Elena Loizidou

Birkbeck College, University of London, Law, Faculty Member

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Gender Theory, Political Theory and in particular classical anarchism.

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Galen Strawson

The University of Texas at Austin

James Elkins

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Shaun Gallagher

University of Memphis

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Rachel E Smith

University of Aberdeen

Mauro Grondona

University of Genova

Peter D. Thomas

Brunel University

TOMMASO GRECO

University of Pisa

Cosmin Sebastian Cercel

Ghent University

חנוך בן-פזי Hanoch Ben-Pazi

Bar-Ilan University

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Papers by Elena Loizidou

The desire to escape that is not escapism

Critical Legal Thinking Blog, 2024

Book Review Judith Butler and Politics

Contemporary Political Theory, 2024

In 'The Days of the Commune' (2003), the playwriter Bertolt Brecht stages the rise and fall of th... more In 'The Days of the Commune' (2003), the playwriter Bertolt Brecht stages the rise and fall of the Paris Commune in 1871. At the start of the play, one of the characters, whom Brecht calls the Portly Gentleman, reads aloud a letter that Monsieur Bracque left for him in a Parisian café. The letter states: 'There's no peace and quiet…these days. Prices, percentages, commission! Well, that's war, everyone contributes in his own way' (Brecht, 2003, p. 55). The events surrounding the Paris commune are well known. In a letter to his American translator, Brecht explained that the use of force was necessary if the communards were to defeat the bourgeoisie. Following Marx, Brecht blamed the defeat of the Commune on the bourgeoisie, who out of fear of being governed by the working class gave their support to the Third Republic which ensued in crashing the communards (Kuhn & Constantine, 2003, p. xv). Adriana Zaharijević's Judith Butler and Politics is excellent. It excels at so many levels: it is, scholarly, drawing on an extensive array of Butler's own writings, as well as Butler's critiques and interlocutors from the fields of philosophy, political theory, feminism, queer and postcolonial theory. Above all, it is politically astute and sensitive to the problem of violence. Wars and insurrections are costly, not just because they cause an increase in prices or are noisy and disruptive, as the letter of Monsieur Bracque alludes to. Wars and insurrections are mostly costly because they leave devastation and death in their wake, as the communards discovered in 1871. While our struggles for freedom, equality, justice and self-determination ought not to be abandoned, we may need to find less costly and non-violent ways of realizing these demands. Zaharijević's book offers a sustained interpretation of Judith Butler's politics and philosophy, grounded in the ideas of interdependence and of non-violence, as an alternative to liberatory struggles that consider the use of force in the struggle for justice, equality and so forth, as necessary. The book ensues to show how this

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Judith Butler: Life, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics: E-Special Issue Introduction

E-Special Issue Introduction Judith Butler: Life, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics: E-Special Issue Introduction, 2024

They have contributed to Theory, Culture & Society and inspired key debates and scholarship aroun... more They have contributed to Theory, Culture & Society and inspired key debates and scholarship around their work. Gender Trouble transformed our understanding of gender, influencing generations of academics, activists, and cultural producers. Butler is an exceptional thinker who aims to build more inclusive and sustainable societies through their writing, which has influenced numerous fields, e.g. sociology, gender studies, politics, and the arts. The editorial introduction juxtaposes earlier and subsequent writings by Butler in order to encourage a wider reading of their work. Drawing upon the full catalogue of Theory, Culture & Society and Body & Society, the collection includes articles published by Butler, interviews with them, a book review, and articles about their work.

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What is Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose About? (Or the Smell of Law)

University of Westminster Press eBooks, Dec 3, 2023

One morning, Ivan Yakovlevich, resident of St. Petersburg and a popular barber, wakes up to the s... more One morning, Ivan Yakovlevich, resident of St. Petersburg and a popular barber, wakes up to the smell of fresh loaves of bread popping out of his wife's oven. He chooses to have a loaf of bread with some onions. He cuts it in half and sees something unusual in the loaf. Curious to find out what this shiny object is, the barber puts his finger in the bread. He extracts a nose. This is not any nose. It is the nose of one of his customers, the Collegiate Assessor, Kovalyov. Fearful of the consequences of being found with the nose, Yakovlevich rushes to the river where he proceeds to throw the nose in its moving waters. From the very start Nikolai Gogol's short story 'The Nose' makes us feel perplexed-how could a nose be baked into a fresh loaf of bread without anyone seeing it? Why did it not burn?-curious-oh, and what happens now that the nose has been thrown in the river? Will its lawful owner ever be reunited with it and have

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Judith Butler: Life, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics: E-Special Issue Introduction

Theory Culture & Society, 2024

This e-special issue of Theory, Culture & Society presents works published by and about US philos... more This e-special issue of Theory, Culture & Society presents works published by and about US philosopher and activist Judith Butler (b. 1956), Distinguished Scholar at the Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley. They have contributed to Theory, Culture & Society and inspired key debates and scholarship around their work. Gender Trouble transformed our understanding of gender, influencing generations of academics, activists, and cultural producers. Butler is an exceptional thinker who aims to build more inclusive and sustainable societies through their writing, which has influenced numerous fields, e.g. sociology, gender studies, politics, and the arts. The editorial introduction juxtaposes earlier and subsequent writings by Butler in order to encourage a wider reading of their work. Drawing upon the full catalogue of Theory, Culture & Society and Body & Society, the collection includes articles published by Butler, interviews with them, a book review, and articles about their work.

