Focusing on the ‘problem’ of pleasure _Law, Orientalism and Postcolonialism_ uncovers the organizing principles by which the legal subject was colonized. That occidental law was complicit in colonial expansion is obvious. What remains to be addressed, however, is the manner in which law and legal discourse sought to colonize individual subjects as subjects of law. It was through the permission of pleasure that modern Western subjects were refined and domesticated. Legally sanctioned outlets for private and social enjoyment instilled and continue (...) to instil within the individual tight self-control over behaviour. There are, however, states of behaviour considered to be repugnant to, and in excess of, modern codes of civility. Drawing on a broad range of literature,, yet concentrating on the experience of British India, the argument here is that such excesses were deemed to be an Oriental phenomenon. Through the encounter with the Orient and with the fantasy of its excess, Piyel Haldar concludes, the relationship between the subject and the law was transformed, and must therefore be re-assessed. (shrink)

This essay examines the iconography and role of animals in medieval and early modern bestiaries. In being without original sin “God’s creatures” were deemed proximate to divine perfection and to salvation. Animals, whether symbolic or actual, both instructed man’s moral behaviour and ushered man towards salvation. Bestiaries, it will be argued, are keys to understanding how modern law would eventually co-ordinate itself in relation to the concept of a future salvic moment.