Elena Loizidou
Birkbeck College, University of London, Law, Faculty Member
- Gender Theory, Political Theory and in particular classical anarchism.edit
Research Interests: Neuroscience, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Law, Philosophy, and 8 moreAesthetics, Art, Theology, Literature, Political Science, Metaphor, Judgement, and Sniffing
This e-special issue of Theory, Culture & Society presents works published by and about US philosopher and activist Judith Butler (b. 1956), Distinguished Scholar at the Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley. They have... more
This e-special issue of Theory, Culture & Society presents works published by and about US philosopher and activist Judith Butler (b. 1956), Distinguished Scholar at the Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley. They have contributed to Theory, Culture & Society and inspired key debates and scholarship around their work. Gender Trouble transformed our understanding of gender, influencing generations of academics, activists, and cultural producers. Butler is an exceptional thinker who aims to build more inclusive and sustainable societies through their writing, which has influenced numerous fields, e.g. sociology, gender studies, politics, and the arts. The editorial introduction juxtaposes earlier and subsequent writings by Butler in order to encourage a wider reading of their work. Drawing upon the full catalogue of Theory, Culture & Society and Body & Society, the collection includes articles published by Butler, interviews with them, a book review, and articles about their work.
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Book synopsis: Assesses the layered meanings and persistent global legacy of an American film classic. Five decades after the production and initial release of Rebel Without a Cause, this book examines both the complicated historical... more
Book synopsis: Assesses the layered meanings and persistent global legacy of an American film classic. Five decades after the production and initial release of Rebel Without a Cause, this book examines both the complicated historical moment in which the film was made as well as its continuing and pervasive influence on film today. The contributors track how the film continues to speak to diverse audiences as a touchstone for imagined anxieties over adolescence and coming-of-age, traditional values of family and community, threats from abroad, and the provocations of mass or consumer society. Although the specific sources and motivations for rebellion have shifted, what has persisted is the film’s singular power to represent rebellion in what could otherwise be seen as the everyday, and to move viewers to ponder its causes. "Having avidly read most of what has been published in English on James Dean over the past thirty years, I was delighted to encounter perspectives that succeed in offering such fresh, original, and creative analyses of the most celebrated film of this actor’s short career—analyses that open up new ways to read the film and the historical contexts of its production, distribution, and reception. This is a remarkable book from beginning to end, and each author substantially contributes to a greater appreciation of the film’s richness.” — Michael DeAngelis, author of Gay Fandom and Crossover Stardom: James Dean, Mel Gibson, and Keanu Reeves "This is an absolutely unique book and a real contribution to cinema studies. The contributors offer the reader not only a comprehensive history of the film, with all of the key players given their proper place in film history, but also present the reader with unmistakable evidence of the lingering impact of the film on contemporary cinema discourse.” — Wheeler Winston Dixon, author of Straight: Constructions of Heterosexuality in the Cinema
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In his essay 'The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte' (1852), Karl Marx, though not wholly dismissive of the rights (such as freedom of expression) won by the French Revolution, maintains that the apparent victory for... more
In his essay 'The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte' (1852), Karl Marx, though not wholly dismissive of the rights (such as freedom of expression) won by the French Revolution, maintains that the apparent victory for democracy is haunted by the specter of capitalism and bourgeois values. A democracy based on rights never ceases to be in his eyes a bourgeois democracy, based on social and economic inequality. Marx's critique may involve a misunderstanding of the concept and practice of democracy. As suggested by the title of this paper, taken from a popular slogan during the anti-WTO demonstration in Seattle in 1999, democracy is not a form of government but rather a process or an action, 'the action of subjects who' as Ranciere recently pointed out, 'by working the interval between identities [man and citizen], reconfigure the distributions of the public and the private, the universal and the particular.' This particular understanding of democracy is akin to the anarchist tradition, a point that Ranciere make himself in Hatred of Democracy (2007). In focusing upon the anti-conscription actions and writings during World War I of US-based anarchists Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, I explore the differences between the Marxist and anarchist understandings of democracy and the effects that such differences may raise in relation to the question of how we can, present tense, begin a journey towards a better life.
