Catherine Malabou's concept of plasticity has influenced and inspired scholars from across disciplines. The contributors to _Plastic Materialities_—whose fields include political philosophy, critical legal studies, social theory, literature, and philosophy—use Malabou's innovative combination of post-structuralism and neuroscience to evaluate the political implications of her work. They address, among other things, subjectivity, science, war, the malleability of sexuality, neoliberalism and economic theory, indigenous and racial politics, and the relationship between the human and non-human. _Plastic Materialities_ also includes three essays by Malabou (...) and an interview with her, all of which bring her work into conversation with issues of sovereignty, justice, and social order for the first time. Contributors. Brenna Bhandar, Silvana Carotenuto, Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, Jairus Victor Grove, Catherine Kellogg, Catherine Malabou, Renisa Mawani, Fred Moten, Alain Pottage, Michael J. Shapiro, Alberto Toscano. (shrink)

In this article the author examines Fitzpatrick’s foundational critique of liberal legality and racism, a theme which remained central to his decades-long excavation of modern law’s self-identity. After considering Fitzpatrick’s ‘separation thesis’, the author then turns to consider the ways in which neoliberal legality is parasitic upon liberal legal racial formations while at the same time, obscuring the foundational place of race in contemporary capitalism by subsuming material life within its modes of value extraction.

On 29 March 2017, the United Kingdom Government notified the European Council of its intention to withdraw from the European Union legal order. On 31 January 2020, the UK entered a transition period, during which it remains bound to the EU Treaty Framework. This review essay examines the near three-year period of the UK’s attempted cessation from the EU. It argues that what is most striking about the Brexit case is that it reveals the extent to which EU member states (...) remain bound by ideologies and tropes developed during the era of European colonisation—even in their relationship with each other. The review essay draws upon Brenna Bhandar’s Colonial lives of property: Law, Land and racial regimes of ownership, Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson’s Rule Britannia: Brexit and the end of empire, and Eva Mackey’s Unsettled expectations: Uncertainty, land and settler decolonization to show how Brexit bears upon themes that have long preoccupied postcolonial scholars working in a variety of contexts and geographical locations. From the Brexit example, the review article highlights the persistence of colonial projects of invention and the appropriative techniques and tropes that attend these and, above all, it highlights the necessity of decolonial violence. (shrink)