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  • The Four Axes of Legal Ideology

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    Wardle_2016_01Thesis.pdf (1.913Mb)
    Author
    Wardle, Benjamin James
    Primary Supervisor
    Allan Ardill
    Other Supervisors
    William MacNeil
    Daniel Hourigan
    Year published
    2016
    Metadata
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    Abstract
    The writings of Slavoj Žižek have greatly expanded our understanding of how social stratification is maintained through ideology. However, those writing on the ideological operation of law are yet to engage with Žižek’s work. This thesis draws on Žižek’s multifaceted definition of ideology to provide unique insights into the ways that law is implicated in the maintenance of systemic inequality in liberal democracies. Ideology is defined as incorporating four interdependent and interrelated axes. The first axis, discourses, explains how communicative networks often controlled by the powerful lead people to view contingent, cultured and historic concepts necessary for social hierarchy as universal, egalitarian or eternal. It is asserted that the dominant legal norms of individual freedom and formal equality act in this way by masking the systemic oppression prevalent in liberal democracies. These norms also permeate abstract individualism and colonise popular understandings of two potentially revolutionary concepts. The second axis, spontaneous beliefs, analyses how people instinctively react to unfamiliar situations drawing on ideological discourses in ways that adapt, develop and individualise beliefs that are intimately entwined with social hierarchies. In daily experiences people draw on the dominant norms of abstraction and individualism permeated by law. In doing so these norms are amended to suit changing social conditions. The production of legal ideology is consequently not the exclusive terrain of professional ideologues like academics, politicians and judges but is assisted by people from all walks of life in seemingly mundane and ordinary circumstances.
    Thesis Type
    Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
    Degree Program
    Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
    School
    Griffith Law School
    Item Access Status
    Public
    Subject
    Slavoj Žižek
    Legal ideology
    Social stratification
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/367046
    Collection
    • Theses - Higher Degree by Research

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