Introduction: what is disobedience?

Rebellion and citizenship: Hannah Arendt, Jim Stark and American public life in the 1950s

State University of New York Press eBooks, 2005

Book synopsis: Assesses the layered meanings and persistent global legacy of an American film cla... more Book synopsis: Assesses the layered meanings and persistent global legacy of an American film classic. Five decades after the production and initial release of Rebel Without a Cause, this book examines both the complicated historical moment in which the film was made as well as its continuing and pervasive influence on film today. The contributors track how the film continues to speak to diverse audiences as a touchstone for imagined anxieties over adolescence and coming-of-age, traditional values of family and community, threats from abroad, and the provocations of mass or consumer society. Although the specific sources and motivations for rebellion have shifted, what has persisted is the film’s singular power to represent rebellion in what could otherwise be seen as the everyday, and to move viewers to ponder its causes. "Having avidly read most of what has been published in English on James Dean over the past thirty years, I was delighted to encounter perspectives that succeed in offering such fresh, original, and creative analyses of the most celebrated film of this actor’s short career—analyses that open up new ways to read the film and the historical contexts of its production, distribution, and reception. This is a remarkable book from beginning to end, and each author substantially contributes to a greater appreciation of the film’s richness.” — Michael DeAngelis, author of Gay Fandom and Crossover Stardom: James Dean, Mel Gibson, and Keanu Reeves "This is an absolutely unique book and a real contribution to cinema studies. The contributors offer the reader not only a comprehensive history of the film, with all of the key players given their proper place in film history, but also present the reader with unmistakable evidence of the lingering impact of the film on contemporary cinema discourse.” — Wheeler Winston Dixon, author of Straight: Constructions of Heterosexuality in the Cinema

Anarchy: This is What Democracy Looks Like

Social Science Research Network, Mar 29, 2010

In his essay 'The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte' (1852), Karl Marx, though not w... more In his essay 'The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte' (1852), Karl Marx, though not wholly dismissive of the rights (such as freedom of expression) won by the French Revolution, maintains that the apparent victory for democracy is haunted by the specter of capitalism and bourgeois values. A democracy based on rights never ceases to be in his eyes a bourgeois democracy, based on social and economic inequality. Marx's critique may involve a misunderstanding of the concept and practice of democracy. As suggested by the title of this paper, taken from a popular slogan during the anti-WTO demonstration in Seattle in 1999, democracy is not a form of government but rather a process or an action, 'the action of subjects who' as Ranciere recently pointed out, 'by working the interval between identities [man and citizen], reconfigure the distributions of the public and the private, the universal and the particular.' This particular understanding of democracy is akin to the anarchist tradition, a point that Ranciere make himself in Hatred of Democracy (2007). In focusing upon the anti-conscription actions and writings during World War I of US-based anarchists Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, I explore the differences between the Marxist and anarchist understandings of democracy and the effects that such differences may raise in relation to the question of how we can, present tense, begin a journey towards a better life.

Anarchism and love

Routledge eBooks, Sep 8, 2022

Lolita at the Interface of Obscenity: Children and the Right to Free Expression*

Utopia

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, 2022

Dance, Anarchism, Mutual Aid

Methuen Drama eBooks, 2021

Book synopsis: This book examines the relation between bodies and political economies at micro an... more Book synopsis: This book examines the relation between bodies and political economies at micro and macro levels. It stands in the space between ends and beginnings – some long-desired, such as the end of capitalism and racism, and others long-dreaded, such as the climate catastrophe – and reimagines what the world can be like instead. It offers an original investigation into the relation between performance, dance, and political economy, looking at the points where politics, economics, ethics, and culture intersect. Arising from live conversations and exchanges among the contributors, this book is written in an interdisciplinary and dialogical manner by leading scholars and artists in the fields of Performance Studies, Dance, Political Theory, Economics, and Social Theory: Marc Arthur, Melissa Blanco Borelli, Anita Gonzalez, Alexandrina Hemsley, Jamila Johnson-Small, Elena Loizidou, Tavia Nyong'o, Katerina Paramana, Nina Power, and Usva Seregina. Their critical and creative examinations of the relation between bodies and political economy offer insights for both imagining and materializing a world beyond the present

The love bug and the melancholic drag queen or a reflection on the cultural/political “grounds” of subjects as sexual

Journal for Cultural Research, Oct 1, 2004

The notion of the subject and its formation has long been at the centre of discus-sion in critica... more

