Literature in Law:Exceptio Artisand the Emergence of Literary Fields

Literary Trials as Mirrors. An Introduction

“…In this context it is interesting to point to the fact that in some states there is evidence for a temporal connection between the emergence of a literary field sensu Bourdieu and the consecration of a relatively high degree of exceptio artis in the legal field. This seems to be the case for example in the Netherlands (Grüttemeier and Laros 2013) and South Africa (Laros 2013). Obviously the introduction of significant tools of exceptio artis into jurisdiction -whether into positive law or not -can be seen as a kind of consecration of the literary field by the field of power, indicating a structural and conceptual homology between the elites in both fields.…”

De Sade as a Benchmark. Dutch Legal Actions Against Obscenity in Literature, Theatre and Film in the 1960s and 1970s

“…The idea of the Supreme Court that a work of art had to be considered as an organism, a living creature, is in line with the so-called idealistic conception of literature, where form and content are considered to be a whole and the successful work of art as an organic unity, which transcends everyday reality, although from this reality elements could be lifted to a higher level (Beekman and Grüttemeier 2005: 63-5, 79;Grüttemeier and Laros 2013).…”

Law and the Literary Field in South Africa, 1910–2010

“…Departing from the premise that literary trials might serve as a barometer registering the presence -or absence -of a relatively autonomous literary field in a country and that by submitting literary trials to an institutional and literary conceptual analysis one might be able to put this barometer function to use (cf. Grüttemeier and Laros 2013), this essay will present the results that such analyses have yielded with regard to the case of South Africa. 1 That is to say that it will attempt to formulate an answer to the question how the institutional and literary conceptual treatment that literature was given by the South African judiciary since 1910 -the year in which the nation became independent -might be described and explained.…”