Everything is dislocated: reading (dis)connections in Joseph Conrad and theories of justice and violence

Abstract

The relationship between law and justice has long been a concern of legal theory, but the gap of uncertainty, or aporia, between them has been a particular focus of recent jurisprudence. Some theorists, such as Costas Douzinas and Ronnie Warrington, have focused on the cleavage between judgment and the aspiration to ethical justice to the Other, while others, such as Robert Cover, Austin Sarat and Thomas Kearns, have worked on the gulf between law and justice in the face of violence and pain, within, caused by and before the law. This paper suggests that such theories are primarily concerned with problematised dislocation, as a critical technique and an observed state, which is also to be found in modernist fiction, especially in Joseph Conrad's Weltanschauung and literary style. It is argued that examining the disconnections that characterise Conrad's fiction, through engagement with his stories and secondary commentaries thereon, and combining that analysis with the study of dislocation in legal theory, permit the development of a richer picture of these shared concerns. On this basis, the paper constructs a distinct concept of ‘dislocation’ and suggests how it can supplement jurisprudential discussion.