This interdisciplinary and international 'curated conversation' focuses on the relationsh... more This interdisciplinary and international 'curated conversation' focuses on the relationship between time, law and social ordering. Participants were drawn from law, sociology and anthropology in the UK, Canada and the Netherlands. Their research is inspired by, and engaged with, feminist theory, post- or anti-colonial perspectives and/or critical race theory. In an extended written conversation lasting several days (and later edited), participants reflected on how questions of time have emerged in their research, the ways in which they have struggled with conceptual or methodological dilemmas to do with analysing time in relation to law or social ordering. The conversation focused in particular on how constructions of race are co-imbricated with dominant temporal idioms and practices and the challenges this poses for researchers interesting in unpicking the knotted relationships between race, colonialism, and specific legal technicalities or approaches.
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société, 2014
This article traces some of the ways in which Australian law in the post-Mabo era has functioned ... more This article traces some of the ways in which Australian law in the post-Mabo era has functioned to discursively historicize Indigenous Australia, that is, to construct Indigenous Australia as a historical relic. I argue that despite law’s continual historicization of Indigenous Australia, there have nonetheless been “moments of decolonization,” as there have been since the colonization of Australia began, in which Indigenous Australia asserts its contemporary presence in opposition to and outside of colonial Australia. Drawing on Doreen Massey’s conceptualization of place and space and three examples, I argue that in these moments, Indigenous activists do not only resist the ongoing project that is settler Australia, they also create an elsewhere to it.
This chapter critically analyses the effects which registration systems have on the temporality o... more This chapter critically analyses the effects which registration systems have on the temporality of land title. The chapter argues that whereas title deed systems were oriented toward the past, title registration systems are oriented toward the future. Whereas deed systems operate on the basis that the title to be transferred already exists, registration systems operate on the basis that title is produced anew upon every conveyance. Title registration systems facilitate the coordination of an increasingly complex and rapid trade in title which has minimal connection to the daily routines and interests of those who live and/or physically work on the land. Examining title registration systems in four different contexts, I argue that there is a disjuncture between the temporality of registered titles and the temporality of the land to which those titles pertain: registered title and land are out of sync.
For centuries, transferring ownership of land under common law was a slow, complex process requir... more For centuries, transferring ownership of land under common law was a slow, complex process requiring the construction of a chain of paper deeds evidencing multiple decades of prior possession. In 1858, colonist Robert Torrens developed a new system for the transfer of land in South Australia, where the land was understood by colonial powers as 'new' and without history. With the intention of making land a liquid asset, Torrens' system of title registration shifted the legal basis of title from a history of prior possession to a singular act of registration. Analysing the structure and effects of title registration, engaging with interdisciplinary work on time, and taking H.G Wells' iconic time travel novella as a point of departure, I argue that title registries can usefully be understood as time machines. Like the machine H.G Wells imagined, title registries use fiction to facilitate fantastical journeys in which the subject is radically temporally dislocated from the material constraints of history. As with time machines, it tends to be a transcendental white male subject who is most likely to survive this dislocation. While based on fiction, the impacts of title registries are very much real, facilitating humanity's arrival at racist, dystopic landscapes in the here and now.
When British naval officer James Cook first landed on the continent now known as Australia in Apr... more When British naval officer James Cook first landed on the continent now known as Australia in April 1770, he was met by warriors of the Gweagal nation whose land he was entering uninvited. The Gweagal were armed with bark shields and wooden spears. Cook fired a musket at them, hitting one. The shield from that first encounter, complete with musket hole, is today displayed in the British Museum. It is subject to a repatriation request from Gweagal man Rodney Kelly, who wishes the shield to be displayed in Australia where Aboriginal people will be able to care for and view it. In this article, I outline the contested legal status of the shield. Centering Kelly’s perspective, I argue that regardless of whether he is able to prove the precise genealogy of either the shield as object or himself as owner, as an Aboriginal man he has a better claim to the shield than the British Museum. What is at stake in the dispute between Kelly and the British Museum is not just rights over the shield but also the broader issue of basic colonial reparations: in this instance returning an Aboriginal object to Aboriginal control. The issue of ownership/possession of the Gweagal shield cannot be separated from the historical reality of Britain’s mass theft of Aboriginal land, decimation of Aboriginal people and destruction of Aboriginal culture.
