Literature Alongside Law as a Contemporary Paradigm

Abstract

This article presents and evaluates two paradigms and their relevance within the law and literature discourse. According to the first one, the global law paradigm, the law appears as a huge web or as a unified and orderly metanetwork, which encompasses human experience in all realms, and provides a normative response for every aspect of it. This paradigm may be set against an alternative perception, the paradigm of literature alongside law. Within the framework of this paradigm, vulnerable parts of the law, some of its false pretences as well as the hidden processes shaping it, are exposed. Next, there is the establishment of both hope and the ability to fulfil it, animated by imagination, shaped by literature and reflected in it, to put things right; to arrive at concrete truths and justice in a reality which does not enable comprehension of the whole, and never abandoning the strife towards the complex and the constantly changing equilibrium between human needs and human limitations.