Papers by Honni van Rijswijk
Law and Literature, Dec 17, 2023
Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 2015
The figure of the “abused Aboriginal child” haunts the Australian legal imaginary in ways that ar... more The figure of the “abused Aboriginal child” haunts the Australian legal imaginary in ways that are both poignant and dangerous. This article examines the role this figure has played in assertions of Australian law’s violent jurisdictions, in the past and in the present. I examine the narratives that support law’s claims to authority and jurisdiction over Aboriginal communities, arguing that practices of representation—narrative, figuration, and what we might more widely think of as “law’s imaginary”—need to be interrogated and challenged, as an important means of intervening in law’s violent jurisdictions. We need to engage in what I term here a “literary jurisprudence,” in order to intervene in law’s claims to authority and jurisdiction that are based on narratives of purported harm to the Aboriginal child. “Haunting” is used to think through the significance of the legal imagination in two ways: the ways in which narratives in legal and state archives affect culture and politics; and also the role of law’s own imaginary and the ways in which its figures and narratives affect judicial outcomes, perhaps in ways that function beyond logic. To say that law is haunted by the figure of the abused Aboriginal child is to point to the affective, political, legal, and imaginative afterlife of narratives and figurations that are part of law, and which are not ended with each case or legislative regime but which, unresolved, are always living on.
By way of an example of these practices, I provide a reading of harm in the novels of Alexis Wright, a leading Australian novelist, which I argue together provide an exemplary text that counters state law’s representational practices and claims. What is needed to resist the use of the child figure as the occasion for further violence, I argue, and what this reading provides, can be described as a “counter-imaginary” to law’s. This counter-imaginary re-writes law’s narratives and figures, connects that which law has separated, and makes visible that which law has occluded. In particular, each of Wright’s three novels Plains of Promise (1997), Carpentaria (2006), and The Swan Book (2013) is concerned with the relation of harm to questions of Aboriginal authority. Together, all three of Wright’s novels provide a developed counter-imaginary to law’s continuing assertions of authority over Aboriginal people based on the figure of the “abused Aboriginal child,” from the early twentieth century to the present.
Law and Literature, 2016
This article focuses on the significance of practices of representation to law's role in adjudica... more This article focuses on the significance of practices of representation to law's role in adjudicating harm-both the role of representation in the adjudication of past harms, and in law's present-day assertions of authority. I focus in particular on the ways in which questions of harm to the person, relation to land, and sovereignty have been separated in law, and the effects of these practices in constructing legal authority. I turn to Wright's The Swan Book (2013) to provide a reading of the "undoing" of narratives of harm based on the person, and to thereby critique law's representations of harm. I argue that, as an anti-elegy in the Modernist tradition, Wright's novel provides a metaphor of harm and responsibility that reorganises time, destabilises law's claims to authority over the adjudication of harms, and queries law's claim to authority over other legal systems and sovereignties. This reading takes the framework of harm beyond the personal, to include the violent histories that have produced legal concepts including "land," "sovereignty" and even "law" itselfhistories and contexts that are separated and obscured in law.
