Singing the Law

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Leman
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Global South ◽  
Law And Literature ◽  
Legal Authority ◽  
Cultural Narratives ◽  
East African ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many

“Singing the Law” is about the legal lives and afterlives of oral cultures in East Africa, particularly as they appear within the pages of written literatures during the colonial and postcolonial periods. In examining these cultures, I begin with an analysis of the cultural narratives of time and modernity that formed the foundations of British colonial law. Recognizing the contradictory nature of these narratives (i.e., they both promote and retreat from the Euro-centric ideal of temporal progress) enables us to make sense of the many representations of and experiments with non-linear, open-ended, and otherwise experimental temporalities that we find in works of East African literature that take colonial law as a subject or point of critique. Many of these works, furthermore, consciously appropriate orature as an expressive form with legal authority. This affords them the capacity to challenge the narrative foundations of colonial law and its postcolonial residues and offer alternative models of temporality and modernity that give rise, in turn, to alternative forms of legality. East Africa’s “oral jurisprudence” ultimately has implications not only for our understanding of law and literature in colonial and postcolonial contexts, but more broadly for our understanding of how the global south has shaped modern law as we know and experience it today.

Introduction: Temp/orality in Law and East African Literature

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Peter Leman
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o ◽  
East African ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
Postcolonial Literatures ◽  
The Relationship

The introductory chapter establishes a critical framework for reading oral jurisprudence in East Africa in relationship to narratives of temporality in British colonial law, colonial and postcolonial literatures, and modern law generally. I begin with a brief analysis of the 2012 trial Mutua and others v. The Foreign Commonwealth Office to illustrate the relationship between law and time and the lasting effects of the British Empire’s “crisis of modernity,” or simultaneous promotion of and retreat from modernity as it faced resistance in the colonies. I then theorize the oral-legalistic strategies that colonial subjects developed to exploit this crisis and restore, imaginatively at first, what was lost in the encounter with colonial time. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has argued that orature, in particular, “played the most important role” in anti-colonial struggles, and this is so because of its relationship to the deep history of colonial law, which unwittingly empowered legalistic orature with the force of subversion as well as restoration. I conclude with a discussion of East Africa’s important but misunderstood place in the history and development of modern law.

The educative ambition of Law and Literature

Legal Studies ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Ward
Keyword(s):  
Law And Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Legal Studies ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many

In 1979, Allen Smith suggested that there was to be a ‘coming renaissance’ in Law and Literature as a teaching discipline. In fact, Law and Literature had already arrived. In 1973, James Boyd White had publishedhis The Legal Imagination, and had geared it primarily to the teaching and study of law. Of the many intriguing characteristics of the Law and Literature movement, one of the most exciting and most valuable, is the fact that, unlike many other theoretical approaches to the problems of law, the ambition of Law and Literature is firstly educative, and only then, secondly, social and political. Moreover this secondary ambition, has tended, in two senses, to be appended to the educational ambition. In one sense, it is additional in that the political manifesto is supposed to emerge from the educational force of literature. In a second sense, it is additional because politics was certainly not such a ranking ambition in the earliest days of the Law and Literature movement, and it is no concidence that the politicization of Law and Literature has come about as its star has risen, whilst that of Critical Legal Studies has declined

NOMANSLAND: The British Colonial Office and the League of Nations Mandate for German East Africa, 1916–1920

1993 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Callahan
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
East Africa ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
British Colony ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
German East Africa ◽  
The Many ◽  
New System

One of the many problems facing the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 was the future of the conquered German and Turkish territories in Africa, the Pacific, and the Middle East. Widespread anti-imperialist sentiment in Europe and the United States opposed direct annexation of the possessions, but wartime agreements and the security interests of the Allies prevented returning the conquered areas to their former rulers. In particular, many British leaders wanted to ensure that Germany could never again attempt world domination and were convinced that the restoration to Germany of its overseas possessions would pose a “grave political and military menace” to Britain's vital maritime connections with South Africa and India. After a long, often acrimonious debate, the Conference agreed on a compromise that placed the former German colonies and Ottoman provinces under the supervision of the League of Nations. This solution gave the Allies control of their acquisitions as “mandates” within a framework of international accountability. Great Britain received the most mandates, including Germany's largest colony of German East Africa. For the British leaders who had always advocated transforming German East Africa into a British colony, the new system seemed to make little practical difference. For the colonial officials in London and at the highest levels of colonial administration within the conquered possession, however, the mandates system presented serious problems and was not simply a disguise for annexation.

scholarly journals (East) African postcolonial ecocriticism: Revisiting Okot p’ Bitek’s Song of Prisoner

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-157
Author(s):  
Alex Nelungo Wanjala
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Environmental Literature ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
East African ◽  
Literature Reading ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Postcolonial Ecocriticism

This article celebrates Okot p’Bitek’s contribution to East African literature in general and the song school of East Africa in particular, by revisiting one of his less-known works, Song of Prisoner on the fiftieth anniversary of its publication. I subject the text to a close reading in order to demonstrate how p’Bitek uses imagery that is drawn from East Africa’s natural environment in a way that evokes issues that are an assault on the prevailing social and political order in East Africa at the time, in a nuanced manner. With the benefit of hindsight, the paper establishes that p’Bitek’s attempt to preserve his natural environment (that of East Africa) through writing it into his poetry, was a precursor for texts that would later be examined within the framework of the contemporary critical theory of postcolonial ecocriticism, and that using the text, one can narrow the scope further in a manner that takes into account the specificities of (East) African environmental literature. In so doing, the paper establishes that p’Bitek indeed highlights social realities through his poetry, in order to launch his attack on the existing neo-colonial capitalistic order prevailing at the historical moment of his writing, thus confirming that he displays a social vision that strives for decolonisation without the exploitative aftermath encapsulating modernity. The paper thus demonstrates how this poem is still relevant as a study to the student of East African literature reading it in the 21st century.

scholarly journals Encountering Charles Dickens: The Lawyer’s Muse

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 507-516
Author(s):  
Michael P. Malloy
Keyword(s):  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Law And Literature ◽  
Professional Responsibility ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Extended Study ◽  
Bleak House ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Practical Impact

This article explores the themes of the practical impact of law in society, the life of the law, and the character of the lawyer (in both senses of the term), as reflected in the works of Charles Dickens. I argue that, in creating memorable scenes and images of the life of the law, Charles Dickens is indeed the lawyer’s muse. Dickens – who had worked as a junior clerk in Gray’s Inn and a court reporter early in his career – outpaces other well-known writers of “legal thrillers” when it comes to assimilating the life of the law into his literary works. The centrepiece in this regard is an extended study and analysis of Bleak House. The novel is shaped throughout by a challenged and long-running estate case in Chancery Court, and it is largely about the impact of controversy on the many lawyers involved in the case. It has all the earmarks of a true “law and literature” text - a terrible running joke about chancery practice, serious professional responsibility issues, and a murdered lawyer. Keywords: Charles Dickens; Law and Literature; the Life of the Law.

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