This article analyses the temporal effects of title registration and their relationship to race. ... more This article analyses the temporal effects of title registration and their relationship to race. It traces the move away from the retrospection of pre-registry common law conveyancing and toward the dynamic, future-oriented Torrens title registration system. The Torrens system, developed in early colonial Australia, enabled the production of 'clean', fresh titles that were independent of their predecessors. Through a process praised by legal commentators for 'curing' titles of their pasts, this system produces inde-feasible titles behind its distinctive 'curtain' and 'mirror', which function similarly to magi-cians' smoke and mirrors by blocking particular realities from view. In the case of title registries , those realities are particular histories of and relationships with land, which will not be protected by property law and are thus made precarious. Building on interdisciplinary work which theorises time as a social tool, I argue that Torrens title registration produces a temporal order which enables land market coordination by rendering some relationships with land temporary and making others indefeasible. This ordering of relationships with
This article analyses two cases brought by aboriginal Australians against the Australian governme... more This article analyses two cases brought by aboriginal Australians against the Australian government acquisition of long leases of their land under the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007. These leases are conspicuous, particularly in that the government always made it clear that it would not take up its right to exclusive possession of the leased land, and has not done so. The leases have not been used to evict residents, as some feared; nor to pursue mining or agricultural activity. Socio-legal theories centered on the right to exclusive possession cannot account for these leases. The article explores the use of property under the 2007 Act, the legal geographies of the areas subject to the leases and the political potency of property beyond exclusive possession, and suggests an understanding of property as a spatially contingent relation of belonging. Specifically, the article argues that property is productive of temporal and spatial order and so can function as a tool of governance.
Abstract: This article examines how refugee law's requirement of an essentialised vulnerability f... more Abstract: This article examines how refugee law's requirement of an essentialised vulnerability from women applying for asylum on the grounds of sexuality persecution, serves to reinforce transnational power structures of patriarchy and racial oppression.
Sarah Keenan interviews Rodney Kelly, Vincent Forrester and Roxley Foley, who are in London seeki... more Sarah Keenan interviews Rodney Kelly, Vincent Forrester and Roxley Foley, who are in London seeking the repatriation of the Gweagal shield from the British Museum.
This interdisciplinary and international 'curated conversation' focuses on the relationsh... more This interdisciplinary and international 'curated conversation' focuses on the relationship between time, law and social ordering. Participants were drawn from law, sociology and anthropology in the UK, Canada and the Netherlands. Their research is inspired by, and engaged with, feminist theory, post- or anti-colonial perspectives and/or critical race theory. In an extended written conversation lasting several days (and later edited), participants reflected on how questions of time have emerged in their research, the ways in which they have struggled with conceptual or methodological dilemmas to do with analysing time in relation to law or social ordering. The conversation focused in particular on how constructions of race are co-imbricated with dominant temporal idioms and practices and the challenges this poses for researchers interesting in unpicking the knotted relationships between race, colonialism, and specific legal technicalities or approaches.
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société, 2014
This article traces some of the ways in which Australian law in the post-Mabo era has functioned ... more This article traces some of the ways in which Australian law in the post-Mabo era has functioned to discursively historicize Indigenous Australia, that is, to construct Indigenous Australia as a historical relic. I argue that despite law’s continual historicization of Indigenous Australia, there have nonetheless been “moments of decolonization,” as there have been since the colonization of Australia began, in which Indigenous Australia asserts its contemporary presence in opposition to and outside of colonial Australia. Drawing on Doreen Massey’s conceptualization of place and space and three examples, I argue that in these moments, Indigenous activists do not only resist the ongoing project that is settler Australia, they also create an elsewhere to it.
This chapter critically analyses the effects which registration systems have on the temporality o... more This chapter critically analyses the effects which registration systems have on the temporality of land title. The chapter argues that whereas title deed systems were oriented toward the past, title registration systems are oriented toward the future. Whereas deed systems operate on the basis that the title to be transferred already exists, registration systems operate on the basis that title is produced anew upon every conveyance. Title registration systems facilitate the coordination of an increasingly complex and rapid trade in title which has minimal connection to the daily routines and interests of those who live and/or physically work on the land. Examining title registration systems in four different contexts, I argue that there is a disjuncture between the temporality of registered titles and the temporality of the land to which those titles pertain: registered title and land are out of sync.
