Synopses & Reviews
The relation between law and revolution is one of the most pressing questions of our time. As one country after another has faced the challenge that comes with the revolutionary overthrow of past dictatorships, how one reconstructs a new government is a burning issue.
South Africa, after a long and bloody armed struggle and a series of militant uprisings, negotiated a settlement for a new government and remains an important example of what a substantive revolution might look like. The essays collected in this book address both the broader question of law and revolution and some of the specific issues of transformation in South Africa.
Review
"This book is a rare one-the reflections on philosophy, law, and political theory are profound and moving. Rather than reproduce the multiple stages of debate surrounding transitional justice--reconciliation vs. forgiveness, memory vs. forgetting--the author shifts the question toward what she calls 'substantive revolution.' This marks an advance in discussions of reconciliation and political life after massive, sustained spasms of violence. When one adds to that a significant dose of philosophy and critical theory- from Heidegger through contemporary political philosophers- the book takes on a new thread in theorizing transition and gives it real complexity. Substantive revolution is deepened by critical theory, critical theory is deepened by engagement with the concrete work of substantive revolution."-John Drabinski, Amherst College
About the Author
Drucilla Cornell is Professor of Political Science, Women's and Gender Studies, and
Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. She also teaches at Birkbeck College, University of London and the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Her most recent books are uBuntu and the Law: African Ideals and Postapartheid Jurisprudence and The Dignity Jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of South Africa: Cases and Materials, Volumes I and II (both Fordham).
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Introduction: Transitional Justice Versus Substantive Revolution
Should Critical Theory Remain Revolutionary?
2. Is Technology a Fatal Destiny? The Relevance of Heidegger for South Africa and for All "Developing" Countries
3. Socialism or Radical Democratic Politics? On Laclau and Mouffe
The Legal Challenge of uBuntu
4. Dignity Violated: Rethinking AZAPO Through uBuntu
5. Which Law, Whose Humanity? The Significance of Policulturalism in the Global South
6. The Significance of the Living Customary Law for an Understanding of Law: Does Custom Allow for a Woman to Be Hosi?
The Struggle over uBuntu
7. uBuntu, Pluralism, and the Responsibility of Legal Academics to the New South Africa
8. Rethinking Ethical Feminism Through uBuntu
9. Is There a Difference that Makes a Difference Between Dignity and uBuntu?
10. Where Dignity Ends and uBuntu Begins - A Response by Yvonne Mokgoro and Stu Woolman
Conclusion: uBuntu and Subaltern Legality
Notes
Index