Book Launch! Spatial Justice after Apartheid: Nomos in the Postcolony

Join us on Monday, June 26th 2023, at 3.30 pm at C1.15-16, 115 New Cavendish Street, University of Westminster, for a panel discussion of

Spatial Justice After Apartheid. Nomos in the Postcolony (Routledge 2022), co-edited by Jaco Barnard-Naudé (University of Cape Town) and Julia Chryssostalis (University of Westminster)

Speakers:

• Prof Anthony Farley (online), James Campbell Matthews Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, Albany Law School, author of 'The Colorline as Capitalist Accumulation' Buffalo LRev (2008), 'Law as Trauma and Repetition' NYURev of Law and Social Change (2007), 'The Poetics of Colorlined Space' in Crossroads, Directions, and a New Critical Race Theory (2002)
• Prof Mark Devenney, Professor of Critical Theory, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Brighton, author of Improper Politics (Edinburgh University Press, 2020)
• Dr. Oliver Phillips, Reader, Westminster Law School, University of Westminster, author of Sexuality and Rights in Post-Colonial Southern Africa (2018)
• Dr Leticia Paes, Fellow, Centre for Law and Humanities, Birkbeck Law School, University of London; and practising psychoanalyst
• and the book's co-editors, Prof. Jaco Barnard-Naudé, Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town, and Julia Chryssostalis, Principal Lecturer, Westminster Law School, University of Westminster.

The book: Spatial Justice After Apartheid. Nomos in the Postcolony (Routledge 2022), co-edited by Jaco Barnard-Naudé (University of Cape Town) and Julia Chryssostalis (University of Westminster), is a collection of essays across disciplines (law, literature, architecture, photography) and genres (essay, photo essay, poetry) that explores the spatial inscription of normativity (racialised and racist, heteronormative, nationalist) in the colonial and post-colonial and post-apartheid context of South Africa. Its main concern is the tracing of the colour/lines through which injustice takes root and place, remaining normalised long after the formal apparatus of colonial rule and apartheid is gone. In this project, we find Carl Schmitt's concept of nomos, with its emphasis on the constitutive character of land-taking, as the act that grounds the law to the earth, a productive one, enabling us "to confront law's spatiality in a 'postcolonial' era with the traumatic legacy of what Paul Gilroy has called the 'colonial nomos'." In the course of this confrontation, "critical questions of continuation, extension, disruption, re-writing" and 'un-writing' are raised, both "challenging Schmitt's account of nomos and affirming the constitutive relation between law and space".

Film Screening: The Panel Discussion will be followed by a screening of the short documentary film, Spatial Justice in the Postcolony (2020). Dir: Dian Weys. The film was made with funding from the British Academy Newton Advanced Fellowship, that Jaco held at the University of Westminster Law and Theory Lab (2017-2020) and for which Julia was CI. 

The screening will take place at 5.00 pm at the Pavillion - C1.18 (across the corridor from C1.15-16), University of Westminster, 115 New Cavendish Street, followed by a drinks reception (hopefully) on the terrace.

If you would like to join virtually please email j.chryssostalis@westminster.ac.uk for the zoom link.