“Das Recht ist kein Kreißsaal für die Gerechtigkeit”: Law, justice, and legal violence in the literature and politics of Juli Zeh
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Juli Zeh has been described as "eine Schriftstellerin, Juristin und Gegenwartsseziererin," and it is rare that a discussion of her literary oeuvre does not also reference her legal work (Zeh, "Warum").Literature, law, and a critical stance toward many developments in German contemporary politics are three strands that have wound their way through Zeh's fiction and non-fiction work.Her political activism was recently on display in her response to the regulation and management of the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany, which she criticized both in the public sphere (Soboczynski) and in her novel Über Menschen (2021).This critique of political responses to an urgent and unexpected situation is characteristic of Zeh, who had earlier criticized state responses to the threat of terrorism in both her non-fiction work, such as Angriff auf die Freiheit (2009), and in her literary publications, including Corpus Delicti (2009).In her criticism of state responses to these challenges, Zeh has been particularly concerned to highlight two factors: the privileging of security over freedom and the use of appeals to an Ausnahmezustand to justify the imposition of restrictions on individual freedom.However, despite the almost ubiquitous references to her legal training and current work as an honorary judge of the constitutional court in Brandenburg in scholarly discussions of both her literary writing and her political stance, the influence of jurisprudence on her literature, and the connection between this and her political interventions, is something of an underexplored field.Academic contributions in this area to date have tended to concentrate on Zeh's reflection on and critique of legal procedure, but there is more work to be done on the impact of legal philosophy on her literary work and the direct line that may be drawn between this and her public advocacy.
Source: The German Quarterly
DOI: 10.1111/gequ.12400
Author: Kylie Giblett
Institution: The University of Sydney
Language: German
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,630
OpenAlex ID: W4387859349