REMINDER: CORE Seminar in Legal Theory under the auspices of Prof. Dr. Laurent DE SUTTER: Hyo Yoon Kang on “Legal Materiality” (Brussels: VUB, 21 MARCH 2023 [HYBRID EVENT])

Legal Materiality

Introduction

In the last ten years or so, the notions of matter and materiality have gained more visibility in Anglo-American legal scholarship. These are distinct from approaches informed by historical materialism and have borrowed from the diverse body of works loosely labelled as 'new materialisms'. I critique some of the legal scholarship's 'application' of new materialist works and argue that they result in flattening the explanatory field: first, they are not attuned to the concrete forms and compositions of legality and second, they tend to simplify and take for granted the complex histories of things, objects or materials. I ask what materiality could mean specifically in relation to 'legal' and propose a working definition that could further a differentiated study of legalities: as a quality in which certain physical and intangible things and techniques become enlisted and come to matter as legal matters of concern. Lastly, I think about the critiques of such a legal materialist focus, e.g. how does this approach address the 'bigger' concepts (capital, justice, bio/power); is this too or not enough 'materialist' in the physicalist sense; and does this not rarefy and transcendentalise 'law'?

Biographical note

Hyo Yoon Kang is Associate Professor at the School of Law, University of Warwick. Prior to joining Warwick Law School, she was a Reader in Law at Kent Law School and Assistant Professor of Science Studies at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland. She conducted postdoctoral research on scientific and legal classifications at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, and has been a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and the LSE.

Reading Materials: 

(2020) ‘Legal Materiality‘ in: DelMar, M, Meyler, B. & Stern, S. eds. Oxford Handbook for Law and the Humanities, Oxford University Press (first author; second author: Sara Kendall) (2019) Introduction to Special issue on ‘Legal Materiality’ Law Text Culture Vol. 23 (with S. Kendall) Open access. (2018) ‘Law’s Materiality: Between Concrete Matters and Abstract Forms, or How Matter Becomes Material‘ in: Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulous, A. ed. Routledge Handbook for Law and Theory. Routledge.

Practical information

Tuesday 21 March 2023, 12 am  

Vrije Universiteit Brussel Room: 4C409 / (contact laurent at de sutter at vub dot be for the Teams-link)

Brussels Humanities, Sciences & Engineering Campus