The Reflexivity of Law and of Literature

Abstract

“As observed by Hart in the opening lines of The Concept of Law, «few questions concerning human society have been asked with such persistence and answered by serious thinkers in so many diverse, strange, and even paradoxical ways as the question 'What is law?'». The question What is Law? has a profoundly different meaning for a jurist than the question What is Chemistry? for a chemist. The reason is that law would not be possible, it would not even exist, without the question What is Law?. Law, in other words, exists only through the question through which it interpellates itself. Law does not institute itself, it does not exist, outside the question on what it is, on what makes it what it is. A similar claim can be made for literature. Literature is nothing but the question What is Literature? – at least since, as observed by Maurice Blanchot, Mallarmé wondered Quelque chose comme les Lettres existe-t-il?: «this question is literature itself» when literature has become a concern for its own essence . It is this reflexive movement – such that law and literature do not get to institute themselves without the question on themselves – that must be examined, to indicate the point where their separation, their distance, remains radical”.