Finding and Losing One's Self in the Topoi: Placing and Displacing the Postmodern Subject in Law

Abstract

According to Santos, postmodernism has produced a new subjectivity that should be privileged in conceiving a new, progressive reimagination of the law. Rather than privilege this new subject, I argue that it deserves to be critically interrogated in how it occupies a space of unacknowledged socioeconomic and cultural privilege. Subjects are fashioned in political practice; what are the social practices we seek to foster? A utopian sphere of postmodern politics might begin with a politics of nonidentity, noncommunity, and an ethics of openness to contingency. We should strive to enable new subjectivities to materialize from encounters with difference, rather than privilege a static postmodern subject.

Keywords: Postmodernism, Subjectivity