Abstract
In this essay, I will describe the way that Peter Fitzpatrick takes a deep dive into law in its most abstract and mythopoetic form. I will argue that in doing so, Fitzpatrick reveals the way that an intangible and ethereal non thing can and does shape laws in all of their authority and violence. By looking at this strata of legal formation, Fitzpatrick demonstrates the way that law bridges the gap between its own non-being and its power in the world. He shows us not only how this works but also how in some ways this process can be resisted and diverted, how the violence of law can sometimes be mitigated by its own mythopoetic sources. In doing so, Fitzpatrick reveals the inner logics, the determining myths and abstractions that suggest, not only the foundations of law, but also the possibility of other laws, other forms of engagement and authority.
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Notes
I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer of this essay for the term ‘meta-pattern’. The reviewer also suggested a link to the work of Margaret Wetherell who is herself an authority on the way that patterns of association allow for affective and other relations that do not depend on some externality to function and whose work is very helpful for that reason. See for example, Wetherell (2012).
Badiou writes that ‘what we are dealing with here [in terms of the resurrection of Christ] is precisely a fable’ (Badiou 2003, p. 4).
Quoted in this case by Althusser who sees in this ipseity something of the workings of interpellation more generally (Althusser 2001, p. 121).
References
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Fitzpatrick, Peter. 1992. The mythology of modern law. London: Taylor & Francis.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Ben Golder and Sara Ramshaw for their excellent editing, as well as to the anonymous reviewer who read and commented on this piece. And thank you to Peter Fitzpatrick himself for his brilliant scholarship, endless kindness and his all-encompassing and truly magical decency.
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Martel, J. How to Make Concrete Laws Out of Thin Air: Peter Fitzpatrick on the Myths and Groundings of Legality. Law Critique 32, 255–268 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-021-09301-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-021-09301-2