The Next Dada Utopian Visioning Peace Orchestra: Constitutional Theory and the Aspirational
The McGill Law Journal is pleased to invite you to attend its Annual Lecture, to be delivered by acclaimed Professor Mari Matsuda, from the University of Hawai'i.
Accreditation for 1.5 hours of continuing legal education for jurists is pending.
A cocktail reception will follow in the Atrium.
Overview
In 2015, a law professor attempted to build an orchestra comprising instruments constructed out of the waste stream. These instruments, made from trash and discards, wielded by volunteer musicians, were the constituent parts of The Next Dada Utopian Visioning Peace Orchestra. In its public debut, the orchestra presented a Manifesto of Radical Intersubjective Collectivity and Imagined Possibility.* Like most endeavors in the Dada tradition, this one included a strong dose of the absurd, but, as with original Dada, this sense of the absurd came out of visceral reaction to the carnage of war and the stubborn pursuit of art in the face of trauma.
The premise of this lecture is that we have reached an interesting moment in human history. Either we will become deeply aspirational in our Constitutional interpretation or we will face other challenges. What does an orchestra made out of discarded objects have to do with the foundational documents of self-governance? What do critical race theory and feminist legal theory have to say about art, and what does art have to say about justice? Is a utopian vision required in order to implement change through law? And where do we begin if our charge is to change radically, now, before it is too late? Maybe the Orchestra knows.
About the speaker
Mari J. Matsuda is an American lawyer, activist, and law professor at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii.
Her intellectual influence extends beyond law reviews (she authored three entries on a Yale Law School librarian's list of the ten most-cited law review articles) to include articles in academic and popular journals such as Amerasia Journal and Ms. Magazine. She is one of the leading voices in critical race theory since its inception. Her publications on reparations and affirmative action are frequently cited.
