Marco Wan

From the Rack to the Press: Representation of the Oscar Wilde Trials in the French Newspaper Le Temps

Abstract This article examines the coverage of the Oscar Wilde trials (1895) in the French press by focusing on the newspaper Le Temps, a liberal publication aimed at the educated elite of the late nineteenth century. It sets the reportage within the context of a teratological construction of homosexuality, and argues that the purported neutrality and transparency of language in Le Temps masks a form of “journalistic prosecution” whereby Wilde’s prosecution was displaced from the legal to the journalistic realm in France. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, it further demonstrates the discursive effect of the reports via a discussion of ornamentation, decadence, and the body, and concludes with a brief glance at the relevance of the discussion to the queer politics of our own time.

Dissent, Cultural Schizophrenia and Hong Kong Identity in David Lee’s Insanity

How does film capture the zeitgeist of a time of cultural and political conflict? This article investigates the relationship between Hong Kong cinema, identity and dissent in David Lee’s Insanity (2015). Drawing on the notion of cultural schizophrenia as posited by Frederic Jameson and reworked by a number of Hong Kong scholars, it argues that Lee’s film about clinical schizophrenia can be interpreted as a representation of the cultural schizophrenia characteristic of Hong Kong identity at the current time.

Introduction: legal marginalia

One of the many consequences of the unexpected political events of 2016 has been a renewed focus on communities on the margins of society and of the law. In the era of Brexit and Donald Trump, refugees, economic migrants, the white working class, sexual outcasts and racial minorities, to name but a few, have dominated the headlines as the world appears to be stumbling towards a new political dispensation. While there is no shortage of discussion of particular groups that find themselves at the sharp end of recent debates – often drawing on long-standing traditions of scholarship that engage questions of sexual and racial discrimination – in this volume we seek to offer a more generalized reflection on this very question of marginalization and the critical purchase to be found in reading from the margins of legal discourse. The shifting sands in political life serve to remind us of the contingent nature of the ‘centre ground’ and ought to attune us to the forces that produce distinctions between the periphery and core, the orthodox and marginal. In some political regimes, scholars embed their criticism of government policies in endnotes and footnotes, such that their ‘core’ arguments can be discerned only by looking at the ‘margins’ of the text. Previously ignored or neglected categories of people now receive renewed attention in political and legal discourse, though the ultimate effect of such renewed attention is arguably still to be determined. Finally, the humanities are at times considered ‘marginal’ to legal studies, and the interdisciplinary turn in legal scholarship has underscored the contribution humanistic inquiry can make to the study of law. Taking a step back from the more immediate debates about marginalized communities, and drawing on a range of interdisciplinary approaches, this special issue of Law and Humanities probes more fundamental issues about the definition, formation, perpetuation and appropriation of the margin. It addresses the margin not so much as a fixed demarcation in the law, but as a concept which lies at the intersection of history, genre, identity and the philosophy of law. This collection is animated by two questions: first, by what processes – epistemological, political, cultural – does the law relegate an entity or a group to the margin, and what is at stake in the processes of

Legal consciousness and Hong Kong cinema

This article seeks to elucidate the role cinematic images of law play in the consolidation and transformation of a societys legal consciousness, or the ways in which its inhabitants perceive the legal system, through a discussion of three iconic Hong Kong films about the legal process. The films are chosen from the period between 1984 (the year an international treaty on the return of Hong Kong from Britain to China was signed) to 1997 (the year of the retrocession). It builds on existing work in ‘law and film’, and situates the films in the context of the legal changes that emerged as the city entered the final years of British colonial rule.

A Tale of Many Newspapers: Perversion, Criminality, and Scopophilia in the Edison Chen Scandal

This chapter examines the reportage on the Edison Chen sex photo scandal in Hong Kong. Chen, a popular actor and singer, took pictures of himself and his various sexual partners, and the pictures were leaked onto the internet in late 2007 and early 2008. The incident received widespread coverage in the local media. This article examines the construction of Chen’s identities as sexual deviant and criminal in the journalistic discourse of this period. It also argues that this discourse tapped into local readers’ scopophilia and epistemophilia in its presentation of the event. It concludes by using the Chen case to highlight the need for cultural-legal scholars to scrutinise media representations of issues relating to sexual identity and behaviour.

