Przemysław Tacik’s research while affiliated with Jagiellonian University and other places

In this paper I develop a theory of judicial subjectivity based on Lacan’s psychoanalysis. This theory is enriched with a theoretical confrontation with the abyssal laboratory of populist governance which has been created by the far-right majority in Poland since 2015. By adding this empirical context, I enquire how agency of judges is being created by the split legal system. The subjectivity of the judicial function implies speaking modestly in the name of the law, but at the same time involves being addressed by the demands of the Big Other. Yet at the same time the judge holds in her hands the jouissance of the law: it is the judge that can ultimately – with the effect of recognition within the Symbolic – acknowledge or refused validity of the law. It is in the judge’s subjectivity that the law can be recreated or can collapse. The peculiar link between the judge and her master is located in judicial conscience: the place where the subject’s structural emptiness corresponds to the lack within the law. As I argue in the paper, this role comes to the fore in case of split legal systems – such as the Polish one – which address judges with contradictory norms. In such moment the judge becomes ‘a judicial Antigone’ in Lacanian interpretation: a person on whose personal self-identification the legal system itself depends. Such a judicial Antigone – with empirical examples of Polish judges – is both the utmost hero and the utmost victim of the law. En este artículo desarrollo una teoría de la subjetividad judicial basada en el psicoanálisis de Lacan. Dicha teoría se enriquece con una confrontación teórica con el laboratorio abisal de la gobernanza populista que ha creado la mayoría de extrema derecha en Polonia desde 2015. Añadiendo este contexto empírico, investigo cómo un sistema legal dividido está creando la agencia de los jueces. La subjetividad de la función judicial implica hablar modestamente en nombre de la ley, pero al mismo tiempo implica ser abordado por las demandas del Gran Otro. Sin embargo, al mismo tiempo, el juez tiene en sus manos el goce de la ley: es el juez el que puede, en última instancia -con el efecto del reconocimiento dentro de lo Simbólico–, reconocer o rechazar la validez de la ley. Es en la subjetividad del juez donde la ley puede recrearse o derrumbarse. El vínculo peculiar entre el juez y su amo se localiza en la conciencia judicial: el lugar donde el vacío estructural del sujeto se corresponde con la ausencia dentro de la ley. Como sostengo en el artículo, este papel pasa a un primer plano en el caso de los sistemas jurídicos divididos –como el polaco– que dirigen a los jueces normas contradictorias. En ese momento, el juez se convierte en “una Antígona judicial”, según la interpretación lacaniana: una persona de cuya autoidentificación personal depende el propio sistema jurídico. Tal Antígona judicial –con ejemplos empíricos de jueces polacos– es a la vez el máximo héroe y la máxima víctima de la ley.

The present introductory chapter offers an overarching background narrative on the semi-peripheral condition of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), impacting upon its legal and political culture, against the backdrop of which the current right-wing populist tendencies have emerged. It first addresses the potential of a criticojuridical engagement with authoritarian populism emphasising the need for a proper critical methodology, including ideology critique, and going beyond the point of view of liberal legality. The chapter also looks into the semi-peripheral status of Central and Eastern Europe, reading against not only the world system theory of Immanuel Wallerstein, but also post-colonial theory, as well as the theory of legal transplants. Finally, the chapter sets the broader historical context in which the CEE variety of right-wing illiberal populism has emerged, characterised by weak institutional traditions, frequent and profound transformations, and deep historical traumas affecting the law, politics, economy, and society in the region.

The paper attempts to grasp conceptually the nature of law application in zones of confined life. Drawing upon empirical research, it uses the example of closed centres for foreigners. Approaching the topic with methods of sociology of law and legal anthropology, as well as drawing on Agamben’s conceptualisations of law and life, I would like to propose a more general understanding of the role that law plays in total institutions such as detention centres. A great majority of legal provisions pertaining to them is stipulated with the intention of defending the detainees from abuses of power. Nonetheless, the positivist view of the law which translates noble principles, enshrined in constitutions and international law, into low-rank acts and then regulates the behaviour of officers, is at odds with the practice revealed by the sociological and anthropological research. The law remains a foreign body to officers: it is acknowledged as a body of rules which officially regulate all the actions of the institution, but in truth it functions rather as the Other’s gaze. It embodies external control and the possibility of intervention. As such, it never regulates the actions per se (it is too unfamiliar to do so), but rather constitutes an external foothold which stops officers from applying all the methods of discipline that they spontaneously invent. It also provides a free object of criticism which mediates between officers’ projected goals of border guards and their expected practice. Consequently, the vision of the law as a tool that ‘regulates’ detention centres is empirically contradicted. The paper addresses this relation with the use of Agambenian conceptuality, seeking points of contact between the law and life as well asking to what degree life is lawrepellent in confined zones.

Celem artykułu jest zmierzenie się z klasycznym enfant terrible austriackiej kultury – Thomasem Bernhardem – z jednoczesną próbą zadania pytania o relacje pomiędzy wymogiem prawdomówności a prawowitym Nestbeschmutzungiem. Bernharda często dezawuowano jako pełnego sarkazmu i złośliwości szaleńca, który z niesprawiedliwego obrażania wspólnoty czerpał przyjemność. Tymczasem, jak staram się pokazać w tekście, demaskacja wspólnotowej przemocy działa u Bernharda na o wiele głębszym poziomie niż prosto pojęta paresia. Proza Bernharda przyjmuje strukturę fugi, w której bohaterowie zmagają się z problemem swojego jednoczesnego upodmiotowienia i uprzedmiotowienia. To właśnie struktura owej fugi pełni funkcje demaskatorskie i parezjastyczne, o wiele istotniejsze niż wmieszane w nią „oszczercze” treści. W ostatecznej instancji jest strategią przeciwstawienia się obezwładniającej władzy i próbą poszukiwania upodmiotowienia poza jej zasięgiem. Bernhard. Nestbeschmutzer and Compulsion of Repetition Against Power The paper addresses the work of an enfant terrible of the post-war Austrian culture, Thomas Bernhard, by posing questions about the relation between veridiction and a proper Nestbeschmuzung. Bernhard was frequently downplayed as a sarcastic and spiteful madman who drew sick pleasure from insulting his community. Nonetheless, as I demonstrate in the paper, the unveiling of systemic violence in Bernhard’s oeuvre reaches much deeper than just paresia. Bernhard’s prose has a structure of the fugue in which protagonists struggle with their own subjectification and objectification. It is precisely this structure of the fugue that possesses unmasking and paresiastic functions that go beyond the role of insults which make up a good part of the content this structure gives a form to. Ultimately, the fugue is a strategy to counter the overwhelming power and seek the subjectification outside of its realm.