Before the Law, Encounters at the Borderline

Book synopsis: New Critical Legal Thinking articulates the emergence of a stream of critical lega... more Book synopsis: New Critical Legal Thinking articulates the emergence of a stream of critical legal theory which is directly concerned with the relation between law and the political. The early critical legal studies claim that all law is politics is displaced with a different and more nuanced theoretical arsenal. Combining grand theory with a concern for grounded political interventions, the various contributors to this book draw on political theorists and continental philosophers in order to engage with current legal problematics, such as the recent global economic crisis, the Arab spring and the emergence of biopolitics. The contributions instantiate the claim that a new and radical political legal scholarship has come into being: one which critically interrogates and intervenes in the contemporary relationship between law and power

From Exchange to Freedom and Back

Methuen Drama eBooks, 2021

A Break?

Law and Critique, Sep 13, 2017

Since the financial crisis of 2008 we have seen a rise in suicides across the world. Greece for e... more Since the financial crisis of 2008 we have seen a rise in suicides across the world. Greece for example in 2011 saw a sustained increase in suicides of 35.7%. In this article I draw our attention to well-publicized suicides that took place in Greece. I focus on the suicide notes left behind. The suicide notes, I suggest, can be read as offering us a critique of the anxious times in which we find ourselves. They are offering us a critique in two senses: (a) a critique of the way we are being governed (through austerity memorandums and a neoliberal logic); and (b) a critique of the affirmative ways of responding towards the financial crisis (through occupations, demonstrations etc.). Consequently these suicide notes can be read as a demand for having a break from this neoliberal logic and organization of life and asking us to re-imagine our social and political realm. In arguing thus, the article draws on Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Wendy Brown and others.

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Sequences on law and the body

Sequences on Law and the Body sketches an account of discursive and material critical legal writi... more Sequences on Law and the Body sketches an account of discursive and material critical legal writings on law and the body. It begins with the discursive and proceeds to the material sequence. This ordering is not meant to designate a hierarchy of accounts in the sense of x sequence being more radical or valuable than the other. Nor does this ordering intend to propose a historical progressive narrative. Such a suggestion would have been preposterous and untrue, as research in both of these sequences is still undergoing. Instead what you witness is an attempt to delineate in a meaningful manner the abundance of work within this field of legal research.

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Heavenly creatures, matricide and criminal law's obsession with confessions

Cassell eBooks, 1998

Loizidou, Elena (1998) Heavenly creatures, matricide and criminal law&#x27;s obsession with c... more

Dreams and the Political Subject

Duke University Press eBooks, Oct 13, 2016

Book synopsis: Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as opposites, with the assumptio... more Book synopsis: Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as opposites, with the assumption that vulnerability requires protection and the strengthening of paternalistic power at the expense of collective resistance. Focusing on political movements and cultural practices in different global locations, including Turkey, Palestine, France, and the former Yugoslavia, the contributors to Vulnerability in Resistance articulate an understanding of the role of vulnerability in practices of resistance. They consider how vulnerability is constructed, invoked, and mobilized within neo-liberal discourse, the politics of war, resistance to authoritarian and securitarian power, in LGBTQI struggles, and in the resistance to occupation and colonial violence. The essays offer a feminist account of political agency by exploring occupy movements and street politics, informal groups at checkpoints and barricades, practices of self-defense, hunger strikes, transgressive enactments of solidarity and mourning, infrastructural mobilizations, and aesthetic and erotic interventions into public space that mobilize memory and expose forms of power. Pointing to possible strategies for a feminist politics of transversal engagements and suggesting a politics of bodily resistance that does not disavow forms of vulnerability, the contributors develop a new conception of embodiment and sociality within fields of contemporary power.

Criminal Law and Punishment

Punishment & Society, Jul 1, 2004

This article sets out to question the relationship between criminal law, punishment and prohibiti... more This article sets out to question the relationship between criminal law, punishment and prohibition. The argument is made that criminal law is not founded upon prohibitive grounds but rather on permissive grounds. Criminal law does not operate as a set of prohibitive rules, whereby the rule breaker is punished, but rather as a system that is indexed by permission and particularly by the slogan ‘enjoy without restraints!’ If criminal law is viewed in this way, it can be read as a manual of citizenship. The article articulates this reading through the use of psychoanalytic myths. The aim is to open up a space whereby one can articulate and criticize the wider project in which criminal law is engaged, one whereby it creates the conditions for citizenship.

The desire to escape that is not escapism

Critical Legal Thinking Blog, 2024

Book Review Judith Butler and Politics

Contemporary Political Theory, 2024

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Judith Butler: Life, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics: E-Special Issue Introduction

E-Special Issue Introduction Judith Butler: Life, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics: E-Special Issue Introduction, 2024

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What is Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose About? (Or the Smell of Law)

University of Westminster Press eBooks, Dec 3, 2023

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Judith Butler: Life, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics: E-Special Issue Introduction