Michael Dellwing, Kassel: Das Recht und das Monster

Über Kollusionen mit phantastischen Partnern

Abstract: Parents have long raised children by externalizing the violence inherent in enforcing expectations to supernatural penal agents like “boggeymen”. With Goffman, this externalization can be conceived of as a set of three collusions: First, parents collude against the child by inventing the penal agent to enforce shared expectations; second, the collusion is extended to a fantastic partner who shares in the parents’ expectations but is portrayed as solely responsible for the violence in its enforcement; third, a collusion between parents and children against the monster ensues in an attempt to prevent children from defining their parents as the “Other”; that enforces unwanted expectations. With help of the legal perspectives of Derrida and Stanley Fish, it can be argued that law operates in similar, though not identical fashion.

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