplines.

On the one hand, there are many disciplines which deal with texts but also discuss the concept of text on a theoretical level, such as linguistics, theology, literary studies, editorial studies, legal studies, historiography, sociology. On the other hand, there are many disciplines which deal in one way or another with texts but do not need to discuss the terminological foundation of the concept of text on a meta-level; this is the case with disciplines belonging to the natural sciences, but also, to a certain extent, economics.

At the same time, the concept of text is intrinsically interdisciplinary. Famous representatives of text theory stress the fact that text is per se multi- and/or interdisciplinary. In his essay “De l’œuvre au text” Barthes sees ‘text’ as an illimitable and thus undefinable phenomenon: “Si le Texte pose des problèmes de classification […], c’est qu’il implique toujours une certaine expérience de la limite […].” ^[28] John Mowitt, one of the leading representatives of US American textual studies, goes even further and describes ‘text’ less as inter- than as “antidisciplinary.” He thus sees text less as an object than as a field, namely an antidisciplinary one, in which many disciplines operate. In his words:

[…] the text is within disciplinarity, but in a manner that captures the constitutional instability of disciplinary power […]. For this reason textuality must be distinguished from interdisciplinary research without abandoning it, which is why I have argued that it makes more sense to conceive of the text as an antidisciplinary field. ^[29]

For Mowitt, text is caught in an ambivalent status between disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. As far as the connection between the concept of text and the concept of interdisciplinarity is concerned, Mowitt provides another very important thesis. He points to the fact that discussions of the concept of text always seem to correlate with disciplinary crises. ^[30] And, in fact, Barthes’ essential reflections on the concept of text concerning the emergence of text linguistics as an independent linguistic sub-discipline, happen simultaneously with the influential academic discussions on interdisciplinarity such as the famous conference on interdisciplinarity at universities in Nice in 1970. ^[31]

We can thus agree with F. Jameson, who pointed to the epistemological potential of the concept of text. In his essay “The Ideology of Text” he propagates a very wide concept of text which can even be applied to research objects in the human and social sciences; the semantics of textuality comprises object features from biogenetics to IT. ^[32] In this case, the concept of text serves also to underline the subjectivity and relativity of the production of knowledge. At the same time, for Jameson, text is strongly tied to the literary field (for both its object and its theories) and is again in an ambivalent position between disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. Apart from its intrinsic and general interdisciplinarity, the special interdisciplinary dimension of a concept of text which is applicable for Law and Literature must be investigated. The concept of text must meet the demands of both disciplines and should help to explain in-between text genres and textual procedures such as, for example, those of Oudropo,,. As already hinted at in the introduction, such an interdisciplinary concept of text applicable for research within Law and Literature should be inspired by text-centered literary theories, modern practice theories, and social semiotics.

4 A concept of text between law and literature

An essential part of the theoretical framework for such a concept of text is provided by – as I seek to call them ‒ ‘text-centered’ literary theories. They serve to discuss the relation between text and literariness. By largely abandoning the concept of œuvre, from the 1960s onwards literary studies have focused on the literary text in its aestheticity, and also in its mediality, thus, implicitly discussing the relationship between literature and non-literature. A very fruitful contribution to this discussion has been provided by the literary scholar Jost Schneider. He tries to avoid a too simple equation between literature and text and has suggested a model which helps to connect the genuine characteristics of the notion of literature or the literary text to a more general understanding of text, also within other disciplinary fields. He names three constants of the literary text, namely fixation, fictionality, and poeticity, which determine the degree of a text’s literariness and also allow considering hybrid genres. ^[33] Whereas the fixation is obvious, the latter two can vary in degree and intensity and can sometimes also be true for non-literary texts. A three-circle diagram of these three constants helps to illustrate possible overlaps and shows that it is not only literary texts that can comprise of these characteristics but also other specialized texts. ^[34] This leads of course to Siegfried J. Schmidt’s Ästhetikkonvention. He defines literariness as form, and not as a special characteristic of text but rather as a special way of approaching a text (pragmatic view). ^[35] In this context, the expansion into “transtextuality,” as suggested by Oliver Jahraus, must also be taken into account. Jahraus defines the literariness of a literary text as a textual quality which – and this is an important point – must have transtextual impact beyond the text. ^[36]

