L'institution de la vie en images

The French legal historian, psychoanalyst and jurist Pierre Legendre has developed an unusual legal theory. At its heart lies the concept of law as an institution. It is the function of law to institutionalise life in the world. The law thereby acts as the central agent between the transcendent and the subject in our societies. Performing this function, it draws on the media of staging and imagery. This article presents the essential features of Legendre’s theoretical construct. It emphasises the aspects in which it contrasts with established concepts of institution and law by assuming the institution as given at any time, and accordingly by placing the law at the constitutive centre of society. It argues that the price paid by such an understanding is an intensification of the problem of transcendence in law. Its thesis is that Legendre’s strategies in responding to this problem, namely processes of visualisation and ontological arguments, become absorbed in tautologies and hence risk the explanatory value of his entire legal theory.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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