Law Research Seminar Series - Of Rebels and Disobedients: Reflections on Arendt, "Race," and Lawbreaking
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
Of Rebels and Disobedients: Reflections on Arendt, “Race,” and Lawbreaking
Speaker: Ayça Çubukçu (LSE)
Abstract
Hannah Arendt was conservative in more ways than one. She valued the unprecedented, the unexpected and the new, yet in “Civil Disobedience” and other essays crafted at the end of the rebellious 1960s, struggled to square this valuation with a palpable desire for law and order. She lamented how criminality had overtaken American life, accused the police of not arresting enough criminals, and charged “the Negro community” with standing behind what she named black violence. At once, she praised “the white rebels” of the student movement in the United States for their courageous acts of disobedience. In this talk, my aim is to explore how differential Arendt’s treatment of lawbreaking action was. This will require engagement with the conceptual distinctions she proposed—distinctions between power and violence, civil and criminal, opinion and interest—and their racialization in her work.
About the Speaker
Ayça Çubukçu is Associate Professor in Human Rights and Co-Director of LSE Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Before LSE, Dr. Çubukçu was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, and taught for the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University and the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard University.
Law Research Seminars are held on Wednesdays at lunchtime. The seminars are free and open to the public, and a light lunch is provided.
This event is open to the public and free to attend however booking is required via this page. We kindly request that if you are unable to attend that you cancel your booking in order to allow others to attend.
Latecomers to the event are not guaranteed entry. Please be advised that photographs may be taken at the event.
Please contact us if you have any access requirements. See here for further details of accessibility at Birkbeck venues. Food and drink may be served at this event. Please contact us if you have any allergies that we may need to consider.
Contact name:
School of Law