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The Law Is a White Dog : How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons / Colin Dayan.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2011]Copyright date: ©2011Edition: Course BookDescription: 1 online resource (368 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780691070919
  • 9781400838592
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 346.73012 23
LOC classification:
  • KF465 .D39 2017
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. Holy Dogs, Hecuba’s Bark -- 2. Civil Death -- 3. Punishing The Residue -- 4. Taxonomies -- 5. A Legal Ethnography -- 6. Who Gets To Be Wanton? -- 7. Skin Of The Dog -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary: Abused dogs, prisoners tortured in Guantánamo and supermax facilities, or slaves killed by the state--all are deprived of personhood through legal acts. Such deprivations have recurred throughout history, and the law sustains these terrors and banishments even as it upholds the civil order. Examining such troubling cases, The Law Is a White Dog tackles key societal questions: How does the law construct our identities? How do its rules and sanctions make or unmake persons? And how do the supposedly rational claims of the law define marginal entities, both natural and supernatural, including ghosts, dogs, slaves, terrorist suspects, and felons? Reading the language, allusions, and symbols of legal discourse, and bridging distinctions between the human and nonhuman, Colin Dayan looks at how the law disfigures individuals and animals, and how slavery, punishment, and torture create unforeseen effects in our daily lives. Moving seamlessly across genres and disciplines, Dayan considers legal practices and spiritual beliefs from medieval England, the North American colonies, and the Caribbean that have survived in our legal discourse, and she explores the civil deaths of felons and slaves through lawful repression. Tracing the legacy of slavery in the United States in the structures of the contemporary American prison system and in the administrative detention of ghostly supermax facilities, she also demonstrates how contemporary jurisprudence regarding cruel and unusual punishment prepared the way for abuses in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. Using conventional historical and legal sources to answer unconventional questions, The Law Is a White Dog illuminates stark truths about civil society's ability to marginalize, exclude, and dehumanize.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781400838592

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. Holy Dogs, Hecuba’s Bark -- 2. Civil Death -- 3. Punishing The Residue -- 4. Taxonomies -- 5. A Legal Ethnography -- 6. Who Gets To Be Wanton? -- 7. Skin Of The Dog -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Abused dogs, prisoners tortured in Guantánamo and supermax facilities, or slaves killed by the state--all are deprived of personhood through legal acts. Such deprivations have recurred throughout history, and the law sustains these terrors and banishments even as it upholds the civil order. Examining such troubling cases, The Law Is a White Dog tackles key societal questions: How does the law construct our identities? How do its rules and sanctions make or unmake persons? And how do the supposedly rational claims of the law define marginal entities, both natural and supernatural, including ghosts, dogs, slaves, terrorist suspects, and felons? Reading the language, allusions, and symbols of legal discourse, and bridging distinctions between the human and nonhuman, Colin Dayan looks at how the law disfigures individuals and animals, and how slavery, punishment, and torture create unforeseen effects in our daily lives. Moving seamlessly across genres and disciplines, Dayan considers legal practices and spiritual beliefs from medieval England, the North American colonies, and the Caribbean that have survived in our legal discourse, and she explores the civil deaths of felons and slaves through lawful repression. Tracing the legacy of slavery in the United States in the structures of the contemporary American prison system and in the administrative detention of ghostly supermax facilities, she also demonstrates how contemporary jurisprudence regarding cruel and unusual punishment prepared the way for abuses in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. Using conventional historical and legal sources to answer unconventional questions, The Law Is a White Dog illuminates stark truths about civil society's ability to marginalize, exclude, and dehumanize.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 27. Jan 2023)