I was supposed to write about law school every week. Post my notes as a gut reaction to the elitist nature of legal education. Instead, I have been mute for 9 months, the longest lull on elab. I could tell you that law school purposely submerges students precisely so they don’t have time to think – or blog- about the inner war also known as « learning to think like a lawyer ». This violent molecular rearrangement hasn’t worked out that well in my case. Like a recalcitrant adolescent –law school is very infantilising-, I have adopted a rather reactionary stance. But this might come off as a convenient explanation. The truth is: I am still unable to fully explain processes of power allocation and perpetuation in legal education and practice.

While I have written about the dynamics of power subversion and reappropriation, I’ve grown skeptical about law as a mere addition to one’s progressive arsenal. Like many students in the faculty, I came to law school to change the world. And like most of my first year classmates, I am now confronted to a reality where the power of law is limited. Lucidity mandates a questioning of « laypersons » somewhat naïve fantasy as to what one can accomplish through law. Duncan Kennedy offers the most acute description of my type: part judo player, part acrobat, needing the tables to align exactly her way. As an artist I am interested –and relegated- to precariousness and walking a thin line, always. But law has failed to afford the stability and legroom I somewhat candidly envisioned.

The deep enshrined hierarchy in the legal domain, the individualistic undertones tones of the rights discourse and the pervasive undermining of critical approaches to the benefit of an economic perspective based on the fiction of rational actors seriously curtail the potential of law as a motor for social change. Some of these obstacles are given, but the energy spent simultaneously learning and unlearning law is typically underestimated.

Some quit. Because there is no support system for this transplant rejection. No script for going forward. No SERE handbook for persevering in hostile territory. No protocol for disenchantment. No encouragement whatsoever. No recognition of non-legal accomplishments. And no cyanide pill in the prospect of enemy capture, thank god, because I’d have taken it on September 2nd.

Just the prospect of finiteness.

Reminiscent of an art performance innit?