For centuries, transferring ownership of land under common law was a slow, complex process requir... more For centuries, transferring ownership of land under common law was a slow, complex process requiring the construction of a chain of paper deeds evidencing multiple decades of prior possession. In 1858, colonist Robert Torrens developed a new system for the transfer of land in South Australia, where the land was understood by colonial powers as 'new' and without history. With the intention of making land a liquid asset, Torrens' system of title registration shifted the legal basis of title from a history of prior possession to a singular act of registration. Analysing the structure and effects of title registration, engaging with interdisciplinary work on time, and taking H.G Wells' iconic time travel novella as a point of departure, I argue that title registries can usefully be understood as time machines. Like the machine H.G Wells imagined, title registries use fiction to facilitate fantastical journeys in which the subject is radically temporally dislocated from the material constraints of history. As with time machines, it tends to be a transcendental white male subject who is most likely to survive this dislocation. While based on fiction, the impacts of title registries are very much real, facilitating humanity's arrival at racist, dystopic landscapes in the here and now.
When British naval officer James Cook first landed on the continent now known as Australia in Apr... more When British naval officer James Cook first landed on the continent now known as Australia in April 1770, he was met by warriors of the Gweagal nation whose land he was entering uninvited. The Gweagal were armed with bark shields and wooden spears. Cook fired a musket at them, hitting one. The shield from that first encounter, complete with musket hole, is today displayed in the British Museum. It is subject to a repatriation request from Gweagal man Rodney Kelly, who wishes the shield to be displayed in Australia where Aboriginal people will be able to care for and view it. In this article, I outline the contested legal status of the shield. Centering Kelly’s perspective, I argue that regardless of whether he is able to prove the precise genealogy of either the shield as object or himself as owner, as an Aboriginal man he has a better claim to the shield than the British Museum. What is at stake in the dispute between Kelly and the British Museum is not just rights over the shield but also the broader issue of basic colonial reparations: in this instance returning an Aboriginal object to Aboriginal control. The issue of ownership/possession of the Gweagal shield cannot be separated from the historical reality of Britain’s mass theft of Aboriginal land, decimation of Aboriginal people and destruction of Aboriginal culture.
This article analyses the temporal effects of title registration and their relationship to race. ... more This article analyses the temporal effects of title registration and their relationship to race. It traces the move away from the retrospection of pre-registry common law conveyancing and toward the dynamic, future-oriented Torrens title registration system. The Torrens system, developed in early colonial Australia, enabled the production of 'clean', fresh titles that were independent of their predecessors. Through a process praised by legal commentators for 'curing' titles of their pasts, this system produces inde-feasible titles behind its distinctive 'curtain' and 'mirror', which function similarly to magi-cians' smoke and mirrors by blocking particular realities from view. In the case of title registries , those realities are particular histories of and relationships with land, which will not be protected by property law and are thus made precarious. Building on interdisciplinary work which theorises time as a social tool, I argue that Torrens title registration produces a temporal order which enables land market coordination by rendering some relationships with land temporary and making others indefeasible. This ordering of relationships with
This article analyses two cases brought by aboriginal Australians against the Australian governme... more This article analyses two cases brought by aboriginal Australians against the Australian government acquisition of long leases of their land under the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007. These leases are conspicuous, particularly in that the government always made it clear that it would not take up its right to exclusive possession of the leased land, and has not done so. The leases have not been used to evict residents, as some feared; nor to pursue mining or agricultural activity. Socio-legal theories centered on the right to exclusive possession cannot account for these leases. The article explores the use of property under the 2007 Act, the legal geographies of the areas subject to the leases and the political potency of property beyond exclusive possession, and suggests an understanding of property as a spatially contingent relation of belonging. Specifically, the article argues that property is productive of temporal and spatial order and so can function as a tool of governance.
Abstract: This article examines how refugee law's requirement of an essentialised vulnerability f... more Abstract: This article examines how refugee law's requirement of an essentialised vulnerability from women applying for asylum on the grounds of sexuality persecution, serves to reinforce transnational power structures of patriarchy and racial oppression.
