Capitalism and the Equity Fetish: Desire, Property, Justice

ISBN-13: 9783030665258 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022 / 244 str.

Robert Herian

Opis

This book is a provocative, interdisciplinary, and critical appraisal of civil justice, property, and the laws that shape and command them within capitalism. Dr. Herian’s book is both a complementary and countervailing narrative to many mainstream legal accounts, one that critiques core and influential areas of legal knowledge and practice. Central to the book’s thesis is a rich collaboration of ideas and perspectives that consider what is at stake from institutions, concepts, and practices of equity and civil justice tied to the subjective psychic life and the unconscious desires of capitalist stakeholders. The book aims to address several questions, including how capitalism has imagined and shaped equity and civil justice since the nineteenth century; how capitalism acts as a well-spring of desire for forms of justice that wrap-around and sustain complex frameworks of private property power and ownership; and how equity supports agile neoliberal strategies of justice and reason in the twenty-first century.

Spis treści

Foreword

Chapter 1: Introduction

Why Equity?

Structure and scope

Method

Conclusion

Chapter 2: Setting the Scene

Introduction

The (ir)rational structure of law

Am I an Equity fetishist?

Chapter 3: Reform economics and the ‘Plucked Rib’ of Equity

Introduction

The pleasure, pain, and pannomion of Jeremy Bentham

The age of reform and capital

The age of Judicature

Chapter 4: The Road to Complete Justice

Introduction

A problem called Chancery

Equity as a means to complete justice

Conclusion

Chapter 5: Stakeholders of Capitalism

Introduction

The stakeholder

Private property power

Trusts, securities and the fantasy of finding the lost object

Conclusion

Chapter 6: A Different Theory of Civil Justice

An introduction to Equity fetishism

The language of Equity

Freud with Marx

Chapter 7: Fetishism in Action

Introduction

Fetishism and ideology

Concepts in relation to fetishism

Chapter 8: Equity Fetishism

Introduction

Belief

Disavowal

Memorialization

Summary

Chapter 9: Neoliberalism & Equity Fetishism

Introduction

The law of neoliberalism

Equity within neoliberal thought

Legal contortionism as neoliberal strategy

Conclusion

Chapter 10: Law and the Reality it Masks

Introduction

(In)competent justice

The politics of Equity

References

Index

O autorze

Dr. Robert Herian is Senior Lecturer at The Open University Law School (UK) and Co-Founder of the Equity and Trusts Research Network. Robert’s research encompasses equity, trusts, and property law; psychoanalysis; legal history; critical theory and philosophy. He lives in Northwest England with his partner, Chloe, and their border terrier, Billy.

Blurb

This book is a provocative, interdisciplinary, and critical appraisal of civil justice, property, and the laws that shape and command them within capitalism. Dr. Herian’s book is both a complementary and countervailing narrative to many mainstream legal accounts, one that critiques core and influential areas of legal knowledge and practice.  Central to the book’s thesis is a rich collaboration of ideas and perspectives that consider what is at stake from institutions, concepts, and practices of equity and civil justice tied to the subjective psychic life and the unconscious desires of capitalist stakeholders. The book aims to address several questions, including how capitalism has imagined and shaped equity and civil justice since the nineteenth century; how capitalism acts as a well-spring of desire for forms of justice that wrap-around and sustain complex frameworks of private property power and ownership; and how equity supports agile neoliberal strategies of justice and reason in the twenty-first century.

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Dr. Robert Herian is Senior Lecturer at The Open University Law School (UK) and Co-Founder of the Equity and Trusts Research Network. Robert’s research encompasses equity, trusts, and property law; psychoanalysis; legal history; critical theory and philosophy.  He lives in Northwest England with his partner, Chloe, and their border terrier, Billy.