Book Reviews : Steve Redhead, Unpopular Cultures: The Birtb of Law and Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, 136pp
| Date | 01 December 1995 |
| Author | Austin Sarat |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399500400414 |
| Published date | 01 December 1995 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
539
’outlier’,
between
justice
and
the
actuarial
accounting
of
probabilities.
The
equation
of
law
and
indifference
in
opposition
to
that
of
justice
and
difference,
however,
is
probably
the
key
theme
and
insight
of
Constable’s
historicist
project.
It
is
this
essentially
ethical
concern
that
returns
in
each
of
the
substantive
themes
of
the
book.
In
Constable’s
terms,
the
history
of
the
mixed
jury
is
to
be
retold
so
as
to
alter
’the
way
we
think
about
law.
Attributing
&dquo;law&dquo;
only
to
the
authoritative
declarations
of
officials ...
loses
sight
of
an
important
aspect
of
law -
namely,
the
justice
that
accompanies
respect
for
the
other -
which,
insofar
as
we
are
all
legal
positivists,
we
are
in
danger
of
forgetting’
(p. 26).
The
deconstruction
of
that
positivism
will
make
room
’for
an
attempt
at
another
&dquo;history&dquo;
of
law’
(p.
67).
Slightly
later,
and
equally
commendably,
the
positivist’s
propositional
logic
of
rules
is
opposed
to
the
possibility
that
jurisprudence
’could
think
the
writing
of
law ...
differently
or
nonpositivistically
...
as
the
nonpropositional
writing
of
law
that
occurs,
for
instance,
in
the
poetic
expression
of
practices’
(p.
88).
To
reclaim
a
difference
which
has
disappeared
thus
seems
to
imply
a
slightly
indistinct
perception
of
future
possibilities.
In
Freudian
terms,
recollecting
the
forgotten
is
no
guarantee
of
subjective
change
or
cure.
As
Constable
is
well
aware,
however,
recollecting
difference
is
a
precondition
of
justice
and
it
is
such
a
possibility
of
justice
that
she
invokes
so
successfully
throughout
the
historical
narrative
of
the
book.
The
Law
of the
Other
ends
by
laying
claim
to
the
’paradoxical
nihilism
of
a
positivistic
age,
an
age
that
seeks
continually
to
become
something
else,
to
be
other
than
itself,
to
perpetually
overcome,
thereby
letting
nothing
be’
(p. 152).
While
some
might -
and
indeed
have -
challenged
that
Nietzschean
appropriation
of
philosophical
nihilism
as
being
closer
to
agnosticism
than
to
the
transvaluation
of
values,
such
a
criticism
misses
the
point.
The
positive
value
of
Marianne
Constable’s
book
lies
in
its
modesty,
its
subversion
of
legal
historicism
and
its
meticulous
scholarship.
To
use
the
history
of
the
mixed
jury
to
engage
with
key
contemporary
jurisprudential
debates
is
already
a
considerable
achievement.
To
allow
that
history
to
speak
to
or
to
express
the
difference,
the
other
scene
or
alternative
jurisdictions
and
writings
of
law,
is
a
far
greater
event.
Whether
or
not
such
a
strategy
can
yet
specify
what
values
will
emerge
from
a
nonpositivistic
historicism
is
not
yet
a
sensible
issue.
What
is
manifest
and
valuable
is
the
right
and
the
writing
of
difference
as
such.
In
linking
difference
to
ontology,
otherness
to
existential
place
and
justice
to
the
stranger
and
to
her
alien
forms
of
writing,
The
Law
of
the
Other
makes
a
signal
and
welcome
contribution
to
the
elaboration
of
other
possibilities
for
law.
PETER
GOODRICH
Birkbeck
College,
University
of London,
UK
STEVE
REDHEAD,
Unpopular
Cultures:
The
Birtb
of
Law
and
Popular
Culture.
Manchester:
Manchester
University
Press,
1995, 136pp.
Steve
Redhead’s
Unpopular
Cultures
is
an
interesting
and
provocative
book.
Indeed
its
interest
lies
largely
in
its
bold
provocations.
Among
the
most
dramatic
of
these
gestures
is
Redhead’s
effort
to
develop
a
new
academic
discipline
by
marrying
cultural
studies,
literary
theory,
studies
of
deviance
and
law.
This
field
will,
if
Redhead
has
his
way,
attend
to
the
aesthetics
and
erotics
of
law.
Another
valuable
provocation
is
his
assertion
that
law
has
’disappeared
into
culture’
such
that
the
distinction
between
the
legal
and
the
illegal
should,
in
effect,
be
replaced
by
the
distinction
between
’popular’
and
’unpopular’.
Beyond
these
provocations,
what
Redhead’s
book
provides
is
a
map
of
the
domain
of
legal
regulation
of
cultural
practices.
In
so
doing,
Unpopular
Cultures
usefully
explores
the
intersection
of
an
academic
discipline
and
the
disciplinary
practices
of
the
regulatory
regime
itself.
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