The Library
Couplings Horizons, exclusion, justice
Tools
Paterson, John and Webb, Julian (2007) Couplings Horizons, exclusion, justice. In: Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Andreas, (ed.) Absent environments : theorising environmental law and the city. Law, science and society . London: UCL, pp. 83-116. ISBN 9781844721542
Research output not available from this repository.
Request-a-Copy directly from author or use local Library Get it For Me service.
Abstract
This chapter brings together environmental law and the city. Autopoietically, the endeavour presents difficulties of various degrees, mainly attributed to the Luhmannian divide between society and the rest, as well as the concept of communication which applies only to social systems and thus reinforces the societal boundary. While this would not be so much of a problem, since there are autopoietic tools with which society and consciousness can converge ( instances of which have been shown in the previous chapter), it becomes significantly more problematic when the environment returns as the main focus of the discussion. The presence of an absent environment within the system demands several shifts of emphasis and reconceptualisations that affect both the way the system understands itself and couples with other systems.
The first concept to be scrutinised and cast in the light of absence is structural coupling - namely the historical co-evolution of two systems through mutual observation. Structural coupling is now described from the 'unfocussed' angle of the environment, which converts the already considerable levels of uncertainty produced into unmalleable spaces of ignorance within the system. This ignorance, along with the previously encountered descriptions of ignorance in the law and the city, are operationalised in a negative way through what I call unutterance, namely a vehicle of self-questioning with regard to the logocentricity of communication. The operationality of unutterance relies precisely on its negative qualities as non-fitting, non-accessible, non-communicable, non-essentialist, and so on. The paradoxical nature of such an operation - the disruption of operation as operation - is the closest a system has to a 'core', namely a space within the system that guarantees the unity of the system through its very absence from the operations of the system. This is not a tangible space, before and beyond operations, but the very paradox of operations. In its centripetal non-essentialism, the paradox is the crux of recursive self-legitimacy and the space on which the system must never tread at risk of disintegration. The paradox relies and reinforces an undecidability which is here seen to be the condition of an internalised but undomesticated exteriority. Through the form continuum/rupture, the environment of the system in its spectral appearances as justice, utopia, unutterability, returns as the absence that haunts the system.
Item Type: | Book Item | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law | ||||
Series Name: | Law, science and society | ||||
Publisher: | UCL | ||||
Place of Publication: | London | ||||
ISBN: | 9781844721542 | ||||
Book Title: | Absent environments : theorising environmental law and the city | ||||
Editor: | Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Andreas | ||||
Official Date: | 2007 | ||||
Dates: |
|
||||
Number of Pages: | 259 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 83-116 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |