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25 L. & Critique 1 (2014)

handle is hein.journals/lwcrtq25 and id is 1 raw text is: Law Critique (2014) 25:1-13 DOI 10.1007/s10978-013-9131-3 Supplements: Law and Resistance-Turkey and Brazil Bethania Assy - Bagak Ertiir Published online: 22 January 2014 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 Introduction by Illan Rua Wall With the financial crash of 2008, a new wave of radical political activity emerged, both drawing on the old networks of the anti-globalisation movements and generating distinct modes and objects. These dispersed and dissonant revolts, occupations and protests have proliferated and, as has become clear, they demand thought. Journals have been a privileged place for critical schools to work out their political and theoretical perspectives. One only need think of the significance of Tel Quel for a certain postmodernism, for instance. Law and Critique has generated a space for types of theoretical inquiry that were previously not possible to place within legal scholarship. It has facilitated pioneering works of postmodern jurisprudence, law and aesthetics, and law and psychoanalysis. The journal article presents the possibility of developing new avenues of inquiry or thrashing out contradictions and conflicts in a concise fashion. Yet the danger here is that we maintain an idealised view. We cannot ignore the function of journals and their peer-review structures in neoliberalised higher education. An article placed in a journal becomes a point of measurement, capable of being aggregated with the journal impact factor in order to calculate the value or worth of an individual researcher (and by extension their school and university) (Burrows 2012). The journal is a node wherein 'academic value' is generated (ibid). Of course from the perspective of the journal, this works as an apparatus of capture: to survive, the journal must seek out 'good copy' and it therefore becomes caught in a scramble for B. Assy (E) Pontifical University of Rio de Janeiro and State University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil e-mail: bethania.assy@gmail.com B. Erttir School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC 1E 7HX, UK e-mail: b.ertur@bbk.ac.uk I Springer