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33 L. & Critique 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/lwcrtq33 and id is 1 raw text is: Law and Critique (2022) 33:1-22 https://doi.org/1 0.1007/si 0978-021-09304-z The Power of Spectacle: The 2012 Quebec Student Strike and the Transformative Potential of Law Honor Brabazon' Accepted: 25 June 2021 / Published online: 28 August 2021 ŠThe Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2021 Abstract Recent iterations in international legal thought of the debate over the transforma- tive potential of law have tended to echo the long-standing assumption that radi- cal movements, when they employ law-based tactics, do so in the same manner as reformist movements: they mobilise the legitimacy of law for short-term goals, only with more radical long-term goals in mind. However, movements such as the 2012 student strike in the Canadian province of Quebec demonstrate more diverse, crea- tive engagements with law that openly mock the legal system in an effort to simulta- neously delegitimise the current legal order. This article argues that this movement's approach is consistent with the notion of an 'impudent' use of law as politics (Bra- bazon 2017b) but also extends it further to include ideas raised by this movement's theatrical 'over-compliance' with law, through which the movement turned law itself into a public spectacle. The article examines instances of the state's unprecedented mobilisation of the legal system to contain the student strike and the student strikers' creative and subversive engagements with law in response, illustrating how the ideas thrown up by this movement can advance theoretical discussion in legal scholarship about law's transformative potential. Keywords Law and social change - Legal theory - Quebec student strike- Transformative potential of law Introduction For seven months in 2012, 160,000 students engaged in what became the long- est university strike in Canadian history and the largest political mobilisation in the history of Quebec (Peres 2012; Nadeau-Dubois and Martin 2013; Rosenfeld 2012). The strike began as a response to the Quebec government's 75% tuition E Honor Brabazon honor.brabazon@uwaterloo.ca Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, St Jerome's University in the University of Waterloo, 290 Westmount Road North, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G3, Canada I_) Springer