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Book synopsis: This book examines the relation between bodies and political economies at micro and macro levels. It stands in the space between ends and beginnings – some long-desired, such as the end of capitalism and racism, and others... more
Book synopsis: This book examines the relation between bodies and political economies at micro and macro levels. It stands in the space between ends and beginnings – some long-desired, such as the end of capitalism and racism, and others long-dreaded, such as the climate catastrophe – and reimagines what the world can be like instead. It offers an original investigation into the relation between performance, dance, and political economy, looking at the points where politics, economics, ethics, and culture intersect. Arising from live conversations and exchanges among the contributors, this book is written in an interdisciplinary and dialogical manner by leading scholars and artists in the fields of Performance Studies, Dance, Political Theory, Economics, and Social Theory: Marc Arthur, Melissa Blanco Borelli, Anita Gonzalez, Alexandrina Hemsley, Jamila Johnson-Small, Elena Loizidou, Tavia Nyong'o, Katerina Paramana, Nina Power, and Usva Seregina. Their critical and creative examinations of the relation between bodies and political economy offer insights for both imagining and materializing a world beyond the present
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The notion of the subject and its formation has long been at the centre of discus-sion in critical theory. Identity discourse constructed a passive subject made up of qualities such us gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and age.... more
The notion of the subject and its formation has long been at the centre of discus-sion in critical theory. Identity discourse constructed a passive subject made up of qualities such us gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and age. Poststructuralist thought on the other hand ...
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Book synopsis: New Critical Legal Thinking articulates the emergence of a stream of critical legal theory which is directly concerned with the relation between law and the political. The early critical legal studies claim that all law is... more
Book synopsis: New Critical Legal Thinking articulates the emergence of a stream of critical legal theory which is directly concerned with the relation between law and the political. The early critical legal studies claim that all law is politics is displaced with a different and more nuanced theoretical arsenal. Combining grand theory with a concern for grounded political interventions, the various contributors to this book draw on political theorists and continental philosophers in order to engage with current legal problematics, such as the recent global economic crisis, the Arab spring and the emergence of biopolitics. The contributions instantiate the claim that a new and radical political legal scholarship has come into being: one which critically interrogates and intervenes in the contemporary relationship between law and power
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Loizidou, Elena (1998) Heavenly creatures, matricide and criminal law's obsession with confessions. In: Moran, L. and Monk, D., (eds.) Legal queries. Cassell, London, pp. 22-22. ... Full text not available from this archive. ...... more
Loizidou, Elena (1998) Heavenly creatures, matricide and criminal law's obsession with confessions. In: Moran, L. and Monk, D., (eds.) Legal queries. Cassell, London, pp. 22-22. ... Full text not available from this archive. ... Lancaster Eprints is provided by Lancaster ...
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Book synopsis: Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as opposites, with the assumption that vulnerability requires protection and the strengthening of paternalistic power at the expense of collective resistance. Focusing on... more
Book synopsis: Vulnerability and resistance have often been seen as opposites, with the assumption that vulnerability requires protection and the strengthening of paternalistic power at the expense of collective resistance. Focusing on political movements and cultural practices in different global locations, including Turkey, Palestine, France, and the former Yugoslavia, the contributors to Vulnerability in Resistance articulate an understanding of the role of vulnerability in practices of resistance. They consider how vulnerability is constructed, invoked, and mobilized within neo-liberal discourse, the politics of war, resistance to authoritarian and securitarian power, in LGBTQI struggles, and in the resistance to occupation and colonial violence. The essays offer a feminist account of political agency by exploring occupy movements and street politics, informal groups at checkpoints and barricades, practices of self-defense, hunger strikes, transgressive enactments of solidarity and mourning, infrastructural mobilizations, and aesthetic and erotic interventions into public space that mobilize memory and expose forms of power. Pointing to possible strategies for a feminist politics of transversal engagements and suggesting a politics of bodily resistance that does not disavow forms of vulnerability, the contributors develop a new conception of embodiment and sociality within fields of contemporary power.
