Andrew T Kenyon, Faculty of Law, University of Melbourne and Esther Milne, Department of Media, Literature and Film, Swinburne University
What can the work of social and legal theorists Gunther Teubner and Niklas Luhmann offer to law and literature? Is Mars the only destination or vantage point their work suggests to academics or lawyers involved in the fields?
Autopoietic theories envisage law as a normatively closed system within a functionally differentiated society. Law can be seen as a self-referential system that is reproduced through its own communications. The legal system is seen to be cognitively open to external events. External events, however, have no direct connection to the legal system and they have an incommensurably different interpretation within law. The legal system constructs the outside in the system's own terms, so there is no unitary source of authority external to the legal system. This may suggest the legal world makes no sense, it makes legal meaning. What meaning may it make of a work such as Italo Calvino's 'A King Listens'? In what way does the world of Calvino's kingdom operate? The authors will clarify and extend the consideration of autopoiesis in law and literature.