On 19 April 2023 the Centre for International Law will be welcoming Professor Aoife O'Donoghue to deliver a talk on 'Tyranny's Temporalities'

Abstract

"Temporality intertwines tyranny and law. Constitutional term limits and cyclical elections aim to prevent future tyrannies emerging or regressions into tyrannical pasts. Tyrants and tyrannies often use nostalgia for a past that never was or a future yet to occur to appeal to followers' imaginations. That these pasts were not necessarily better or were, for most, significantly worse is irrelevant as are the futures that never come. Such temporal leaps place the tyrants' supporters in a better position than what they currently occupy. The intertwined relationship between temporalities and tyrannies are far from unique, replicating across debates on politics and political theory. While term limits and elections are easily postponed by claims of crisis, by monstrous events or by projects that will languish incomplete without the tyrant's irreplaceable leadership, even the calendar can be (re)written to clear tyranny's advent. Tyrannical temporality is tied to a now which is often steeped in the rhetoric of past and future but where future is nullified as only one possible tyrannical future is present. Tyrannicide, itself indelibly lined to temporality, resurrects multiple futures, but has its own costs. this paper considers how asking how temporality constructs tyranny and tyrannicide , what alternative understanding of its relationships with law may be observed."

This is an online event, and is open to all Law School staff and doctoral students. Please join via the following Teams link.