Abstract

Jurisprudential debates on the place of law within the concept of anarchy are limited. Welack thorough arguments on whether law is negated by this concept, or whether anarchy requiressome kind of specific legal organisation. This article seeks to help enliven such discourse by exploring Emmanuel Levinas?s writings on the subject. Levinas?s account of anarchy as anirreducible and emancipatory ingredient of human subjectivity has the nuance capable of addressing the contradictions that dog any attempt to philosophise an anarchic account of the law. Ultimately, it will be argued that Levinas allows us to think of anarchy not as requiring the expunging or co-optionof law, but as connected to law in a mode of perpetual ethical resistance.