Beatty Talk - Legitimatrix: Law, Ethics and the Digital Neo-Baroque

Legitimatrix: Law, Ethics and the Digital Neo-Baroque

New visual technologies are transforming the practice and theory of law. This raises new questions, such as: What authorizes visual meaning as a matter of law? And how will jurists deal with the recurring metaphysical anxiety that has long been associated with the potency of the image? The baroque and contemporary neo-baroque love/hate relationship with the image (what Bruno Latour calls “iconoclash”) reflects a recurring ‘either/or’ response: either the image is what it shows, either it is a transparent frame, like a window onto reality (the so-called “naïve realist” response) or it is a deceit that ought to be rejected, perhaps destroyed (the iconoclastic reaction).

Prof. Sherwin contends that the pictorial turn in law will eventually lead to a more rhetorically sophisticated response to law as image, but along the way what is left of our Cartesian assumptions about conventional semiotic meaning will be transformed. The prospect of that transformation – moving perhaps from the digital neo baroque to the aesthetic and ethical sublime – emerges as we continue to work through the cultural, cognitive, and metaphysical challenges that visualizing law presents.

Attendence of this conference provides 1.5 hours of continuing legal education hours to members of the Quebec Bar, as per the Bar's mandatory professional training requirements.

This event has been made possible by a grant from the Beatty Memorial Lectures Committee.

The Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas thanks the Department of Art History and Communication Studies and the Canada Research Chair in Law and Discourse for their support of this event.