Responsibility, refusal, and return: Thoughts on an ethics of inclination

Abstract

In this article written in honour of Desmond Tutu, I raise inclination as put forward by Cavarero, together with disorientation/reorientation, as per Ahmed and Honig, to think differently about law, rule of law, and legal culture. Drawing on Ndebele, Klare and Van der Walt, I consider inclination as being also about abandoning those vertical and upright certitudes acquired by habit and culture. An ethics and ontology of inclination could, by way of refusal, disclose alternative understandings of law and rule of law. It could challenge those assumptions of certainty and truth that are so central to formalist and black-letter takes on law and current legal culture. I raise inclination also in the vein of a minor jurisprudence and joining McVeigh and Barr’s writing on minor jurisprudence to engage with the question of how to take responsibility for a lawful life, how to respond to the legacy of the past.