Endnote: Untoward
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2004.00285.x |
| Author | Peter Goodrich |
| Published date | 01 March 2004 |
| Date | 01 March 2004 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 31, NUMBER 1, MARCH 2004
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 159±62
Endnote: Untoward
Peter Goodrich*
A plethora of readings. Indeed a brace of Readers, two Lecturers ± the word
a base Latinity for Reader ± and a name which is but a double `r' away from
Booke. The sum of which is a thoroughly literary endeavour, a bookish
event, a series of textual exhalations. The first question to be asked,
untoward though it may be, is what have the Readers been reading? The rest
will follow from the answer to that question.
The initial answer is that the configuration `Law and Literature' allows
for a reading of literary texts. Aside from the innominate marginal scribble
that Goodrich reads, the gathering of texts analysed, interpreted, and brought
to law are entirely literary. There is a little hedonism, a touch of reverie, as
well as an expansive gesture toward accessibility, in the selection of books
being read. Melanie Williams turns to W.H. Auden and questions the trauma
that motivates specific, nominate, theories of law. Her concern is with the
`unconscious trends', the patterns and repetitions that lead from `September
1, 1939', a poem which Auden wrote in New York at the outbreak of World
War II, and September 11, 2001. If there is a motif it is a line that Auden
changed from `We must love one another or die' to `We must love one
another and die'.
Melanie Williams conjures a trauma that is perceived as external to law
but which is in fact internal to legal thought. The poet's concerns with crisis,
the failure of reason, with love and war can be traced in displaced form in the
history of jurisprudence. She offers a reading that is against the grain, a
subtle and untoward interpretation that Adam Gearey picks up in analysing
the words of Desmond Tutu and of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. He also plays upon a contrary or untoward grain, a legal
159
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* Cardozo School of Law, Brookdale Center, 55 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
10003, United States of America
Editors' note: Due to missed deadlines, timelags, and delays, Peter Goodrich was unable
to read the contributions by Peter Fizpatrick, Morris Kaplan, and Julia Chryssostalis.
The editors regret this inconvenience to the reader, but this chance interruption in the
unity and coherence of the volume seems emblematic of the need to resist any final
word.
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