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One - Unsettling Times

from Part One - The Tragic Optimism of the Law: THE END OF A STORY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2023

Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Summary

There is today so much inequality, discrimination, and uncertainty concerning the future that the lives of most people in the world are dominated by fear rather than by hope. However, people cannot afford to be so pessimistic, given that their struggle for survival, an urgent and inescapable everyday task, is at stake. Their struggle will be all the more successful, and their revolt all the more likely to attract followers, if more and more people come to the realization that the hopeless fear of powerless majorities stems from the fearless hope of powerful minorities. This epochal condition endows our time with an atmosphere of monstrosity, i.e. the unpredictable and uninsurable risk to avert vulnerability, the almost incommensurable power differences between oppressors and oppressed, and systemic impunity. Monsters present themselves as specifically disturbing threats, while at the same time constituting realms within which there is room for manoeuvre and resistance. This chapter identifies seven such threats.

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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Unsettling Times
  • Boaventura de Sousa Santos, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • Book: Law and the Epistemologies of the South
  • Online publication: 07 August 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316662441.002
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  • Unsettling Times
  • Boaventura de Sousa Santos, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • Book: Law and the Epistemologies of the South
  • Online publication: 07 August 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316662441.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Unsettling Times
  • Boaventura de Sousa Santos, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • Book: Law and the Epistemologies of the South
  • Online publication: 07 August 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316662441.002
Available formats
×