Contributions to Law, Philosophy and Ecology : Exploring Re-Embodiments

This book explores the failure of established institutions to challenge the categorical centrality of ‘Western Man’ to modernity. This failure can be linked to a fundamental tension between the tired assumptions of modernism and the urgent needs of a complex age characterized by eco-crises: a tension in which mainstream social and legal theory are, by and large, still implicated. Building on the compelling critiques emerging from ecofeminism, political economy, ethno-ecology and some strands of legal theory, this collection provides both a sustained interrogation of disembodied forms of living. And in so doing, it advocates a re-embodiment of the human, and a re-embedding of human understandings and practices in the fact of our bio-material existence.

Contributions to Law, Philosophy and Ecology: Exploring Re-Embodiments is a preliminary contribution to the establishment of re-embodiments as a theoretical strand within legal and ecological theory, and philosophy. Re-embodiments are all those contemporary practices and processes that exceed the epistemic horizon of modernity. As such, they offer a plurality of alternative modes of theory and practice that seek to counteract the ecocidal tendencies of the Anthropocene. The collection comprises eleven contributions approaching re-embodiments from a multiplicity of fields, including legal theory, eco-philosophy, eco-feminism and anthropology. The contributions are organized into three parts: ‘Beyond Modernity’, ‘The Sacred Dimension’ and ‘The Legal Dimension’. The collection is opened by a comprehensive introduction that situates re-embodiments in theoretical context. Whilst closely bound with embodiment and new materialist theory, this book contributes a unique voice that echoes diverse political processes contemporaneous to our times. Written in an elegant and accessible language, the book will appeal to undergraduates, postgraduates and established scholars alike seeking to understand and take re-embodiments further, both politically and theoretically.