Violence, Imagination, and Resistance Socio-legal Interrogations of Power

For some time, scholars have devoted considerable attention to the law as a force of repression, one that replicates and enforces structural inequalities through violence and legally sanctioned modes of punishment. But it is the means by which the law functions as a tool of governmentality that occupies the contributors to this volume. Through the exploration of how to deconstruct law’s power, how to expose the violence the law produces, and finally how to identify modes of resistance that have transformative potential, these essays contribute to the ongoing interrogation of settler colonialism, racism, and structural violence in Canada.

About the Editors

Mariful Alam and Patrick Dwyer are PhD candidates at York University in the socio-legal studies program. Katrin Roots is assistant professor in the Department of Criminology at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Contributors: Timothy Bryan, Nergis Canefe, Irina Ceric, Stacy Douglas, Yavar Hameed, Emily Lockhart, Alex Luscombe, Jeffrey Monaghan, Carmela Murdocca, Heather Tasker, Shaira Vadasaria, Kevin Walby.

Table of Contents

1. Foreword / Christiane Wilke
2. Acknowledgements
3. Introduction: Socio-legal Perspectives on Law’s Violence / Mariful Alam, Patrick Dwyer, and Katrin Roots
4. Part I  Lawfare and Settler Colonialism
   1. 1. Race and Colonialism in Socio-legal Studies in Canada / Carmela Murdocca, Shaira Vadasaria, and Timothy Bryan
   2. 2. Jurisfiction and Other Settler-Colonial Legal Imaginaries / Stacy Douglas
5. Part II  Gendered Violence and Racial Subjugation
   1. 3. Making Terrorism: Security Practices and the Production of Terror Activities in Canada / Yavar Hameed and Jeffrey Monaghan
   2. 4. Law, Gendered Violence, and Justice: Critically Engaging #MeToo / Emily Lockhart, Katrin Roots, and Heather Tasker
   3. 5. Through Different Lenses: Legality, Humanitarianism, and the Western Gaze / Heather Tasker
6. Part III  Resistance and Social Transformation
   1. 6. Practicing Freedom of Information as “Feral Law” and Advancing Research Methods in Socio-legal Studies / Alex Luscombe and Kevin Walby
   2. 7. Far from the Madding Crowds: Redefining the Field of Socio-legal Studies from Within / Nergis Canefe
7. Afterword: Toward the Law of Anti-laws: Notes on Prefigurative Politics and Radical Imaginations / Mariful Alam and Irina Ceric
8. Contributors

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