Law and Revolution in South Africa: uBuntu, Dignity, and the Struggle for Constitutional Transformation

by Drucilla Cornell

Overview

The relation between law and revolution is one of the most pressing questions of our time. As one country after another has faced the challenge that comes with the revolutionary overthrow of past dictatorships, how one reconstructs a new government is a burning issue.

South Africa, after a long and bloody armed struggle and a series of militant uprisings, negotiated a settlement for a new government and remains an important example of what a substantive revolution might look like. The essays collected in this book address both the broader question of law and revolution and some of the specific issues of transformation in South Africa.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823257607
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	04/03/2014
Series:	Just Ideas
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	740 KB

About the Author

Drucilla Cornell is Professor Emerita of Political Science, Comparative Literature, and Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University; Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Pretoria, South Africa; and a visiting professor at Birkbeck College, University of London. With a background in philosophy, law, and grassroots mobilization, she has played a central role in the organization of the memorable conferences on deconstruction and justice at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 1989, 1990, and 1993. She is the author of The Philosophy of the Limit (1992), Feminism and Pornography (2000), and Law and Revolution in South Africa: uBuntu, Dignity, and the Struggle for Constitutional Transformation (2014). She has also coedited several books: Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender (1987), with Seyla Benhabib; and Hegel and Legal Theory (1991) and Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (1992), with David Gray Carlson and Michel Rosenfeld. She is part of a philosophical exchange with Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, and Nancy Fraser entitled Feminist Contentions (1995). In addition to her academic work, she has written four produced plays.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Introduction: Transitional Justice Versus Substantive Revolution

Should Critical Theory Remain Revolutionary?
2. Is Technology a Fatal Destiny? The Relevance of Heidegger for South Africa and for All "Developing" Countries
3. Socialism or Radical Democratic Politics? On Laclau and Mouffe

The Legal Challenge of uBuntu
4. Dignity Violated: Rethinking AZAPO Through uBuntu
5. Which Law, Whose Humanity? The Significance of Policulturalism in the Global South
6. The Significance of the Living Customary Law for an Understanding of Law: Does Custom Allow for a Woman to Be Hosi?

The Struggle over uBuntu
7. uBuntu, Pluralism, and the Responsibility of Legal Academics to the New South Africa
8. Rethinking Ethical Feminism Through uBuntu
9. Is There a Difference that Makes a Difference Between Dignity and uBuntu?
10. Where Dignity Ends and uBuntu Begins - A Response by Yvonne Mokgoro and Stu Woolman

Conclusion: uBuntu and Subaltern Legality

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

"This book is a rare one-the reflections on philosophy, law, and political theory are profound and moving. Rather than reproduce the multiple stages of debate surrounding transitional justice—reconciliation vs. forgiveness, memory vs. forgetting—the author shifts the question toward what she calls 'substantive revolution.' This marks an advance in discussions of reconciliation and political life after massive, sustained spasms of violence. When one adds to that a significant dose of philosophy and critical theory- from Heidegger through contemporary political philosophers- the book takes on a new thread in theorizing transition and gives it real complexity. Substantive revolution is deepened by critical theory, critical theory is deepened by engagement with the concrete work of substantive revolution."-John Drabinski, Amherst College

From the Publisher

Partly focusing on South Africa as a case study, Cornell considers the challenge of reconstructing a government after the revolutionary overthrow of past dictatorships.

Journal of the American Bar Foundation Law & Social Inquiry

Law & Revolution in South Africa continues Drucilla Cornell’s path breaking work on indigenous law formation in post-apartheid South Africa. The essays collected here add to her evolving approach to fundamental ideas of law, politics, and ethics as informing uBuntu, living customary law, and dignity jurisprudence in South Africa. This book bears directly on the vibrant ongoing debate in South Africa about how to restore societal respect for law in light of its gross misappropriation during the many decades of abuse by colonialist and racist control of the country and the accompanying gruesome suppression of the native population. This is a fascinating debate that should be of interest to all those concerned with achieving legitimacy for the institutions and procedures of legality following a transition to constitutional democracy, and especially the extent to which values embedded in customary legal traditions can be used by courts in wrestling with sensitive legal disputes from morally reconstructive perspectives.

Princeton University - Richard Falk

This book is a rare one–the reflections on philosophy, law, and political theory are profound and moving. Rather than reproduce the multiple stages of debate surrounding transitional justice – reconciliation vs. forgiveness, memory vs. forgetting– the author shifts the question toward what she calls ‘substantive revolution.’ This marks an advance in discussions of reconciliation and political life after massive, sustained spasms of violence. When one adds to that a significant dose of philosophy and critical theory – from Heidegger through contemporary political philosophers – the book takes on a new thread in theorizing transition and gives it real complexity. Substantive revolution is deepened by critical theory, critical theory is deepened by engagement with the concrete work of substantive revolution.

Amherst College - John Drabinski