The State of Critique: CCLAS Launch

The State of Critique: Launch of the Centre for the Critique of Law and Society (CCLAS)

To inaugurate the launch of our new research centre (formerly the Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context) at the School of Law, Queen Mary, University of London, we are bringing together intellectuals from across the disciplines of law and the humanities to explore the State of Critique. In a moment of prolonged polycrisis comprising the entanglements of genocides with the break down of hegemonic normative regimes, the prospect of technological singularity and accelerationism, and climate catastrophe (to name but a few threads), we ask what work does the critic and critique do? What different forms does critique take and what are the nature/limitations of its interventions? How might we understand the different kinds of labour that the critic engages in?

To examine these questions and more, we have curated two panels of thinkers to discuss a) the work of critique and b) the work of the critic.

The panels with then be followed by an inaugural lecture for the Centre titled The Future of Critique delivered by Rafeef Ziadah.

Please join us for this day of collective thinking and celebration.

Program

Introduction to the Centre for the Critique of Law and Society

1.15-1.30, Queen Mary, School of Law, Room 2.10

Eva Nanopoulos, Dimitri Van Den Meerssche and Tanzil Chowdhury (QMUL)

Panel 1: The Work of Critique

1.30-3.00pm, Queen Mary, School of Law, Room 2.10

SPEAKERS: Tor Krever (University of Cambridge), Shahd Hammouri (University of Kent), Mai Taha (LSE), Ratna Kapur (QMUL/Havard Law School)

CHAIR: Rob Knox (University of Liverpool)

This panel will examine the historical reasons for the resort to, as well as the form and effects of, critical approaches to law, especially (but not only) as it pertains to the genocide and colonial violence in Gaza. As mobilisation against this violence tends to take on a distinctly legal form—reflected, for example, in the Gaza Tribunal or the political energy generated by ICJ orders and opinions—many critical concerns resurface (and are called into question). Does the invocation of law's formal language foreclose alternative pathways of transformative change? Which social forms, belief systems and institutional routines do we risk reifying when engaging affirmatively with law (even pragmatically or tactically)? Does juridification reify capitalism's social ontology? Yet, at this historical conjuncture, this canon of critique might also feel a little bit worn out or misdirected—downplaying, perhaps, what Michael Fakhri describes as law service as 'a tool for coalition-building towards common emancipatory goals'. If the work of critique served to destabilise the levers of liberalism's false universality, what can it offer now that, in Jessica Whyte's term, 'rulers no longer need to make promises to those they rule'—now that we face a world of 'death and destruction without alibi'. What is the state of critique after the last utopia?

BREAK: 3.00-3.15pm

Panel 2: The Work of Critics

3.15-4.45pm, , Queen Mary, School of Law, Room 2.10

SPEAKERS: Nora Jaber (University of Edinburgh), Sita Balani (QMUL), Koshka Duff (University of Nottingham)

CHAIR: Ruth Fletcher (QMUL)

The panel examines the different types of work of the critic. In his Representations of the Intellectual , Edward Said wrote that the role of the intellectual is 'to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations'. What does it mean for the integrity of critic if they are positioned as either a traditional or organic intellectual (a discussion that recently provoked discussion among lawyers-qua-scholactivists (see also Khaitan 2022; Stone 2022))? Further, how do we understand the different labours of the critic? One is certainly scholarly, but many are also involved in organising, activiating and co-producing inside and outside the academy. What therefore, maybe distinct about the work and interventions of the critic? Finally; what are the ways in which the critic understands the current conjuncture? How do we understand the role of the critic in light of the structural changes to higher education and civil society (e.g. repression/criminalisation of critics etc but also conformism, careerism, individualism, precarity etc).

Break: 4.45-.5.15

Inaugural Annual Lecture: The Future(s) of Critique w/ Rafeef Ziadah (KCL)

5.15-7.00, Queen Mary, Graduate Centre, Peston Lecture Theatre

What happens when legal strategy becomes the dominant horizon of political imagination - when juridical reasoning comes to stand in for political thought itself? In a moment when the genocide in Gaza unfolds in plain view and legal forums command extraordinary attention, debates about strategy are increasingly detached from questions of what political project is being pursued, who is represented within it, and to what ends. Drawing on Benjamin’s reminder that tools bear the sediment of the histories that produce them, and Fanon’s insistence that political becoming emerges through struggle rather than its external representation, the lecture examines how NGO-isation can professionalise solidarity, recast critique as managerial labour, and narrow what counts as politically possible. Rather than romanticising “movements,” it traces the uneven terrains in which critique is produced - from grassroots organising to academic and philanthropic circuits - and how each shapes the horizons of liberation differently. It asks how critique might recover its capacity to unsettle, rather than merely refine, the present, so that tactics—legal or otherwise - remain grounded in broader emancipatory visions rather than substituting for them.

Reception: 7.00-8.00pm, Graduate Centre, Ground Floor Foyer

Teas and refreshments will be available throughout the day. The inaugural lecture will then be followed by a drinks and canapes reception.