Contingent Articulations: A Critical Cultural Studies of Law

Abstract

The politics of global capital restructuring and the challenges of transnationalism have made a contemporary cultural studies of law more pressing; political struggles for identity, recognition, and legitimacy are all at stake. Law and culture are mutually constitutive and in a state of nearly constant flux. From multicultural policies to ‘cultural exemptions’ in free trade agreements, cultural continually appears in legal spheres; particular visions of culture are legitimized and delegitimized through law. In this chapter, I argue that we should avoid pursuing a cultural studies of law through any singular paradigms. Rather than simply linking law and culture, we should recognize the ways in which they have been historically articulated, stabilized and destabilized. Culture must not be simply recognized as signification, but also for materiality in order to recognize the signifying power of law in concrete struggles over meaning and their ensuing political implications.

Keywords: Cultural studies, Law and culture