My story, whose memory: notes on the autonomy and heteronomy of Law

Motha, Stewart (2022) My story, whose memory: notes on the autonomy and heteronomy of Law. Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 87B , pp. 1-18. ISSN 1059-4337.

Abstract

Reflecting on the myriad instances where juridical recognition demands a story, confession, testimony on suffering, or evidence of trauma – this essay 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 implications of, resisting the injunction to reveal all? Going beyond the usual bounds of juridically recognized testimony and evidence – I consider 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 tension between confidential stories of those who have suffered abuse, and the state’s archival drive to preserve such material; literary and metaphorical devices for narrating the past; and a consideration of nature and destruction where the human plays an infinitesimal part in making history.

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