Sarah Keenan interviews Rodney Kelly, Vincent Forrester and Roxley Foley, who are in London seeki... more Sarah Keenan interviews Rodney Kelly, Vincent Forrester and Roxley Foley, who are in London seeking the repatriation of the Gweagal shield from the British Museum.
This book explores the relationship between space, subjectivity and property in order to invert c... more This book explores the relationship between space, subjectivity and property in order to invert conventional socio-legal understandings of property. Sarah Keenan demonstrates that new political possibilities for property may be unveiled by thinking about property in terms of space and belonging, rather than exclusion.
Drawing on feminist and critical race theory, this book shifts focus away from the propertied subject and on to the broader spaces in and through which the propertied subject is located. Using case studies, such as analyses of compulsory leases under Australia’s Northern Territory Intervention and lesbian asylum cases from a range of jurisdictions, Keenan argues that these spaces consist of networks of relations that revolve around belonging: not just belonging between subject and object, as property is traditionally understood, but also the less explored relation of belonging between the part and the whole.
This book therefore offers a conceptually useful way of analysing a wide range of socio-legal issues. It will be of relevance to those working in the area of property and legal geography, but also to those with more general interests in socio-legal studies, social and political theory, postcolonial studies, critical race studies and gender and sexuality studies.
For decades, the British Museum has been displaying an object in its collection as the shield whi... more For decades, the British Museum has been displaying an object in its collection as the shield which was used by Gweagal men defending against Cook's landing at Kamay in 1770. Following a loan of the shield to the National Museum of Australia in 2015/2016, Gweagal man Rodney Kelly lodged a claim with the British Museum asking for the shield to be repatriated. Soon after, the British Museum facilitated and partly funded research which aimed 'to test the argumentor widely held beliefthat the shield was collected at Botany Bay in 1770' (Nugent and Sculthorpe 2018, 37). The research all but concluded that the shield was not collected at Cook's landing, and that that shield, if it exists, is now lost (Thomas 2018, 25). Despite this questioning of the shield's identity, it remains on prominent display in the British Museum's Enlightenment room. In this article, I critically examine the new research on the shield, making two related arguments. I argue first that the research is conceptually limited because it assumes that the Gweagal shield is an empirically definable object of property, and second that the research is practically limited because it has been produced in a material context through which the British Museum has reasserted its control and possession of the shield. Engaging with a range of scholarship that uses different methodologies from those used in the research in question, I argue that the 'truth' about the
In jurisdictions around the world, the previously paper-based practice of conveyancing is being d... more In jurisdictions around the world, the previously paper-based practice of conveyancing is being digitised. The move to ‘e-conveyancing’ has attracted little critical attention and tends to be regarded as a mere change of form rather than substance. In this article, I examine Australia’s move to national, platform-based electronic conveyancing, focusing on legal and practical changes made in the state of New South Wales to facilitate that move, asking how changes in the legal form of property affect its substance. Using legal analysis and engaging with a range of interdisciplinary literature on materiality, I argue that these digitising reforms involve a new structure of governance for the transfer of property in land, which in turn has negative implications for the relevance of subject-owns-object theories of property and the status of the proprietor. Although the diminution of proprietor status is presently occurring in ways that bolster the power of corporate finance, the shift away from older modes of landownership nonetheless presents a moment of potential disruption to the political regimes they help uphold, and an opportunity to reimagine what property is and could be.
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Drawing on feminist and critical race theory, this book shifts focus away from the propertied subject and on to the broader spaces in and through which the propertied subject is located. Using case studies, such as analyses of compulsory leases under Australia’s Northern Territory Intervention and lesbian asylum cases from a range of jurisdictions, Keenan argues that these spaces consist of networks of relations that revolve around belonging: not just belonging between subject and object, as property is traditionally understood, but also the less explored relation of belonging between the part and the whole.
This book therefore offers a conceptually useful way of analysing a wide range of socio-legal issues. It will be of relevance to those working in the area of property and legal geography, but also to those with more general interests in socio-legal studies, social and political theory, postcolonial studies, critical race studies and gender and sexuality studies.