1st Edition
David Bowie Outlaw Essays on Difference, Authenticity, Ethics, Art & Love
This book explores the relevance of David Bowie’s life and music for contemporary legal and cultural theory. Focusing on the artist and artworks of David Bowie, this book brings to life, in essay form, particular theoretical ideas, creative methodologies and ethical debates that have contemporary relevance within the fields of law, social theory, ethics and art. What unites the essays presented here is that they all point to a beyond law: to the fact that law is not enough, or to be more precise, too much, too much to bear. For those who, like Bowie, see art, creativity and love as what ought to be the central organising principles of life, law will not do. In the face of its certainties, its rigidities, and its conceits, these essays, through Bowie, call forth the monster who laughs at the law, celebrate inauthenticity as a deeper truth, explore the ethical limits of art, cut up the laws of writing and embrace that which is most antithetical to law, love. This original engagement with the limits of law will appeal to those working in legal theory, ethics and law and popular culture, as well as in art and cultural studies.
1.Introduction. 2.Law’s Monsters: the Hopeful Undecidability of David Bowie. 3.Authenticity: What a Drag . 4. ‘Flirting’ with Fascism: The Thin White Duke, Art and Ethical Limits. 5. Cutting Up the Laws of Writing: The Burroughs Effect. 6. Bowie Love: Beyond Law. 7. References
Biography
Alex Sharpe is a professor of law at the University of Warwick. She is the author of Sexual Intimacy and Gender Identity ‘Fraud’ (Routledge, 2018), Foucault’s Monsters and the Challenge of Law (Routledge, 2010) and Transgender Jurisprudence (Cavendish, 2002).
David Bowie Outlaw undoubtedly belongs with those few great texts on music that are equal to the wild glories that inspired their creation. It is as perfectly formed as a Mick Ronson riff. It's like the build from Suffragette City, funnelling and intensifying its own energies. You need to be a great act to pull off a thesis as bold as this: Bowie is a law giver but, unlike most law givers, Bowie’s law destroys the law: the only command is ‘create afresh’. Sharpe’s Bowie is a figure of ethics, or a spirit that knows its own wealth must be constantly squandered. This is not philosophy, this is not jurisprudence, this is a genocide of old ideas and dead forms. Here is the secret Sharpe shares with us: We are Bowie.
Adam Gearey, Professor of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London
