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Forms of Authority Beyond the Neoliberal State: Sovereignty, Politics and Aesthetics

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Abstract

Critical legal scholarship has recently turned to consider the form, mode and role of law in neoliberal governance. A central theme guiding much of this literature is the importance of understanding neoliberalism as not only a political or economic phenomenon, but also an inherently juridical one. This article builds on these conceptualisations of neoliberalism in turning to explore the wider historical, cultural and sociological contexts which inform the production of neoliberal authority. The papers in this collection were first presented at the symposium ‘Forms of authority beyond the neoliberal state’, held at the Griffith Law School in December 2017. They consider the role of the corporation, the site of the university, the politics of debt, the genre of prestige television, and the archic sources of state violence, in order to imagine forms of authority which lie beyond neoliberalism as an ideology and a set of practices, and the ensemble of institutions which constitute the neoliberal state. The contributions draw on social theory, philosophy, cultural studies, legal geography and political theology in exploring new possibilities for cultivating judgement through and beyond the sovereign, political and aesthetic terrains of neoliberal governance.

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Acknowledgements

As editors of this special issue, we would like to express our appreciation to all the participants at the symposium on ‘Forms of Authority Beyond the Neoliberal State’ held at the Griffith Law School in December 2017, including Edwin Bikundo, Angela Daly, James Martel, Daniel Matthews, Connal Parsley, Timothy Peters, Daniel McLoughlin and Karin van Marle. We would like to acknowledge the Law Futures Centre at Griffith University for the financial support which made this event possible. Many thanks are also due to the editorial team at Law and Critique, particularly Moniza Rizzini Ansari and Valerie Kelley.

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Correspondence to Chris Butler.

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Butler, C., Crawley, K. Forms of Authority Beyond the Neoliberal State: Sovereignty, Politics and Aesthetics. Law Critique 29, 265–270 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-018-9230-2

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