Ai Weiwei, Oscar Wilde, and the Art of Posing

In April 2011, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was arrested at the airport in Beijing. To mark the first-year anniversary of his arrest, the artist decided to turn his own life into a form of performance art by installing cameras in his studio; in doing so he both reassures his supporters of his safety and allows the Chinese authorities to monitor his movements. This article examines Ai’s encounters with the government and the law by juxtaposing his experience with that of another controversial figure in art history, Oscar Wilde. It demonstrates the parallels between the two figures, in particular their use of the act of posing as a mode of subversion and resistance. It asks whether Wilde’s experience in the late-Victorian period can shed any light on Ai’s controversies in our own time.

Screening the law in China: law, image and evidence in three documentaries on HIV/AIDS cases by Ai Xiaoming

The early to mid-1990s marked the beginning of a strange and terrifying episode in China which continues today: a large number of people in both the cities and the rural areas mysteriously contracted the HIV virus. Many of them eventually died of AIDS, in part because they had no immediate reason to suspect that their illnesses were HIV related and so they only tested for the virus at a very late stage. The victims did not seem to belong to the categories of people normally regarded to be in high-risk groups: they were of both sexes, they came from across the age groups, and there were no indications of any variations amongst different sexualities. Eventually, the problem was traced to Henan and its neighbouring provinces, and there it was discovered that the victims had contracted the HIV virus through blood donations and blood transfusions. Due to a scarcity of blood supply in hospitals in many parts of China, there emerged a black market for blood. Illegal blood centres were established in places like Henan province, and the methods of blood collection were often unsafe and unsanitary. The blood that was collected was then sold all across the country for use in hospitals. Since the blood scandal came to light, the victims and their families have been seeking compensation from a variety of institutions, including the hospitals, the government, and the courts. However, even though a small proportion has received some compensation, the vast majority of the victims have been unsuccessful. A number of activists have emerged in the past decade to fight for justice, but many of them have been targeted by the government and imprisoned for their political activities.

The Unwritten Law of Files

Abstract This review article brings into dialogue Cornelia Vismann’s Files and the Hong Kong film The Unwritten Law (1985). It discusses the originality and contribution of Vismann’s work, and further draws on her analysis to investigate the construction of legal identity in the film.

Fetishistic Reading, Intertextual Reading: Law, Literature and Androgyny in the Madame Bovary Trial

On 30 January 1857, Flaubert appeared before the Tribunal Correctionnel in Paris charged with having committed an ‘outrage against public and religious morals, or against decency’ as a result of the publication of Madame Bovary.1 Ernest Pinard, the Imperial Counsel, represented the French government, and Jules Sénard represented the author and the publishers. Flaubert’s pivotal role in the development of the modern European novel and in the debate over literary realism which the events of 1857 generated suggest that the Madame Bovary trial ought to occupy a central place in the ‘law and literature’ enterprise, and recently critics working at the intersection of literary, historical and legal studies have focused on the trial as a significant event in legal and cultural history. Elisabeth Ladenson’s study of literary obscenity is a case in point: she examines both the trial itself and twentieth-century filmic adaptations of the novel to warn her readers against succumbing to what she terms ‘chronological chauvinism’, and demonstrates that conservative attitudes towards Madame Bovary persist in more subtle forms in our purportedly more enlightened time.2 While Ladenson concentrates on the published version of the novel, Ramona Naddaff returns to the exchanges between Flaubert and his editors to argue that the novel’s publication history advances a new conception of authorship which negotiates between the traditional notion of the sovereign writer and the postmodern vision of the death of the author. Naddaff ’s reading of the novel and its (2008) 2(2) Law and Humanities 233–254