Law and Literature, 2023
Henry Lawson’s short story, “The Drover’s Wife,” has animated Australian nationalism since its pu... more Henry Lawson’s short story, “The Drover’s Wife,” has animated Australian nationalism since its publication in 1892. The story is much-loved, and has been perceived as representing a voice from the margins, the enduring archetype of the Australian frontier bush woman, a figure who is simultaneously vulnerable and stoic. This archetype organises other tropes in Lawson’s story, symptomatic of the national imaginary of the internal frontier–the unrelenting harshness of the Australian land, the resilience of the white frontier individual, and the civilising effects of those individuals’ labor on the landscape, as well as on First Nations people, who are coded as part of “nature,” requiring “civilisation.” It is against this context of white colonial fetishism of both the story and of Lawson himself that Leah Purcell’s version/s–a play (2016), and now a film (2022)–are set. Leah Purcell is a proud Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri woman from Queensland, and one of Australia’s leading writers, directors and actors. In this article, I examine Purcell’s radical reimagining of this foundational Australian text. In the original story, Lawson imagines the key antagonists of the frontier as belonging to the “natural world,” including a bull, a poisonous snake, the isolation and harshness of the environment, and the presence of an “uncivilised” Indigenous man who appears as a stranger in the unnamed drover’s wife’s home. In Purcell’s reworking, she upturns this narrative and its fetishistic tropes, giving a name to the drover’s wife–Molly Johnson–and also truthfully naming the true antagonists the drover’s wife must face on the Australian frontier: the imminent threat of violence and sexual violence against all women, and the violence of the frontier wars against First Nations communities, which was followed by government policies of assimilation and intervention (Watson, 2009). Purcell’s work reveals truths about the violence of the frontier, about forms of state and outlaw violence that not only led to the massacre of First Nations people, but also created a false epistemology: that the land which Indigenous people have inhabited with peace and ease for thousands of years is “harsh,” that First Nations labor is “idleness,” and that the colonist’s work at the frontier is noble, rather than an act of ugly, violent theft. Purcell thereby critiques the role of particular Australian literary works in the creation of national mythology and in the papering-over of violent historical truths. Purcell’s work both reveals and subverts the colonial epistemology of violence, gender, sexuality, and state law’s complicity in these processes, from its foundational refusal to acknowledge First Nations law, to the imposition of a thieving land law and then to the “lawful” removal of First Nations children. This paper will explore the radical implications of this work to both legal and cultural imaginaries.
HANDBOOK ON CYBER HATE - The Modern Cyber Evil, 2024
The new Australian legislation empowering the eSafety Commissioner has established a system with ... more The new Australian legislation empowering the eSafety Commissioner has established a system with some good powers. So far, the eSafety Commissioner seems to have a good record of handling one-off, prominent cases, but not continuing, everyday harms suffered by vulnerable groups in particular. Overall, it appears that the problem is individuated and while the eSafety Commissioner is addressing large tech corporations and asking them to do better, they are not making enough use of their powers to seek penalties for the poor and inadequate actions on behalf of corporate actors. Law should create a positive legal duty for these corporations who make so much money from our online use to ensure a safe space for all uses. The corollary is product liability laws or workplace safety laws or consumer safety laws. The current regime in Australia focuses too much on individualsboth as perpetrators and victims-rather than seeing the bigger picture of how cyber hate is a collective harm. Tech companies have the technology, the capacity and the resources to manage and minimise this harm, and law should ensure that this happens.
Routledge eBooks, Apr 1, 2020
Routledge eBooks, Apr 2, 2021
Placing contemporary technological developments in their historical context, this book argues for... more Placing contemporary technological developments in their historical context, this book argues for the importance of law in their regulation. Technological developments are focused upon overcoming physical and human constraints. There are no normative constraints inherent in the quest for ongoing and future technological development. In contrast, law profers an essential normative constraint. Just because we can do something, does not mean that we should. Through the application of critical legal theory and jurisprudence to pro-actively engage with technology, this book demonstrates why legal thinking should be prioritised in emerging technological futures. This book articulates classic skills and values such as ethics and justice to ensure that future and ongoing legal engagements with socio-technological developments are tempered by legal normative constraints. Encouraging them to foreground questions of justice and critique when thinking about law and technology, the book addresses law students and teachers, lawyers and critical thinkers concerned with the proliferation of technology in our lives.
