Abstract
Following the murder of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter-movement (BLM) took to the streets to protest against institutional racism. In these protests, one could often hear the slogan “No Justice, No Peace”. Drawing on legal theory, speech act theory and phenomenology, this article investigates what kind of justice and peace are called upon and how the slogan functions as a claim addressed to the legal order. First, the article shows that the rule of law provides a comprehensive normative framework to evaluate what went wrong during the arrest of George Floyd. Second, the article maintains that the slogan should be understood as a passionate utterance in the sense of Stanley Cavell. Finally, drawing on a responsive phenomenology of legal order inspired by the work of Bernhard Waldenfels, the article concludes that the slogan is an extraordinary claim questioning the legal order, showing its contingent origins.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 94-110 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 4 Aug 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2 Jan 2024 |
Funding
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Conference “Confronting Discrimination: Phenomenological and Genealogical Perspectives” at the Department of Philosophy, University of Innsbruck (online) in October 2021 and at the Conference “People on Streets. Critical Phenomenologies of Embodied Resistance” at Paderborn University in May 2022. I am grateful to audiences at and organizers of both conferences for their remarks and questions, and especially to Marieke Borren and Maria Robaszkiewicz for including my contribution in this special issue. Many thanks also to the two anonymous reviewers of this journal for their very helpful comments. Any remaining mistakes are entirely my responsibility.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Universität Innsbruck |