Critical Analysis of Law Workshop: Torrey Shanks

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF LAW WORKSHOP

presents

Torrey Shanks
University of Toronto
Political Science Department

The Rhetoric of Self-Ownership

Tuesday, January 16, 2018
12:30 - 2:00
Solarium (Room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park

This essay considers self-ownership as a rhetorical and political practice. Political and legal theorists who address self-ownership as a rhetoric often urge its removal from the political lexicon, noting its lack of safeguards in preventing others from using one’s words in unintended ways. In hopes of managing such risks, they also obscure how rhetoric transforms the meaning and uses of self-ownership and may offer unexpected resources. With a broader notion of rhetoric as creative and effective speech, the paper traces the debate over self-ownership from contemporary criticism, back to Macphersonian possessive individualism and to the political writings of John Locke and the Levellers. Exemplary historical cases offer new insights into the political promises and risks of the rhetoric of self-ownership. The ambiguity and plurality too often rendered as a liability for self-ownership instead offers opportunity for novel claims and appeals to emerging audiences.

Torrey Shanks is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Authority Figures: Rhetoric and Experience in John Locke’s Political Thought and articles on early modern political thought, feminist theory, and rhetoric and politics in Political Theory and Theory & Event. She is currently working on questions of the political rhetoric of property.

A light lunch will be provided.

For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.