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This article sets out to question the relationship between criminal law, punishment and prohibition. The argument is made that criminal law is not founded upon prohibitive grounds but rather on permissive grounds. Criminal law does not... more
This article sets out to question the relationship between criminal law, punishment and prohibition. The argument is made that criminal law is not founded upon prohibitive grounds but rather on permissive grounds. Criminal law does not operate as a set of prohibitive rules, whereby the rule breaker is punished, but rather as a system that is indexed by permission and particularly by the slogan ‘enjoy without restraints!’ If criminal law is viewed in this way, it can be read as a manual of citizenship. The article articulates this reading through the use of psychoanalytic myths. The aim is to open up a space whereby one can articulate and criticize the wider project in which criminal law is engaged, one whereby it creates the conditions for citizenship.
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Lauren Berlant is Professor of^ English and the Humanities at the University of Chicago. Berlant's research and published work reflect an inter-disciplinary trajectory and a (counter) political agenda. She works between several... more
Lauren Berlant is Professor of^ English and the Humanities at the University of Chicago. Berlant's research and published work reflect an inter-disciplinary trajectory and a (counter) political agenda. She works between several academic disciplines, English, Law, Cultural studies, Politics, Queer studies, and Women's studies. What binds her different projects together is her interest in the force of optimism in peoples' attachments to each other and to concepts, for example, of the good life, good intentions, political worlds, and transparent ...
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This volume brings together and explores interrela-tionships between law and geography, two established disciplines that hitherto have had minimal direct con-tact. Given their ubiquity both examine the forces that control persons and... more
This volume brings together and explores interrela-tionships between law and geography, two established disciplines that hitherto have had minimal direct con-tact. Given their ubiquity both examine the forces that control persons and things and their shared tendencies to ...
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Berlant has given us through her own interpretation of Cynical philosophy the possibility of imagining and seeing a collective subjectivity.
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This volume brings together and explores interrela-tionships between law and geography, two established disciplines that hitherto have had minimal direct con-tact. Given their ubiquity both examine the forces that control persons and... more
This volume brings together and explores interrela-tionships between law and geography, two established disciplines that hitherto have had minimal direct con-tact. Given their ubiquity both examine the forces that control persons and things and their shared tendencies to ...
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Book synopsis: Disobedience has been practiced and considered since time immemorial. The aim of this edited collection is to explore the concept and practice of disobedience through the prism of contemporary ideas and events. Past... more
Book synopsis: Disobedience has been practiced and considered since time immemorial. The aim of this edited collection is to explore the concept and practice of disobedience through the prism of contemporary ideas and events. Past writings on disobedience represented it as a largely political practice that revealed the limits of government or law. It was not, for example, thought of as a subjective exigency and its discussion in relation to law and politics was tied to an unduly narrow conception of these terms. Disobedience reveals the multivalent, multidisciplinary and poly-local nature of disobedience. The essays in this volume demonstrate how disobedience operates in various terrains, and may be articulated in relation to textuality, aesthetics and subjectivity, as well as politics and law. A rich and useful guide to current legal, political and social possibilities, this book provides a fresh perspective on a subject that is of both historical importance and contemporary relevance.
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Book synopsis: Disobedience has been practiced and considered since time immemorial. The aim of this edited collection is to explore the concept and practice of disobedience through the prism of contemporary ideas and events. Past... more
Book synopsis: Disobedience has been practiced and considered since time immemorial. The aim of this edited collection is to explore the concept and practice of disobedience through the prism of contemporary ideas and events. Past writings on disobedience represented it as a largely political practice that revealed the limits of government or law. It was not, for example, thought of as a subjective exigency and its discussion in relation to law and politics was tied to an unduly narrow conception of these terms. Disobedience reveals the multivalent, multidisciplinary and poly-local nature of disobedience. The essays in this volume demonstrate how disobedience operates in various terrains, and may be articulated in relation to textuality, aesthetics and subjectivity, as well as politics and law. A rich and useful guide to current legal, political and social possibilities, this book provides a fresh perspective on a subject that is of both historical importance and contemporary relevance.
