This paper discusses corporate entanglement, impactfulness and responsibility in the Anthropocene, amidst events and conditions that ‘uncontain’ time. It takes its direction of travel from artist Brian Jungen’s ‘Cetology’ (2002), a whalebone sculpture made out of cut-up plastic garden chairs, which conjoins the times of earth and world history, as it hangs in the air of the art gallery, ‘as if’ exhibited in the natural history museum. The paper relates ‘Cetology’s’ engagement with natural history, time, and commodification to matters of corporate entanglement and responsibility within company law and governance. Problems with understanding the comparable imprint of large and multinational companies on matters, places, and communities are identified, after the domination of corporate legal frameworks over nature and the stability and perfection of economic incentives at law. The reading of this (critical-legal) situation is developed through theory and engagement with materialist and critical thinkers, who unite in their concern with distributed human–nature relations and the ‘concreteness’ that attends collisions in time, ruin and affect. Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno’s writings are central to this analysis, and strengthen the commentary on ‘natural history’ themes curated by Jungen. The paper contemplates how times’ uncontainment might invoke a change in expectation and method for the company law field, assigning contingency to the corporation and provoking a new mode of reflection about corporate entanglement and responsibility at law.

中文翻译：

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自然历史博物馆的空气中：论失控时代的企业纠葛与责任


本文讨论了人类世在“无法遏制”时间的事件和条件下的企业纠缠、影响力和责任。它的行进方向来自艺术家布莱恩·荣根 (Brian Jungen) 的“Cetology”（2002），这是一个由切割的塑料花园椅子制成的鲸鱼雕塑，它悬挂在艺术画廊的空中，将地球时代和世界历史结合在一起，“仿佛”在自然历史博物馆展出。本文将“Cetology”对自然历史、时间和商品化的参与与公司法和治理中的公司纠葛和责任问题联系起来。在公司法律框架对自然的支配以及法律上经济激励的稳定和完善之后，理解大型跨国公司在事物、地点和社区上的可比印记的问题就被发现了。对这种（批判法律）情境的解读是通过理论以及与唯物主义和批判性思想家的接触而发展起来的，他们共同关注分布式的人与自然关系以及伴随时间、毁灭和情感冲突的“具体性”。沃尔特·本杰明和西奥多·阿多诺的著作是这一分析的核心，并加强了对荣根策划的“自然历史”主题的评论。本文思考时代的失控可能会引发公司法领域的预期和方法的变化，将意外事件赋予公司，并引发对公司纠缠和法律责任的新反思模式。