Kent Law Lecturer Dr Rose Sydney Parfitt is hosting a three-day workshop in Australia as part of an interdisciplinary legal research project on ‘Fascism and the International’.
The workshop, ‘Speeches Punctuated with Resounding Slaps: Law, Expansion, Hierarchy, Resistance’ begins today and features a keynote talk on ‘Fascism, Modernism, Modernity’ by art historian Mark Antliff (Duke University). A busy programme of contributions includes: a lecture on the politics of the Futurist by sound artist Luigi Russolo and a performance of Futurist poetry from the composer and musicologist Luciano Chessa (San Francisco Conservatory of Music); a panel on ‘Fascism and International Law: History, Technology, Representation’ with leading historians of international law Anne Orford (Melbourne Law School), Martti Koskenniemi (Helsinki Law School) and Gregor Noll (Gothenburg University); and video-art screenings and discussions from Mexico and Central and Eastern Europe led by Helena Chavez Mac Gregor (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) and independent visual artist Alicja Rogalska. There will also be a series of panels, all of which examine the international dimensions of fascism and anti-fascist resistance in different ways and in different places, with a particular focus on fascism’s legal and aesthetic dimensions.
Dr Parfitt said: ‘The workshop’s aim is to develop new ways of getting at the past and present of fascism, and more effective strategies for resisting the violent, discriminatory and totalitarian order that fascism seeks to consolidate.’
It’s the second workshop for Dr Parfitt’s project which has been funded with a grant from the Australian Research Council. The first workshop was held at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City in June 2017.
The project brings together a group of scholars, artists and activists working in and across the fields of international law, history, history of art, international relations, postcolonial studies, sociology, anthropology, political theory, geography, sound studies, feminist studies, queer theory, critical race theory and beyond.
Dr Parfitt is the director of the Constellations seminar series on methodology and interdisciplinarity; the co-director (with Dr Luis Eslava) of a collaborative research network on International Law and Politics at the (US) Law and Society Association; and an active member of the HAAIL (History, Anthropology and the Archive of International Law) and After Self-Determination projects.
Her book, The Process of International Legal Reproduction: Subjectivity, Historiography, Law, Violence, will be published by Cambridge University Press later this year.
Image: Umberto Boccioni, Forme uniche della continuità nello spazio, 1913