Power and Legitimacy: Law, Culture, and Literature

by Anne Qu ma

Overview

An interdisciplinary analysis of the ways in which symbolic acts create social norms, Power and Legitimacy is an important contribution to the growing body of scholarship on law and literature. Drawing on the theoretical insights of Judith Butler and Pierre Bourdieu, Anne Quéma demonstrates the effect of symbolic violence on the creation of social and political legitimacy.

Examining modern jurisprudence theory, statutory law, and the family within the modern Gothic novel, Quéma shows how the forms and effects of political power transform as one shifts from discourse to discourse. An impressive integration of the scholarship in these three fields, Power and Legitimacy is a thought-provoking analysis of the basis of power and the law.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442649033
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	02/24/2015
Pages:	376
Product dimensions:	6.33(w) x 9.27(h) x 1.18(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Anne Quéma is a professor in the Department of English and Theatre at Acadia University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Symbolic Power and Legitimacy

2. Social Poiesis and Symbolic Power

3. Law’s Symbolic Power to Legitimize

4. Symbolic Violence and Illegitimacy: The Political Uncanny

5. The Symbolic Power and Violence of Legal Utterances

6. The Legitimacy of the Family: Family Law and Gothic Fiction

7. The Political Uncanny of the Family: Patricia Duncker’s The Deadly Space Between and The Civil Partnership Act 2004

8. Legitimizing the Subject of Domestic Violence: Lesley Glaister’s Honour Thy Father and Laws of the Household

9. Resistance and Legitimacy

10. Making the Law

What People are Saying About This

David Gurnham

“Power and Legitimacy confidently manipulates intellectually diverse and difficult sources, incorporating a vast canon of critical literature, to make an innovative argument about the nature of law and its relationship with legal subjects. Quéma’s writing is elegant and sharp.”

Desmond Manderson

“Quéma’s work is an original and highly sophisticated contribution to the field of law and literature. It is extremely well written, clearly argued, and full of powerful and succinct critical analyses of legal and literary texts.”

Editorial Reviews

Quéma’s work is an original and highly sophisticated contribution to the field of law and literature. It is extremely well written, clearly argued, and full of powerful and succinct critical analyses of legal and literary texts.”

—Desmond Manderson, College of Law, Australian National University

“Power and Legitimacy confidently manipulates intellectually diverse and difficult sources, incorporating a vast canon of critical literature, to make an innovative argument about the nature of law and its relationship with legal subjects. Quéma’s writing is elegant and sharp.”

—David Gurnham, Southampton Law School, University of Southampton

From the Publisher