13/12/2019 – Gonzalo Ana Dobratinich, Silencio, murmullo, ruido. El derecho, el lenguaje y la literatura de Borges [Noises, murmurs and silences. Law, language and literature in Borges]
Noises, murmurs, and silences reside in every stroke printed by literary and legal writing. The space that whispers in the absence, is perhaps the one that the legal language must grasp and constantly expand in each epistemological proposal. Able to expose and strip us, literature invites us to read Borges. It will be a game, a digression, a dialogue, or a neutral space between what is and what ought to be. The mere fact of transiting requires a resignification of the legal space, even if by doing so we invoke foreign noises, mythological murmurs, or simply our own silences.
13/12/2019 – Carla Faralli, Diritto e letteratura al femminile. In ricordo di Toni Morrison [Law and literature from a feminist perspective. In memory of Toni Morrison]
On August 5, 2019, Toni Morrison died. Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, recognized for having given life to “an essential aspect of American reality”, Morrison was part of the so-called “Black Women Renaissance” along with Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Audre Lorde, and other fem writers who combined feminist theory and practice and literature. The meeting between Feminist Legal Theory and Law and literature in the United States since the 1970s has characterized these two movements, opening them up to new perspectives.
28/10/2019 – Letizia Mingardo, Biodiritto & Letteratura. Il caso delle volontà anticipate di Ulisse [Biolaw & Literature. The case of Ulysses and his living will]
In this paper, I will reflect on advanced health care directives, from a bioethical point of view. Advance directives, which deal with the right of self-determination, are now regulated by Italian law no. 219/2017. I will look in depth at the concept of capacity for rational choice in advance decisions, by looking at the figure of Ulysses, who is considered to give his companions the first living will in Western history. From Homer’s ‘dilemmatic rationality’ to the present time, this path will give the opportunity to consider advance directives as instruments of a dialogical-dialectical resolution of dilemmatic situations.
09/09/2019 – Francesco Cavalla, La struttura processuale nell’opera di Wagner [Wagner and the Trial]
In Wagner, three different trial forms are present if we look at the Valkyrie and Lohengrin. There is a trial by the inquisition, which provides a kind of justice affected by authoritarianism and partiality. But there is also the accusatorial model, which, despite the respect for the adversarial principle, is ineffectual, because it lacks the authority able to decide. The kind of justice given by a father is the only one able to reach the world of values and principles: punishment and education are the same because the son is provided with what is necessary to go on living.
23/06/2019 – Anne S. Hewitt, Aeschylus’ Eumenides and Political Impasse
What can we do in the face of irreconcilable conflict, when two opposing parties (be they individuals, groups, or nations) have disagreements in which there seems to be no common ground, no hope for resolution? Further still, what do we do when both sides of an argument appear to be rational? In this paper, I explore this kind of ‘tragic’ impasse through the lens of Aeschylus’ Eumenides. This play has been taken by some scholars to be the precursor of the Western legal system (establishing the jury trial and neutral, third-party judge). Others see it less optimistically, as a portrayal of a misogynistic abuse of power. I diverge from these lines of interpretation and suggest that the Eumenides offers a useful approach to disagreement, building on the idea that those bitter struggles that result in impasse can be resolved only through a deliberate reorientation of identity, guided by an engaged judge whose most important actions come after the trial.
23/06/2019 – Domenico Corradini H. Broussard, Per Amedeo G. Conte (24.5.1934-17.5.2019), poeta di Kenningar. Con testo originale e due traduzioni
Domenico Corradini H. Boussard ricorda Amedeo G. Conte, filosofo del diritto e poeta, scomparso il 17 maggio del 2019.
16/05/2019 – Giulia Benvenuti, Dalla caverna al sole: essenti, diritto e morale nella simbolica di Nietzsche [From the cave to the sun: beings, law and moral in the symbolic of Nietzsche]
No more metaphysics. No more Hamlet, «To be, or not to be». Only the man who knows how to be a bridge and not an aim doesn’t fear suffering. He loves the midnight sun like the midday sun because he has learned that only through death it’s possible to born again. In the eternal overcoming of what it is, what it has been, and what it will be, the Übermensch sees the possibility of new social, moral, and juridical horizons. As a child who creates himself and becomes himself will to power.
09/04/2019 – Vittorio Capuzza, Notizie intorno ad alcuni letterati giureconsulti [News on some literary jurisconsults]
The essay aims to describe some literary figures, whose ideas and forms to elaborate their poetic works derived from their legal profession.
18/03/2019 – Jessica Mazzuca, L’arte del “puro vedere”: il ruolo dell’interprete [The arte of “pure seeing”: the role of the interpreter]
A work of art happens and takes its form through the recipient’s understanding and evolves in the historical and social context in which it is from time to time interpreted. Some artists are aware of this. Even if their expressivity is different, they share the idea that the first and last source of truth lies not in an objective, devoid of life or fact, but in the human soul. Among the forerunners of the “pure seeing art”, there are Baschenis, Velázquez, and Cezanne, who focused their search on the role of the interpreter, making him/her the true protagonist of their works.
18/02/2019 – Marcus Vinícius Xavier de Oliveira, (Por Nenhum) Decreto [(By None) Decree]
The present text was prepared for the event organized by the Researchers Groups in Contemporary Political Theory, Ethics, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Literature, and Literary Studies, entitled “Interlocutions between Literature, Philosophy, and Law”, which occurred on 2016, December 6-8, in the Federal University of Rondonia. The aim of the essay is to demonstrate, starting from a transdisciplinary reading of Paulo Leminski’s poem “Bem no Fundo”, that the alleged struggle of society in general, and of social movements in particular, by a regulation more comprehensive and particularized of all aspects of the human life – juridification of life – is, in fact, a trap that we ourselves have armed to the detriment of our freedoms, autonomies, and potentialities. When this juridification meets the judicialization of life and politics, the path to totalitarian rule is, as it were, perfectly paved. Therefore, there will be no more life, but only Law and Sentences, and with them the respective “little problems”. The essay, therefore, is also intended to be a warning sign and a sign of the need to renew the democratically founded struggle for moral and political autonomy, indifference to difference, and the preservation of our freedoms.
14/01/2019 – Domenico Corradini H. Broussard, Eliot, il potere temporale e quello spirituale. Con la traduzione di “Murder in the Cathedral” e il testo originale [Eliot, the temporal power and the spiritual one. With the translation of «Murder in the Cathedral» and its original text]
“Murder in the Cathedral” was written by Eliot in 1935 and represented the same year in Canterbury. The chief character is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckt, for a long time Chancellor of the King of England, Henry the Second. After a good friendship on the political questions, they didn’t accord on the relationship between spiritual and temporal power. The spiritual power, from the point of view of Beckt, who resigned as Chancellor of State, was the Pope’s power. I.e., a power that first is of God and then of Pope, a power that is higher of temporal power, a power that is the supreme guide for State and Church. Beckt dies on December 29th, 1170. Four Knights kill him with their swords, in the name of the King. So the temporal power, in spite of the Middle Ages, triumphs over the spiritual power. Dante and Shakespeare are still far-off. The Chorus, another important character, expression of the poor people, closes the poetical drama with an invocation to God, Christ and Beckt.