Abstract

"This is a masterpiece overflowing with insight, argument, scholarship, and passion. This book will be much discussed, reviewed, and I would predict quickly acknowledged as a 'standard-setter' for interdisciplinary 'law and humanities' studies."--Robin L. West, Georgetown University Law Center "Wai Chee Dimock's brilliant book brings literature, law, and moral philosophy into kaleidoscopic interaction in order to examine concepts fundamental to all three. Stunningly clear in style yet full of unexpected turns of thought, this book will make readers think hard about the idea of justice--and it will urge them to reread the texts and traditions Dimock moves among so commandingly,"--Richard H. Brodhead, English, Yale University "Dimock's scholarship has long impressed me. Her new book only deepens my appreciation of the breadth of her scholarship, the probing and insightful nature of her analysis. Residues of Justice exemplifies the best in the new cultural studies. It fuses political philosophy and critical legal theory, literature and history without confusing distinctions between these fields--or the reader. It brilliantly grounds traditional western understandings of the nature of justice in a detailed understanding of the history and culture in which those understandings took form and then problematizes all by counterposing legal theory to literary texts. Her counterposing of Beccaria and James Fenimore Cooper, Marx and Melville, Chomsky and Whitman is dazzling. All interested in the new cultural studies, in critical legal theory, in the history of American culture will find Residues of Justice pathbreaking and invaluable."--Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania.