Public-Private Seminar with Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos
Public-Private Seminar with Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos
Atmosphere, or the indistinction between private and public
I deal with airs and sounds and scents, while keeping an eye on the law. My field of enquiry is the interstitial area between sensory and affective occurrences, namely sensory experiences that are traditionally thought to be a causal result of external stimuli, and affective experiences that are mostly associated with emotional changes and generally allude to something internal. I am arguing that there is no constructive difference between internal and external origin of occurrences, indeed that the boundary between the public and the private is merely a question of philosophical positioning. In its stead, I suggest the concept of atmosphere, namely an attempt at understanding affective occurrences as excessive, collective, spatial and elemental. However, it quickly becomes apparent that an atmosphere is politically and legally determined. Politics and law control affective occurrences by regulating property of sensory stimulation. At the same time, they guide bodies into corridors of sensory compulsion – an aspect of which is consumerism in capitalist societies. This is achieved by allowing certain sensory options to come forth while suppressing others, something which is particularly obvious in cases of intellectual property protection that capture the sensorial. I deal with the apparent need to distinguish between private and public in its material, spatial manifestation and in particular through what I have called the ‘lawscape’, namely the fusion of space and normativity. I employ a broadly Deleuzian and Luhmannian methodology with insights from radical geography, affective studies, urban and critical legal theory.
Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, LLB, LLM, PhD, has read Law in Thessaloniki, Greece, as well as in other European cities. He completed his LLM at King's College, London, and his PhD at Birkbeck College, London. He is Professor of Law & Theory and Director of the Westminster International Law & Theory Centre at the University of Westminster, London, an international research centre in the heart of London with a vibrant series of events, publications, internships and research clusters. Andreas's research interests include critical legal theory, autopoiesis, philosophy, psychoanalysis, architecture, geography, art, phenomenology, and their critical instances of confluence. He researches in the areas of environmental law, EU law, human rights and critical jurisprudence. Andreas has been awarded the Oxford University Press National Law Teacher of the Year Award 2011.
The seminar is part of the Public Private Platform Seminar Series.