Author: Panu Minkkinen

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Walking with W.G. Sebald

This text is part of a longer paper that I’m currently working on and that I’ll be presenting at a couple of seminars over the spring (e.g. SLSA 2020 in Portsmouth). But I thought that it might work as a shorter piece on its own here in the blogosphere, as well. It continues my (perhaps misguided) self-reflexive engagements with ethnography and expands from a few lines towards the end of an earlier text. All comments are welcome, as usual. Note: The final article is available as open access here. 

WG Sebald
W.G. Sebald, circa 1997. Photo: Jerry Bauer

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The power of a ‘relatively activist’ judiciary

In my inaugural lecture from May 2017 (introduced in Finnish here), I tried to argue for a slightly modified notion of judicial power. Section 99 of the Constitution of Finland (731/1999) seems to understand a ‘separated’ judicial power as not much more than the courts’ exclusive duty and right to ‘administer justice’, that is, to apply the law in individual cases. This deceptively clear-cut definition was recently reduplicated in Article 3 of the Courts Act (673/2016) which, in turn, makes a direct reference to the powers of the judiciary as they are defined in the Constitution. There is little about the courts’ role in the general control of the constitutionality of the activities of the political branches, although Section 106 of the Constitution did specifically create a new duty for the courts to abstain from applying primary legislation that is ‘in evident conflict’ with the constitution. The Finnish tradition of constitutional review has traditionally emphasised the role of parliamentary preview preferring a more restraint understanding of judicial power.

Photo of anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller.
Anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller (C) speaks to media as she leaves the Supreme Court after the ruling on the prorogation of parliament, in London, Britain, 24 September 2019. The Supreme Court ruled that the suspension of parliament by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was unlawful. Photo: Neil Hall/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (10422422n)

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Brasília: an anthropophagic space?

These notes belong to the same project on constitutional spaces that I have been working on for a while. They represent my first attempt to look at the intersections of constituted power, architecture, and urban planning. A very early version was presented in Hong Kong at the ICON-S 2018 conference, but the notes below are closer to something I discussed with colleagues in Gothenburg later that year.

Map of Brazil indicating location of Brasília.
Source: back cover of journal Brasília (Vol. 2, Nr. 1, 1957).

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A new commitment

Well, more than a year has passed since my last post. It’s not as if nothing has happened. In addition to the usual teaching-related excuses, I can confidently say that I’ve kept writing, little by little, added seemingly connected bits and bobs into my Scrivener projects. But I should have developed those ideas here too, if only to somehow reframe my (occasionally) inaccessible formulations into something that at least resembles plain English. That was, after all, my original motivation. Continue reading “A new commitment”

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The legacy of Liu Xiaobo

More or less immediately following Liu Xiaobo’s death in 2017, I was asked to speak at a seminar bearing the name of this blog post at a time when it was unlikely that many from my home university, i.e. the organisers, would be presenting. Even though I could claim no expertise in either Liu as an individual or sinology more generally, I agreed because I thought that I might have something relevant to say about human rights. As it turned out, my contribution, entitled ‘Why Are Human Rights Important (Even For A Crit)?’ in the programme, fit in surprisingly well. I thank my co-speakers and other participants at the seminar, the real experts, for their encouragement.

Portrait of Liu Xiaobo.
Liu Xiaobo. Photo: EPA

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Constitutional spaces

Constitutions have a multifaceted relationship with spatiality. In addition to an overabundant use of spatial metaphors (e.g. ‘constitutional architecture’ or ‘constitutional design’ as depicting horizontal and vertical power relations), I can imagine at least three perspectives worth investigating. Continue reading “Constitutional spaces”