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24 L. & Critique 1 (2013)

handle is hein.journals/lwcrtq24 and id is 1 raw text is: Law Critique (2013) 24:1-22 DOI 10.1007/s10978-012-9114-9 The Law and the Statuesque Martin A. Kayman Published online: 7 December 2012 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012 Abstract Law and literature, an exemplary product of the textual turn in the study of culture, has found itself challenged by the more recent visual turn in critical thought. However, debate hitherto has been largely based on a two-dimensional approach to the visual. By going beyond the metaphor of the 'legal screen' in favour of a theory of the 'statuesque', this essay adds a new dimension to the way we think about the force of law in culture. Drawing on eighteenth-century and contemporary aesthetic theory, and twentieth- and twenty-first-century public art, the article pre- sents an account of the political aesthetics of law in which a place for the possibility of justice may be made. Keywords Johann Herder - Law and literature - Legal aesthetics - Richard Serra Sculpture - Statue - Stele - Trafalgar Square - 7 July Memorial 'all the Laws of this Kingdom have some Monuments or Memorials ... in Writing' (Hale 1971, p. 1) 'Sculpture is a category so obvious that it is usually taken for granted, and at the same time a little awkward, partly because it disrupts the pervasive logic of the two-dimensional image in modern culture.... The awkwardness of sculpture is a significant feature of the modern visual imagination, and its more substantial ramifications extend well beyond the limits of sculptural aesthetics.' (Potts 2000, p. ix) M. A. Kayman (E) Cardiff School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Percival Building, Cardiff University, Wales CF10 3EU, UK e-mail: KaymanM@cardiff.ac.uk _ Springer