{"id":1744,"date":"2016-06-21T11:47:34","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T10:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/law-news\/?p=1744"},"modified":"2016-06-21T11:48:49","modified_gmt":"2016-06-21T10:48:49","slug":"international-workshop-on-law-and-materiality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/law-news\/international-workshop-on-law-and-materiality\/","title":{"rendered":"International workshop on law and materiality \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

An international workshop on law and materiality was hosted at Kent\u2019s Paris centre this month by Kent Law School Lecturers Dr Hyo Yoon Kang<\/a> and Dr Sara Kendall<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Scholars met to discuss the rise of \u2018new materialism\u2019 and to consider how it might contribute to, or challenge, existing approaches in critical legal scholarship. They were drawn from across a broad range of disciplines including law, literature, media theory, science studies, rhetoric, politics and political theory, and gender studies.<\/p>\n

The organisers\u00a0noted how law is commonly regarded as a discursive field, where what ought to be done is produced by and communicated to human subjects through language and textual forms. Yet post-humanist and matter-based understandings of agency have proliferated through actor-network theory and other ‘new materialisms’, where humans, texts, and judgments appear as nodes within a broader field of agency.<\/p>\n

The workshop discussed the theoretical underpinnings and the implications of such ‘new materialist’ understandings on the meaning of law and legal scholarship. The interdisciplinary composition of the group enabled it\u00a0to share different perspectives on this under-theorised relationship between law and its material elements and effects.<\/p>\n

The one-day workshop<\/a>, \u2018False Dichotomies? Critical Approaches to Law between Textuality and New Materialities\u2019, was supported by Kent Law School\u2019s Research Workshop Fund. Participants included instructors from the Law School\u2019s Summer School in Critical Theory<\/a>, running concurrently at Reid Hall in Paris through to 24 June.<\/p>\n