Routledge eBooks, Apr 2, 2021
Routledge eBooks, Apr 2, 2021
Routledge eBooks, Apr 2, 2021
Placing contemporary technological developments in their historical context, this book argues for... more Placing contemporary technological developments in their historical context, this book argues for the importance of law in their regulation. Technological developments are focused upon overcoming physical and human constraints. There are no normative constraints inherent in the quest for ongoing and future technological development. In contrast, law proffers an essential normative constraint. Just because we can do something, does not mean that we should. Through the application of critical legal theory and jurisprudence to pro-actively engage with technology, this book demonstrates why legal thinking should be prioritised in emerging technological futures. This book articulates classic skills and values such as ethics and justice to ensure that future and ongoing legal engagements with socio-technological developments are tempered by legal normative constraints. Encouraging them to foreground questions of justice and critique when thinking about law and technology, the book addresses law students and teachers, lawyers and critical thinkers concerned with the proliferation of technology in our lives
Routledge eBooks, Apr 1, 2020
Routledge eBooks, Apr 2, 2021
Placing contemporary technological developments in their historical context, this book argues for... more Placing contemporary technological developments in their historical context, this book argues for the importance of law in their regulation. Technological developments are focused upon overcoming physical and human constraints. There are no normative constraints inherent in the quest for ongoing and future technological development. In contrast, law profers an essential normative constraint. Just because we can do something, does not mean that we should. Through the application of critical legal theory and jurisprudence to pro-actively engage with technology, this book demonstrates why legal thinking should be prioritised in emerging technological futures. This book articulates classic skills and values such as ethics and justice to ensure that future and ongoing legal engagements with socio-technological developments are tempered by legal normative constraints. Encouraging them to foreground questions of justice and critique when thinking about law and technology, the book addresses law students and teachers, lawyers and critical thinkers concerned with the proliferation of technology in our lives.
Routledge eBooks, Apr 2, 2021
Routledge eBooks, Apr 2, 2021
Routledge eBooks, Apr 2, 2021
Placing contemporary technological developments in their historical context, this book argues for... more Placing contemporary technological developments in their historical context, this book argues for the importance of law in their regulation. Technological developments are focused upon overcoming physical and human constraints. There are no normative constraints inherent in the quest for ongoing and future technological development. In contrast, law proffers an essential normative constraint. Just because we can do something, does not mean that we should. Through the application of critical legal theory and jurisprudence to pro-actively engage with technology, this book demonstrates why legal thinking should be prioritised in emerging technological futures. This book articulates classic skills and values such as ethics and justice to ensure that future and ongoing legal engagements with socio-technological developments are tempered by legal normative constraints. Encouraging them to foreground questions of justice and critique when thinking about law and technology, the book addresses law students and teachers, lawyers and critical thinkers concerned with the proliferation of technology in our lives
Routledge eBooks, Dec 30, 2020
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Papers by Honni van Rijswijk
By way of an example of these practices, I provide a reading of harm in the novels of Alexis Wright, a leading Australian novelist, which I argue together provide an exemplary text that counters state law’s representational practices and claims. What is needed to resist the use of the child figure as the occasion for further violence, I argue, and what this reading provides, can be described as a “counter-imaginary” to law’s. This counter-imaginary re-writes law’s narratives and figures, connects that which law has separated, and makes visible that which law has occluded. In particular, each of Wright’s three novels Plains of Promise (1997), Carpentaria (2006), and The Swan Book (2013) is concerned with the relation of harm to questions of Aboriginal authority. Together, all three of Wright’s novels provide a developed counter-imaginary to law’s continuing assertions of authority over Aboriginal people based on the figure of the “abused Aboriginal child,” from the early twentieth century to the present.
By way of an example of these practices, I provide a reading of harm in the novels of Alexis Wright, a leading Australian novelist, which I argue together provide an exemplary text that counters state law’s representational practices and claims. What is needed to resist the use of the child figure as the occasion for further violence, I argue, and what this reading provides, can be described as a “counter-imaginary” to law’s. This counter-imaginary re-writes law’s narratives and figures, connects that which law has separated, and makes visible that which law has occluded. In particular, each of Wright’s three novels Plains of Promise (1997), Carpentaria (2006), and The Swan Book (2013) is concerned with the relation of harm to questions of Aboriginal authority. Together, all three of Wright’s novels provide a developed counter-imaginary to law’s continuing assertions of authority over Aboriginal people based on the figure of the “abused Aboriginal child,” from the early twentieth century to the present.
Law and the Girl explores radical cultural figurations of the girl in fiction, films and TV series, and demonstrates the critical potential of these works in understanding and providing counter-narratives to dominant legal and cultural imaginaries. These works provide ways to not only critique existing law, but to theorise emergent forms of law-making. Law and the Girl contributes to transnational, interdisciplinary jurisprudence, based on an engagement between law and literature, feminist legal critique, studies of representation, and critical legal studies.