Abstract

The ‘constitutive theory’ of law is in question in this essay. Where the task of external criticism is frequently handed to constitutive theorists of various sorts who engage in the description of ‘historical a priori’ structures that inform the subjects of law, Jean-Luc Nancy’s work leads to the possibility that at the historical a priori is a ‘site of abandonment’. As he uses it, ‘abandonment’ evokes the banishment of being – the singular, shared, openness of being, the resistance to identity that freedom designates – and at the same time evokes abundance. Abandonment is ‘the other of law which constitutes the law’. This essay addresses the importance of these claims for contemporary critical legal thought and concludes that by adopting a perspective informed by this sense of abandonment we approach a different articulation of law, community, and life.