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This chapter argues that if we are to reach a “complete transformation of politics,” as Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy urged over thirty years ago, we need to embrace an anarchist art of living, a way of doing things that... more
This chapter argues that if we are to reach a “complete transformation of politics,” as Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy urged over thirty years ago, we need to embrace an anarchist art of living, a way of doing things that situates the question at its center. Drawing upon the anarchist archive of Emma Goldman, as well as the theories of Max Stirner, Krotoptkin and others, the chapter reflects on the political acts of the Indignatos movement in Spain, Indignants in Greece, and Extinction Rebellion in the UK, which may fall short in providing us such a “complete transformation of politics” as these movements are still be attached to concepts and ideas of sovereignty, the state, and so on. By considering withdrawal as a parallel art of living and showing how such art of living comes about, Loizidou argues, we are able to recognise that we have different ethico/political lives living next to each other, and the most radical political gesture may be the one that does not crea...
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Research Interests: Anarchism and Mutual Aid
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The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic is undeniably the most severe global health emergency since the 1918 Influenza outbreak. Depending on its evolutionary trajectory, the virus is expected to... more
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic is undeniably the most severe global health emergency since the 1918 Influenza outbreak. Depending on its evolutionary trajectory, the virus is expected to establish itself as an endemic infectious respiratory disease exhibiting seasonal flare-ups. Therefore, despite the unprecedented rally to reach a vaccine that can offer widespread immunization, it is equally important to reach effective prevention and treatment regimens for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Contributing to this effort, we have curated and analyzed multi-source and multi-omics publicly available data from patients, cell lines and databases in order to fuel a multiplex computational drug repurposing approach. We devised a network-based integration of multi-omic data to prioritize the most important genes related to COVID-19 and subsequently re-rank the identified candidate drugs. Our approach resulted in a highly informed integrated drug ...
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... can reveal the truth. Leslie Moran's essay raises some of the problems of legal scholarship which assume a direct relationship between film representations of legal issues and cases and the actual events. By contrasting two ...
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Book synopsis: This a a broad ranging introduction to 21st century anarchism which includes a wide array of theoretical approaches as well as a variety of empirical and geographical perspectives. The book demonstrates how this vibrant and... more
Book synopsis: This a a broad ranging introduction to 21st century anarchism which includes a wide array of theoretical approaches as well as a variety of empirical and geographical perspectives. The book demonstrates how this vibrant and often controversial ideology has influenced the humanities and social sciences including anthropology, art, feminism, geography, international relations, philosophy, political science, postcolonialism and sociology. Drawing on a long historical narrative that encompasses the 'waves' of anarchist movements from the post-war wave of student, counter-cultural and workers' control anarchism of the 1960s and 1970s to the DIY politics and Temporary Autonomous Zoness of the 1990s right up to the Occupy! movement, this is the perfect introduction to anarchist theory.
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Book synopsis: This handbook sets out an innovative approach to the theory of law reconceptualising legal theory in a material, socially contextualised and politically radical way. The book is made up of original contributions authored by... more
Book synopsis: This handbook sets out an innovative approach to the theory of law reconceptualising legal theory in a material, socially contextualised and politically radical way. The book is made up of original contributions authored by academics at the forefront of research in legal theory so provides a valuable overview of the discipline.
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Sequences on Law and the Body sketches an account of discursive and material critical legal writings on law and the body. It begins with the discursive and proceeds to the material sequence. This ordering is not meant to designate a... more
Sequences on Law and the Body sketches an account of discursive and material critical legal writings on law and the body. It begins with the discursive and proceeds to the material sequence. This ordering is not meant to designate a hierarchy of accounts in the sense of x sequence being more radical or valuable than the other. Nor does this ordering intend to propose a historical progressive narrative. Such a suggestion would have been preposterous and untrue, as research in both of these sequences is still undergoing. Instead what you witness is an attempt to delineate in a meaningful manner the abundance of work within this field of legal research.