Legal fictions: intersections between law and literature
Proposed to be offered next in 1996
T Threadgold
12 points * 2 hours per week * Second semester * Clayton
The subject will take its theoretical directions from recent work in critical legal studies and the law and literature movement. We will employ a variety of interdisciplinary strategies - including critical discourse analysis, poststructuralism, deconstruction, feminism, and contemporary literary theory - to explore a wide range of discursive and generic practices in legal and literary texts. We will study some of the uses of the law in literature, the intersections between literary representations of the law and legal documents, and the uses of literary theory and critical discourse analysis in the deconstruction of the fictions the law constructs about itself. We will also discuss the historical role of literature and literary criticism in the construction of legal subjects and legal concepts of meaning, text, interpretation, truth, objectivity and authority. The subject will have a feminist emphasis, and will conclude with work on ethics, the body, discourse and feminist jurisprudence.
Assessment
Exercise (2000 words): 20% * Short essay (2000 words): 20% * Seminar paper (1500 words): 20% * Final essay (3000 words) or examination (3 hours): 40%
Prescribed texts
Cardinal M The words to say it Van Vactor and Goodheart
Dickens Bleak House OUP
Galt J The entail OUP
Gare N The fringe dwellers Sun Australia
Hardy H Tess of the D'Urbevilles Penguin
Hasluck N The country without music Penguin
Paterson K The Great Gilly Hopkins Puffin
Reutersward M A way from home Turton and Chambers
Thackeray Barry Lyndon OUP
Van Lieshout, T The dearest boy in all the world Turton and Chambers
Recommended reading
Bauman Z Legislators and interpreters Polity Press
Bourdieu P Language and symbolic power Polity Press
Carty A (ed.) Post-modern law: Enlightenment, revolution and the death of man Edinburgh UP
Eisenstein Z The female body and the law California UP
Fairclough N Language and power Longman
Fitzpatrick P (ed.) Dangerous supplements: Resistance and renewal in jurisprudence Pluto Press
Foucault M (ed.) I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister and my brother... a case of parricide in the seventeenth century Nebraska UP
Foucault M The discourse on language (text to be provided in class)
Goodrich P Reading the law: A critical introduction to legal method and techniques Blackwell
Graycar R and J Morgan The hidden gender of law Federation Press
Pateman C The sexual contract Polity Press
Stone J Precedent and law: Dynamics of common law growth Butterworths
Note: For assessment purposes, students will be able to select texts from this list which relate to the materials quoted below.
Legal texts relating to four specific cases (transcripts, affidavits, judgements, case summaries, statutes and acts), media texts and relevant articles will be made available in class. These will cover the following topics: child abuse, parents' rights in child abuse cases, property and family law, wills and inheritance, murder, de facto relationships, contract, defamation, racism and rape.