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![handle is hein.journals/slps89 and id is 1 raw text is: CHAPTER 1
MY STORY, WHOSE MEMORY:
NOTES ON THE AUTONOMY
AND HETERONOMY OF LAW
Stewart Motha
ABSTRACT
Reflecting on the myriad instances where juridical recognition demands a story, con-
fession, testimony on suffering, or evidence of trauma - this chapter considers the
role of storytelling and narrative in constituting the legal person, their persona, and
relationship they have to a community or the state. What are the forces that drive
the demand to give an account of oneself? What are the reasons for, and implica-
tions of resisting the injunction to reveal all? Going beyond the usual bounds of
juridically recognised testimony and evidence - the author considers how memory
moves across time and space in human and non-human material formations. These
questions are posed to open discussion of a wider concern about the autonomy and
heteronomy of law. Looking beyond the separation of law and morality in positivist
jurisprudence - the autonomy/heteronomy distinction is a means of getting at the
co-constitution of the human and non-human. The discussion thus ranges across the
philosophies of history that constitute autonomy/heteronomy - examining the ten-
sion between confidential stories of those who have suffered abuse, and the state's
archival drive to preserve such material; literary and metaphorical devices for nar-
rating the past; and a consideration of nature and destruction where the human
plays an infinitesimal part in making history.
Keywords: Autonomy; heteronomy; legal person; A-G of Canada v. Larry
Fontaine [2017] 2 S.C.R 206; colonial violence; slavery; philosophy of
history; Walter Benjamin; Cornelius Castoriadis; Neil MacComick; W. G
Sebald; Christina Sharpe
Interrupting the Legal Person
Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Volume 87B, 1-18
Copyright © 2022 by Stewart Motha
Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited
ISSN: 1059-4337/doi:10.1108/S105943372022000087B001
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