The Successful Failing of Legal Theory (Decolonisation of Legal Knowledge)

Abstract

Whether decolonisation of legal knowledge is a fact or fiction, a desire or a nightmare, it has to be put on a different basis. Beginning with the concept of World Society, as opposed to globalisation, suggests that legal movement is impossible: everything is already here, where it appears. If legal transplants work, it is not because the transplanting was successful but because the law was already ready, in seed as it were, to become the law. Likewise with legal decolonisation. This opens a much broader discussion, however: the connection between legal theory and legal activism. It is on this basis that the paper suggests the need for a firm division between the two which, at least impressionistically, allows each one its full development, only to face its own successful failing. Through a critical reading of Luhmann, Bhabha, Derrida and others, I engage with the greater consequences of the perceived need to engage with 'practice', however this may be defined.

Keywords: Decolonisation, Law, Legal Knowledge, World Society, Luhmann, Autopoiesis, Legal Theory, Activism

JEL Classification: K49