Civil Death in the Dominion of Freedom: Liberia and the Logic of Capital

Law and Critique, vol 28, no 2 (2017): 145-165

RegNet Research Paper No. 125

26 Pages Posted: 17 Feb 2017 Last revised: 10 Jan 2018

See all articles by Shane Chalmers

Shane Chalmers

The University of Hong Kong - Faculty of Law; The University of Adelaide - Law School

Date Written: February 17, 2017

Abstract

This paper is concerned with how a particular logic informed the articulation of ‘Liberia’ from its conception as an idea of liberty at the beginning of the nineteenth century to its consolidation as a nation-state in the twentieth. The paper begins with an examination of the logic itself, through a reading of John Austin’s lecture on ‘things’. This reveals a logic operating through a legal framework that can render an object entirely fungible. The logic, I argue, is the logic of capital. The paper then turns to the making of Liberia to show how this logic was super-imposed over lands and peoples in west Africa through a process of colonisation, which, since the Roman colōnia, has involved both the introduction of civilisation and the cultivation of new land. The argument running through this history is that, at each point, the legal-representational framework that was supposed to liberate its object — human and land — was informed by the logic of capital. On this logic, liberation would come with the super-imposition of a general value: rendering humans productive citizens, and rendering land productive territory, through the investment of rights. However, the result was that, what began at the start of the nineteenth century as an idea of liberty that was supposed to make free all of Africa, culminated at the end of the twentieth century in a State of civil death, and eventually revolution and war.

Keywords: international law, capital, colonialism, post-colonialism, Liberia, representation, logic

Suggested Citation

Chalmers, Shane, Civil Death in the Dominion of Freedom: Liberia and the Logic of Capital (February 17, 2017). Law and Critique, vol 28, no 2 (2017): 145-165, RegNet Research Paper No. 125, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2919317

Shane Chalmers (Contact Author)

The University of Hong Kong - Faculty of Law ( email )

Pokfulam Road
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
China

The University of Adelaide - Law School ( email )

Ligertwood Building
Adelaide, SA 5005
Australia

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