Of particular relevance are, of course, Roland Barthes’ reflections ^[37] on the notion of text in his lexicon entry “Théorie du Texte.” He resents a traditional concept of text which is committed to some kind of metaphysical truth. Relying very much on Julia Kristeva’s understanding of text, Barthes reinforces five characteristics of text, namely: “pratiques signifiantes,” “productivité,” “signifiance,” “phéno-texte et géno-texte,” “inter-textualité.” ^[38] Text is therefore a signifying practice, an active process of generating meaning: “La notion de pratique signifiante restitue au langage son énergie active […].” ^[39] Connected to it is the concept of productivity. Barthes understands text not as a product, but rather as the producing element: “[…] le texte ‘travaille’, à chaque moment et de quelque côté qu’on le prenne; même écrit (fixé), il n’arrête pas de travailler, d’entretenir un processus de production.” ^[40] If you conceive of text as production and not as product, meaning must also be seen in its dynamicity: “[…] ‘signification’ n’est plus un concept adéquat.” ^[41] Signification describes the one-sided, static attribution of meaning through the text’s author, signifiance, on the other hand, underlines the processual character of text and is a strong statement in favor of the role of the reader in the process of creating meaning: “La signification est un procès, au cours duquel le ‘sujet’ du texte, échappant à la logique de l’ego-cogito et s’engageant dans d’autres logiques (celle du signifiant et celle de la contradiction), se débat avec le sens et se déconstruit (‘se perd’); la signifiance […] est donc un travail […].” ^[42]

By taking up Julia Kristeva’s dual concept of pheno- and genotext Barthes emphasizes the elements of the open and infinite which are inherent to the modern notion of text. ‘Phenotext’ refers to the materially existing text, ‘genotext’, on the other hand, comprises all existing pre- and contexts which are the basis for and constantly influence the phenotext. Text is thus, as its etymological origin implicates, a textile which is endlessly interwoven with all sorts of other texts and cultural products.

In particular, the notion of an open text proposed by Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and Paul de Man within literary studies was investigated by several legal theorists. Ino Augsberg talks about “the textuality of the legal practice” (and he limits the characteristics of textuality not to written texts but applies these to all different media which are part of the legal system (oral, digital, written, etc.)). Inspired by the philosophy and poetics of Romantics, Augsberg describes the modern legal system as a “romantic web”: “[…] eine Form von Textualität […], die nicht mehr unmittelbar an das Gesetz und die hierarchische Architektur der Rechtsordnung gebunden ist, sondern ihre eigenen, nicht mehr primär vertikalen, sondern horizontal-heterarchischen Ordnungsmuster produziert.” ^[43]

Similarly, Thomas Vesting defines the legal system as a network. He urges us to conceive of law as a certain form of thinking, of knowledge, which is aware of its dynamics and replaces linear hierarchies by heterarchical (that is unranked) combinations. By quoting Derrida, he underlines his argument and describes law (under this perspective as a network) as: “einer Ordnung ohne starre Grenzen und stabile Rahmung, eine Konstellation, die als Ganzes undurchsichtig bleiben muss, ‘[…] ein differentielles Netz, ein Gewebe von Spuren, die endlos auf anderes verweisen, sich auf andere differentielle Spuren beziehen’”. ^[44]

What is implied here is law as a medially diverse genre. Vesting urges seeing law from a multimedia perspective and reflecting upon the changes this multimediality brings about. Law as a multimedia constellation is thus described as a hypertext. The notion of hypertext serves here as metaphor for a non-linear, open, interwoven structure.

