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A new nomos offshore and bodies as their own signs

A new nomos offshore and bodies as their own signs
A new nomos offshore and bodies as their own signs
This paper begins with the paradoxes that accrue around the appearance of Robinson Crusoe and his “Man Friday” within recent judgments relating to the Chagos Archipelago. These references are understood as revealing the complex of anxieties and limits that are the final legacy of these rulings. In particular, we trace the ways in which – through Daniel Defoe's iconic characters – these judgments enact a troubling retreat from review of executive action, and a fuller withdrawal of sensibility from situations of “otherness” that both bear and cannot bear analogy to that of Friday. The paper then more briefly considers a similar complex of anxieties and limits, retreats and withdrawals enacted by recent judgments relating to Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. This allows us to suggest that between these two series of highest court rulings, the Anglophone common law is currently constructing the Indian Ocean as an offshore: a site excised from judicial review, and a site in which certain figures – peoples, individuals – are not considerable in both senses of the word. But in fathoming this, we turn to Derrida's insights on sovereignty to argue that, far from being new, this construction of a common law of the Indian Ocean tells us about the affront of an archaic sovereignty that always already determines and is determined by law. Across the arguments of this paper, these perceptions of judgment, geography and sovereignty are enabled by literature, and specifically by reading the return of Crusoe and Friday in a recent novel form (by J. M. Coetzee) that also broaches the limits of judgment and recognition, but through a kind of vigilant silence – an abstinence – that craves an alternative commonality: and in this very longing, resists the silencing complicities of the UK and Australian judgments with the disembodiment of a littoral nomos, offshore
chagos archipelago, j.m. coetzee, indian ocean, judicial review, nomos, offshore, robinson crusoe, sovereignty
1535-685X
253-278
Jones, Stephanie
19fbdd53-fdd0-43ad-9203-7462e5f658c6
Motha, Stewart
d876f3da-af5f-44cf-9c24-e71a5d4c2bb9
Jones, Stephanie
19fbdd53-fdd0-43ad-9203-7462e5f658c6
Motha, Stewart
d876f3da-af5f-44cf-9c24-e71a5d4c2bb9

Jones, Stephanie and Motha, Stewart (2015) A new nomos offshore and bodies as their own signs. Law and Literature, 27 (2), 253-278. (doi:10.1080/1535685X.2015.1034479).

Record type: Article

Abstract

This paper begins with the paradoxes that accrue around the appearance of Robinson Crusoe and his “Man Friday” within recent judgments relating to the Chagos Archipelago. These references are understood as revealing the complex of anxieties and limits that are the final legacy of these rulings. In particular, we trace the ways in which – through Daniel Defoe's iconic characters – these judgments enact a troubling retreat from review of executive action, and a fuller withdrawal of sensibility from situations of “otherness” that both bear and cannot bear analogy to that of Friday. The paper then more briefly considers a similar complex of anxieties and limits, retreats and withdrawals enacted by recent judgments relating to Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. This allows us to suggest that between these two series of highest court rulings, the Anglophone common law is currently constructing the Indian Ocean as an offshore: a site excised from judicial review, and a site in which certain figures – peoples, individuals – are not considerable in both senses of the word. But in fathoming this, we turn to Derrida's insights on sovereignty to argue that, far from being new, this construction of a common law of the Indian Ocean tells us about the affront of an archaic sovereignty that always already determines and is determined by law. Across the arguments of this paper, these perceptions of judgment, geography and sovereignty are enabled by literature, and specifically by reading the return of Crusoe and Friday in a recent novel form (by J. M. Coetzee) that also broaches the limits of judgment and recognition, but through a kind of vigilant silence – an abstinence – that craves an alternative commonality: and in this very longing, resists the silencing complicities of the UK and Australian judgments with the disembodiment of a littoral nomos, offshore

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Published date: 17 August 2015
Keywords: chagos archipelago, j.m. coetzee, indian ocean, judicial review, nomos, offshore, robinson crusoe, sovereignty
Organisations: English

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 382936
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/382936
ISSN: 1535-685X
PURE UUID: 0a73e992-9f1d-4461-93b2-67e4dc862804

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Date deposited: 06 Nov 2015 12:41
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 21:35

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Author: Stephanie Jones
Author: Stewart Motha

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