Three Metaphors for a New Conception of Law: The Frontier, the Baroque, and the South

Abstract

are entering a period of paradigmatic transition. From the paradigm of modernity we have come to a new paradigm which by now can only be defined inadequately. The inevitability of such inadequacy lends to the name of postmodernity its grain of truth. Periods of paradigmatic transition are periods of fierce competition among rival epistemologies and knowledges. They are, therefore, periods of radical thinking-both deconstructive and reconstructive thinking. When viewed from the old outgoing paradigm, they are periods of unthinking or of utopia. When viewed from the new, incoming paradigm, they are periods of temporary and fragile scaffoldings, emergent ruins sustaining nothing but themselves, witnessing nothing but the future. In periods of paradigmatic transition, all competing knowledges reveal themselves as rhetorical in nature, bundles of arguments and of premises of argumentation which circulate inside rhetorical audiences. Indeed, what distinguishes the audiences are the specific arguments and premises of argumentation that they consider valid and convincing or persuasive. In the specific paradigmatic transition we are now entering, any given discipline, be it sociology of law or archeology, tends to be constituted by a larger or smaller number of rival rhetorical audiences. The level of real