Notes from Reading Room #21: Symbionts in Jurisprudence

00:46 Presentation of Drifting Studio Practice and the film Stones Have Laws (Dee Sitonu A Weti)

11:21 Collective reading "A non-human ancestor as a legal entity"

17:54 About the relation between parts of nature being legal entities, and ancestors. Non-human entities: being legal entities as they are not subject of management or ownership. What is the link with passed away legal subjects, ancestors?

19:00 Legal rights of deceased people?

20:29 Translation between two languages. Position of the ancestor as expending the entity of the river in the human legal realm; the river as ancestor, as part of the spiritual and cultural life.
23:35 Further reading about the legal conception of the river, property rights of the water, etc.What the river owns is or is not what the river is?

24:38 River being the water rather than owning it. Does giving a legal personality to the river help with protecting the nature?

25:31 Customary law, in conflict with common law - hierarchy of laws. Representation in court cases.

28:00 guardianship over more-than-human entities, for instance parks.

30:00 Ecocide. Ecological system as an entity.

31:30 Conflict of interests. Who can take advantage, and how?

32:30 Can non-human entities be held responsible for uncontrolable events? Legal representatives? Ancestor and legal responsability. Is there something like legally recognised responsibility for the river? Who is responsible for the problems in the mines around Genk?

36:10 Reading from "The river considered an ancestor and recognized as a legal person appeals to the imagination"

39:44 Relationship between the parts & the whole: what 'entity'?

47:51 Personhood in Roman law <> free will <> forms of intelligence
Malleability of the law. Laurent Desutter, Hors la loi.
Roman law as based on domination, gradually an emancipatory development has occurred.
Is or is it not empowering to include something inside the framework of law?

1:00:00 Compliance with law as constituting communities. Civil disobedience. 'Stiptheidsacties', strikes by applying the rules too strictly: being disobedient by being too obedient. Situations in which no laws apply. Wim Cuyvers' project where the private space just in front of his house became public.

1:13:49 Sarah Vanuxem: Coalitions to collectively learn an ecosystem. Easement rights/Droits de servitudes.

1:28:32 Right to opacity <-> personal privacy / protection from hegemonic other <-> (counter)enlightenment. Law: categorizing. Sigmund Freud: the unconscious does not exclude one from responsibility – yet, state of incompetence.

1:40:26 International settlement agreements (Investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS)): Companies take an entire country to court because they obstruct commercial interest.

1:47:54 Authorship dispute <> Western film production protocols. Dialogue, verbal & filmed agreement about what and what is not allowed regarding the film.

1:52:51 Matter has subjectivity <-> Quantum physics