Dutch colonizer Jan Pieterszoon Coen is remembered as a hero for establishing the spice monopoly and as a perpetrator who mass-killed the Bandanese population in 1621 in pursuit of that monopoly.... Show moreDutch colonizer Jan Pieterszoon Coen is remembered as a hero for establishing the spice monopoly and as a perpetrator who mass-killed the Bandanese population in 1621 in pursuit of that monopoly. After his statue in Hoorn fell off its pedestal in 2011, the municipality decided to restore it in disregard of protesters requesting the statue’s relocation to Westfries Museum. As a compromise, the municipality granted the protest a voice by providing the statue with an updated inscription that acknowledges Coen’s controversial legacy and an accompanying exhibition in Westfries Museum. In this essay, I will analyze these events as a conflict about the articulation of postcolonial memory: how should the colonial past be remembered? Through Olson’s theory of legality and affect and Marcuse’s theory of repressive tolerance, I will interpret this conflict as the negotiation of different legalities. Show less
A principal element of law is the unpredictable outcome of its proceedings. This unpredictability has fueled the hopes of many and the fears of equally as many. In recent years populists and other... Show moreA principal element of law is the unpredictable outcome of its proceedings. This unpredictability has fueled the hopes of many and the fears of equally as many. In recent years populists and other political mavericks have become highly capable at exploiting the element of chance in law, aiming not so much to prove guilt or maintain innocence, but rather to reconfigure the judiciary affectively as a game of winners and losers. Populists’ legal and luysory tactics make it urgent to reconsider the relation between the fields of law and the humanities. By paying more attention to the genres and media of play and game we can better assess the ways in which contemporary actors are playing with law and exploring the limits of the rules of the game. Here, the plurality that characterizes culturally and medially determined forms of legality, as Greta Olson calls it, has a counterpart in an equally culturally inspired and mediatized form of totalitarianism. In analyzing the populist play with law, my guide will be Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, in which he considers law’s origin in play and chance. For Huizinga, play is serious, as is the law. The populist play with law is equally serious, since it may have serious consequences for the Rechtsgefühle of citizens. Show less
What is the relationship between constitutional order and the emergence of oligarchic politics in contemporary democratic societies? How and to what extent does constitutional design contribute to... Show moreWhat is the relationship between constitutional order and the emergence of oligarchic politics in contemporary democratic societies? How and to what extent does constitutional design contribute to oligarchic politics in contemporary liberal democratic states? Focusing on constitutional discourses, rather than the legal positivist interpretation of the constitution (or constitutions as text), I maintain that state constitutions should be understood as an ideational-discursive realm of competing discourses, paradigms, and interpretations of an ideal state. My main argument states that oligarchic democracies emerge because a coalition of stakeholders that promote neoliberal understanding of the constitution has taken hold of this discursive realm of constitutional interpretation both within the state apparatus and the public sphere. Thus, the crisis of democratic representation and its relationship to constitutional design represents ideational and materialist aspects: oligarchs promote, reinforce, and sustain self-serving constitutional interpretations and discourses that reinforce the political logic of oligarchic wealth accumulation while suppressing the politics of peaceful dissent and distributive justice. Show less
