Postmodern Anarchy in the Modern Legal Psyche: Law, Anarchy and Psychoanalytic Philosophy

Abstract

In many a romantic vision of the state dominating the aggressive nature of human beings, the yolk of anarchy stirs. But in our postmodern era, such a vision commits itself to a fundamental legal-epistemological dilemma: once you know the law, you cannot go back to a ?no law' space. This has led some theorists to follow Robert Nozick in seeking the meagre assurances of private property and open markets to regulate in the absence of a state apparatus that is too conflict-ridden, too corrupt to be remedied. However, it is the view of this discussion that such a theoretical purview misses several crucial features of the psyche of the contemporary Australian law revealed by Lacanian psychoanalysis. The purpose of this discussion is to draw on the recent High Court of Australia appeal Lacey v Attorney-General of Queensland (2011) 242 CLR 573 and related materials to the end of proposing a commentary on a philosophico-psychoanalytic theory of law's relation to anarchy.