Let Love Rule: an Argument for an Ethics of Affective Legal Subjectivity

This book is an attempt, using autopoietic theory and critical legal theory as guides, to plot developments within contemporary subjectivity formation through different arenas of the social, arenas which are argued to be particularly significant as markers for the developing relationship between a sense of self and a sense of being and doing in the world. The book looks at sexual subjectivity, technological subjectivity (through new genetic technology and a cyborg ontology), working subjectivity (through developments in 'ethical capitalism') and political subjectivity (through an examination of recent Northern Irish constitutional development). The argument is developed that the space is opened for a reformulation of legal subjectivity away from ideas of 'personality' towards ideas of self-reflective and other related ethical 'character'. This developing process ethics forming in the social and calling out for legal recognition may be summed as a law of love.