The open literary concept and its transposition to legal theory can be best combined and linked to, or, alternatively, made fruitful for, the research field of Law and Literature through the lens of practice theories. In his substantial analyses on the concept of practice and on practice theories in general, Andreas Reckwitz defines practice as the smallest unity of the social and as the human handling of things and objects. ^[45] Considering text as practice means to consider, at the same time, both the object as well as the production and use (reception) of the object as inseparable from each other:

Die Artefakte erscheinen weder ausschließlich als Objekte der Betrachtung noch als Kräfte eines physischen Zwangs, sondern als Gegenstände, deren sinnhafter Gebrauch, deren praktische Verwendung Bestandteil einer sozialen Praktik oder die soziale Praktik selbst darstellt. ^[46]

To examine text as part of media practices ^[47] means not to be interested in text as a single, closed product but, rather, as existing within the many different textual practices which comprise multiple forms of reading and writing, of finding and of applying knowledge. This aspect is also underlined by Ralf Klausnitzer with regard to literary studies. In his attempt to combine literary studies with a praxeological approach, he analyses the complex relationship between text, context, and different forms of knowledge. Text per se is an abstraction which manifests itself in different genres, material forms, modes of production, modes of reception, etc. ^[48] Klausnitzer presents ‘observing’ as a basic epistemic practice in order to come to terms with text-context relations. ^[49] Observation happens ‒ not only in the literary text ‒ at various levels, that is, on a textual, para-, and contextual level; reading means, then, observing the observing, by trying to take into account the impossibility of observing one’s own observation (in Luhmann’s terms).

Consequently, practice theories work on two levels in the research context of Law and Literature. On a theoretical level, they serve to justify a truly interdisciplinary (that is, in between the disciplines) concept of text: Text is not tied to a specific discipline by parameters and characteristics but must be seen in its particular context of usage. On a practical level, praxeological text analysis means considering a text within its different contexts as well as considering text as part of several practices. According to this perspective, it is justifiable to read a legal text not only as part of the legal and academic practice but also as an aesthetic text and to transfer it into other spheres of practices, as is the case with Oudropo,,.

A further important perspective to shape an interdisciplinary concept of text is social semiotics in the tradition of M. A.K. Halliday. A social semiotic perspective serves very much the claim made by Kent D. Lerch, among others, who argues that legal studies must abandon the view of the “metaphysical book,” ^[50] namely the primacy of the material, written, concluded book. This view wrongly implies that knowledge is also restricted to this closed area, and has just to be “taken out” and “used.” ^[51]

This aspect can be considered with the help of social semiotics, which conceives of text as being part of social interaction ^[52] and as being tied to a special sociocultural field. Depending on the form of the text, different social relations are formed. Text is then a semiotic practice and an interdisciplinary concept of text shows how these practices are incorporated. Halliday defines text as a semantic unit: “text is meaning and meaning is choice.” ^[53] Contrary to traditional text theories which stress the syntagmatic level, Halliday focuses on the paradigmatic level. It is the “paradigmatic environment – the innumerable subsystems that make up the semantic system” ^[54] that guides the description of a text and on the basis of which we decide to which order to collate it. In other words: In making meaning out of text, we must relate it to a specific system, e. g., literature, law, economics. In order to analyze the semiotic structure of the text, Halliday names three essential parameters: (a) field (type of social action, that is, the sociocultural context), (b) tenor (the role of the relationship of the participants in the textual communication), and (c) mode (symbolic organization, that is, the text’s function, rhetorical mode, and medium (concept of genre)). ^[55] Needless to say, a (social) semiotic approach to the concept of text allows taking into consideration also semiotic entities other than language, especially relations between language and image, between analog and digital technology, and between alphabetical and numerical language. Multimodality must, therefore, be seen as an integral part of an interdisciplinary concept of text. Oudropo,, serves as a perfect example also for this aspect: they play with the different semiotic practices a text can possibly offer and ‘mis’place the text in different semantic subsystems. A legal text becomes a literary text or a legal text becomes a different legal text, etc.

