Event overview
Join Professor Sonja Buckel discussing her book Subjectivation and Cohesion: Towards the Reconstruction of a Materialist Theory of Law.
Join Goldsmiths Unit for Global Justice and Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought for a talk by Professor Sonja Buckel (University of Kassel) on her book Subjectivation and Cohesion: Towards the Reconstruction of a Materialist Theory of Law, followed by a Q&A session.
This event is free and open to all.
About the talk
Marx initially studied law and, in his early writings in particular, he was sharply critical of the law of his time. However, he did not develop a legal theory in the strict sense. His main interest was in combining philosophy and economics to analyse capitalist societies. It was mainly the critical scholars following Marx who attempted to develop such a materialist theory of law.
In her talk, Sonja Buckel will present these different approaches and develop her own legal-theoretical approach in confrontation with them. To this end, the works of Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer, Evgeny Pashukanis, Oskar Negt, Isaac D. Balbus, the so-called 'State-derivation School', Antonio Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas and Michel Foucault are first analysed for their strengths and weaknesses, and then combined to form something new and much needed: a materialist legal theory that is fit for the present and which avoids the shortcomings of existing theories – above all their disregard for gender relations and the reductive consequences of functionalist, economistic or politicist approaches to law.
The result was published in German in 2007 and in English in 2020 (Subjectivation and Cohesion. Towards the Reconstruction of a Materialist Theory of Law, Brill, Historical Materialism Book Series).
About the speaker
Sonja Buckel, Ph.D. (1969), Kassel University, is Professor of Political Theory and member of the faculty of the Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt. She is a lawyer and political scientist and has published on legal theory, European migration policy and critical social theory. Since 2021, she has also been Vice-President of the University of Kassel.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 13 Nov 2023 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
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