Posthuman Legal Subjectivity: Reimagining the Human in the Anthropocene (Law, Justice and Ecology) - Hardcover

Norman, Jana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0367518724 ISBN 13: 9780367518721

Publisher: Routledge, 2021

Synopsis

This book provides a reimagining of how Western law and legal theory structures the human–earth relationship.

As a complement to contemporary efforts to establish rights of nature and non-human legal personhood, this book focuses on the other subject in the human–earth relationship: the human. Critical ecological feminism exposes the dualistic nature of the ideal human legal subject as a key driver in the dynamic of instrumentalism that characterises the human–earth relationship in Western culture. This book draws on conceptual fields associated with the new sciences, including new materialism, posthuman critical theory and Big History, to demonstrate that the naturalised hierarchy of humans over nature in the Western social imaginary is anything but natural. It then sets about constructing a counternarrative. The proposed ‘Cosmic Person’ as alternative, non-dualised human legal subject forges a pathway for transforming the Western cultural understanding of the human–earth relationship from mastery and control to ideal co-habitation. Finally, the book details a case study, highlighting the practical application of the proposed reconceptualisation of the human legal subject to contemporary environmental issues.

This original and important analysis of the legal status of the human in the Anthropocene will be of great interest to those working in legal theory, jurisprudence, environmental law and the environmental humanities; as well as those with relevant interests in gender studies, cultural studies, feminist theory, critical theory and philosophy.

About this title

About the Author

Jana Norman is a researcher in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Adelaide.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0367518724
• ISBN 13: 9780367518721
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 196