Show simple item record

dc.contributor.authorMacNeil, William
dc.date.accessioned2019-05-13T01:48:58Z
dc.date.available2019-05-13T01:48:58Z
dc.date.issued1999
dc.identifier.issn10383441
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10072/122359
dc.description.abstractThe central claim made by this article echoes one of the most orthodox injunctions of bourgeois-liberal legalism: namely, that we enjoy our rights! But the basis for this injunction is anything but orthodox; indeed, it is this article's intention to re-functionalise rights discourse, making it workable for postmodernity by predicating it upon something other than modernity's rights-fetishism. 'Enjoyment', I shall argue, provides that ground. The enjoyment enjoined here, however, must be distinguished from that of canonical rights jurisprudence. That latter 'enjoyment' is largely philosophical, deriving as it does from the 'pursuit of happiness' so prized by the philosophes of the Enlightenment. The former notion of enjoyment invoked in this article is, however, psychoanalytic, particularly in the way it gives back in reverse form that which is desired. For if this article urges the postmodern subject to enjoy her rights, then it is because that enjoyment is, ultimately, an enjoyment of non-enjoyment. And it is precisely this failure of rights - their very impossibility - which ensures, so I will argue, not only their inevitability but success. That success remains vital to this day because, in the wake of socialism's collapse, rights provide one of the few (if not sole) viable counter-hegemonic discourses available under postmodernity, capable of combating either the specious universalism of global Capital or the malignant particularism of a revivified nationalism.
dc.description.peerreviewedYes
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherGriffith University
dc.publisher.placeAustralia
dc.publisher.urihttp://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/GriffLawRw/1999/6.html
dc.relation.ispartofpagefrom134
dc.relation.ispartofpageto151
dc.relation.ispartofjournalGriffith Law Review
dc.relation.ispartofvolume8(1)
dc.subject.fieldofresearchLaw
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode1801
dc.titleTaking Rights Symptomatically: Jouissance, coupure, objet petit a
dc.typeJournal article
dc.type.descriptionC1 - Articles
dc.type.codeC - Journal Articles
dc.description.versionVersion of Record (VoR)
gro.facultyArts, Education & Law Group, School of Law
gro.rights.copyright© 1999 Griffith Law School. The attached file is reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal's website for access to the definitive, published version.
gro.hasfulltextFull Text
gro.griffith.authorMacNeil, William P.


Files in this item

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

  • Journal articles
    Contains articles published by Griffith authors in scholarly journals.

Show simple item record