Critical Legal Conference 2013

Call for Papers: (Critical Legal Thinking)

It is 24 years since Queen’s Uni­ver­sity Bel­fast last hos­ted the Crit­ical Legal Con­fer­ence. In that time, North­ern Ire­land has under­gone sig­ni­fic­ant polit­ical and social change spurred on by a dif­fi­cult (and ongo­ing) pro­cess of, and yet stead­fast com­mit­ment to, recon­cili­ation and recon­struc­tion. The ques­tions grappled with in this jur­is­dic­tion are argu­ably mirrored in the dis­courses of diverse crit­ical thinkers and artists as they con­tend with the implic­a­tions of the post­struc­tural event in late mod­ern cul­ture and polit­ics. The CLC annual con­fer­ence 2013 invites you to sub­mit abstracts reflect­ing on the role and mean­ing of recon­struc­tion and its the­or­et­ical, cul­tural, polit­ical, eco­nomic, aes­thetic, philo­soph­ical and soci­olo­gical manifestation.

As crit­ical thinkers we are often called on to jus­tify our attach­ment to Der­ridean decon­struc­tion, Heide­g­gerian ‘destruct­ive retrieve’, or But­lerian per­form­ativ­ity. Our crit­ics accuse us of blind­ness to mater­i­al­ity, polit­ics or ‘real­ity’ often unsat­is­fied by the clas­sic Deleuzian response that cri­tique is in itself an act of res­ist­ance. The theme of recon­cili­ation and recon­struc­tion might include, but is not lim­ited to, dis­cus­sion on:

• law’s crit­ical pro­ject in the age of austerity
• the (re)construction of the legal per­son and the body politic
• impro­vised com­munit­ies and ways of being in society
• the role of art and cul­ture in con­tested polit­ical territories
• crit­ical read­ings of the devel­op­ment of ‘gov­ernance’ projects
• the fem­in­ist pro­ject in an era of altern­at­ive modernities.

Sim­il­arly, the theme invites deeper reflec­tion on the concept of trans­ition. This might include re-​reading the pro­ject of human rights; how to con­ceive com­munity and social devel­op­ment; understanding/​regenerating urban spaces; how to remem­ber the past/​the role of memory in recon­struc­tion; the rela­tion­ship between viol­ence and law and the mean­ing of justice.

The con­fer­ence theme is broadly con­ceived and del­eg­ates are encour­aged to sub­mit stream pro­pos­als. Dead­line for stream pro­pos­als (to be sent to the e-​mail below) is Monday 15 April 2013. Dead­line for paper pro­pos­als (to be sent to stream organ­isers) is Fri­day 31 May 2013. For more inform­a­tion, see the CLC 2013 web­site or e-​mail clc2013[at]qub[dot]ac[dot]uk.