In the context of literary studies, a social semiotic approach can be linked to the theory of “strategic formalism” suggested by the literary scholar Levine. With this analytical approach she urges relating aesthetic to social forms. “Strategic formalism” sees “cultures as dense networks of different kinds of interacting forms.” ^[56] In doing so, she ventures a new and open concept of form as “shaping patterns, identifiable interlacings of repetitions and differences, dense networks of structuring principles and categories.” ^[57] Form is “conceptual and abstract, generalizing and transhistorical.” ^[58] It is thus not confined to the realm of the aesthetic and it must not be confused with ‘genre,’ the latter being associated, rather, with artistic products and usually historically contextualized. Form, on the other hand, remains stable over time, having the capacity to “traverse time and space.” ^[59] This concept of form and of formal analysis is thus seen as a fruitful contribution to the development of an interdisciplinary concept of text and to the cross-disciplinary analysis of texts from several disciplines. Again, the activities by Oudropo,, convincingly demonstrate how form can or, rather, must be treated as transdisciplinary and of course transhistorical, and perhaps also as transcultural.

5 Instead of a conclusion: The legislating robot

The play with different textual formats and with disciplinary borders and the inclination for self-irony are also shown in a further creative endeavor. The website of Oudropo,, provides a link to a site called: Legislator, le robot législateur. ^[60] It is an automatic text generator which produces a new ‘legal rule’ at regular time intervals (approximately every five minutes). The aim is to parody the over-productiveness of the French legislators, as can be deduced from their introductory statement on their website:

Chacun peut le constater dans sa vie quotidienne: la France souffre d’un grave manque de lois. Des jours entiers peuvent se passer sans que le contribuable, l’agent économique, le citoyen, ne rencontre une norme byzantine ou contradictoire, et à peine compréhensible par les agents mêmes qui sont chargés de la mettre en œuvre. En un mot, l’anomie nous guette.

Pourtant, beaucoup d’efforts ont été consentis: le Forum Économique Mondial, dans son classement de 2015-2016, classe ainsi la France au 115e rang mondial sur 140 pour le poids de la complexité administrative; nous ne sommes pas si loin du top 20 des pays au fonctionnement le plus kafkaïen (nous en faisions d’ailleurs encore partie en 2012-2013). ^[61]

Of 140 countries ranked by the World Economic Forum, France ranked amongst those with the most complex administration systems, coming close to the top 20 countries with the most Kafkaesque administrations. And still, as they ironically state, entire days can pass by without a needless law or rule being produced; the robot Legislator makes up for this failure:

Legislator est un robot logiciel; il a lu les 80 textes de loi codifiés applicables sur le territoire Français; et à partir de ce corpus, il génère, article par article, de la norme en continu; plus précisément, Legislator produit littéralement une loi toutes les cinq minutes. Legislator ne dort jamais, ne déjeune jamais en ville, ne part pas en voyage d’études, ne va pas tâter le cul des vaches dans sa circonscription; Legislator ne fait rien d’autre que légiférer. ^[62]

The laws, which are generated every five minutes, appear on twitter, a publication organ which is considered to be much more effective, direct, immediate, and democratic than the traditional publication via official organs. Thus, they even plan to edit a so-called Journal Officieux (an inofficial journal) as a sequel to the Journal Officiel (the official publishing organ of French legal texts).

At the end of their introductory statement they make their game explicit by declaring that their greatest success would be if, one day, their automatically generated legal texts were taken for granted:

Enfin, la vraie reconnaissance pour Legislator serait qu’un étudiant en droit ou un assistant parlementaire pressé de composer un rapport à coups de copier/coller sur internet ne réalise pas que ses articles sont imaginaires, et les prenne pour argent comptant: l’art imite la nature. ^[63]

The legislative robot is a particularly illustrative example of the aims and procedures of Oudropo,,. It shows their great amount of self-irony, their drive to play, but shows also the most important dichotomies they play with and/or try to dismantle: namely life vs. art, art vs. non-art, plan vs. chance, human vs. non-human, law vs. life and one could probably think of many more.

Oudropo,, playfully deals with legal texts and simulates the creation of new ones. They deconstruct the process of producing a text but also the reception of a text. Thus, they not only contribute to the self-understanding of legal scholars, as far as their dealing with texts is concerned, but also contribute considerably to a self-understanding of applied research in Law and Literature. They illustrate very convincingly what happens when law is, in fact, treated as literature, and when literary writing and reading techniques are used for legal texts. This is, therefore, a very rare successful example of a truly interdisciplinary procedure with the Oudropians working in a space in-between the realms of the legal and the literary.