Full Citation
Title: The Four Axes of Legal Ideology
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2016
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Abstract: The writings of Slavoj Žižek have greatly expanded our understanding of how social stratification is maintained through ideology. However, those writing on the ideological operation of law are yet to engage with Žižek’s work. This thesis draws on Žižek’s multifaceted definition of ideology to provide unique insights into the ways that law is implicated in the maintenance of systemic inequality in liberal democracies. Ideology is defined as incorporating four interdependent and interrelated axes. The first axis, discourses, explains how communicative networks often controlled by the powerful lead people to view contingent, cultured and historic concepts necessary for social hierarchy as universal, egalitarian or eternal. It is asserted that the dominant legal norms of individual freedom and formal equality act in this way by masking the systemic oppression prevalent in liberal democracies. These norms also permeate abstract individualism and colonise popular understandings of two potentially revolutionary concepts. The second axis, spontaneous beliefs, analyses how people instinctively react to unfamiliar situations drawing on ideological discourses in ways that adapt, develop and individualise beliefs that are intimately entwined with social hierarchies. In daily experiences people draw on the dominant norms of abstraction and individualism permeated by law. In doing so these norms are amended to suit changing social conditions. The production of legal ideology is consequently not the exclusive terrain of professional ideologues like academics, politicians and judges but is assisted by people from all walks of life in seemingly mundane and ordinary circumstances. The materiality of ideology is the third axis and explains how material forms such as rituals can serve as the basis for ideological beliefs. It is through the materialisation of ideology that people often first encounter ideological beliefs and this exposure forms ideological beliefs. Žižek argues that belief is merely the formal act of recognising what we already believe. A particularly prominent component of the materiality of legal ideology is architecture and it is contended that many courthouses and parliament buildings materialise idealist legal norms, proclaim the universality and eternality of contingent and historic legal relations, and are built in celestial designs to manifest a religious-like faith in law. Fourth is the unconscious axis of ideology. This axis applies Žižek’s political engagement with Lacanian psychoanalysis to explore the ways that subjects of ideologies rely on fantasy and repression to maintain their beliefs in the face of constant experiences exposing the flaws, incompleteness and dogmatism inherent in legal ideology. I argue that the perceived universality and irreproachability of human rights stems in part from the fantasmatic elevation of rights to a sublime status assisted by the repression of the turbulent origins and power politics at play in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is ideological as rights are often seen as a silver bullet to complicated social problems without the need to consider the sources of social stratification. Moreover, the belief in the universality of human rights can blanket discussion as to what should constitute a human right, and how rights should be enforced, today and in the future. Through the employment of the four axes of ideology this thesis makes an original contribution to explaining how legal norms and practices assist in the sustainment of systemic inequality.
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Authors: Wardle, Ben
Institution: Griffith University
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Degree: Doctor of Philosophy
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Pages: 239
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Other
Countries: United States