Vision traditionally occupies the height of the sensorial hierarchy. The sense of clarity and purity conveyed by vision, allows it to be explicitly associated with truth and knowledge. The law has always relied on vision and representation, from eye-witnesses to photography, to imagery and emblems. The law and its normative gaze can be understood as that which decrees what is permitted to be and become visible and what is not. Indeed, even if laws perspectival view is bound to be betrayed by the realities of perception, it is nonetheless productive of real effects on the world.
This first title in the interdisciplinary series Law and the Senses asks how we can develop new theoretical approaches to law and seeing that go beyond a simple critique of the legal pretension to truth. This volume aims to understand how law might see and unsee, and how in its turn is seen and unseen. It explores devices and practices of visibility, the evolution of iconology and iconography, and the relation between the gaze of the law and the blindness of justice. The contributions, all radically interdisciplinary, are drawn from photography, legal theory, philosophy, and poetry.
Dr Andrea Pavoni is Post-doctoral Fellow at DINAMIA'CET, ISCTE - Instituto Universit·rio de Lisboa, Portugal. He completed his PhD at the University of Westminster, London, in 2013. His research explores the relation between materiality and normativity from various transdisciplinary angles.
Dr Danilo Mandic is Lecturer in Law at the University of Westminster. His research focuses on copyright law and its relation to technology. His other research interests comprise sound studies, art and law, and media studies.
Dr Caterina Nirta is Senior Lecturer at the University of Roehampton, UK. Her research interests revolve around the body, space and deviance.
