Indigeneity: Before and beyond the law

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with the question that is indigeneity, and its situation within literary and juridical imaginaries. As a persistently unsettling presence, indigeneity appears outside the law, before the law and beyond the law – indeed, in Derrida's terms, as an evocation of the unconditional. Whereas the law determines indigeneity to recognise it, I propose that its expression in Indigenous literature evokes a Derridean unconditional to which the law must perpetually, if momentarily, respond. This chapter elaborates a conception of indigeneity, as expressed in Indigenous literature, as disruptive and deconstructive of non-Indigenous law, opening its narratives to transformation.

Citation

Birrell, K. (2010), "Indigeneity: Before and beyond the law", Sarat, A. (Ed.) Special Issue Interdisciplinary Legal Studies: The Next Generation (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 51), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 219-258. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-4337(2010)0000051011