Michal Alberstein – författare

Pragmatism and Law provides a textual reading of the American legal discourse, as it unfolds through various genres of pragmatism, which evolve and transform during the twentieth century. The historical narrative, which the book weaves, traces the transformation of the pragmatic idea from the forefront of philosophical intellectual inquiries at the turn of the twentieth century to a common sense lawyers’ practical rule of action at the turn of the twenty-first century. During this sequence, a fresh look at American history and legal history in particular is offered through the emphasis on recurring discursive structures which assume incommensurable treatments of basic liberal notions like justice, politics, and truth. Underlying the writing is an interpretative mode of inquiry, based on European post-structural methodologies, while claiming to represent their next intellectual phase. This contemporary mode of inquiry is that of a reading which insists on healing through the paradoxes. It is the same mode that sets, in the author’s view, the updated interpretative model of dispute resolution studies.

Trauma and Memory explores different dimensions of trauma, both its relationship to the social sphere and to group identity, in order to open up new approaches to trauma from a healing perspective. The book's specific focus is doubly unique: first, because of its interest in the tension between collective and individual trauma (in trauma as socially constructed and related to identities of ethnicity, nationality, gender, and class); and second, because of its interest in the legal and medical professions (in their construction of trauma, their ways of treating it, their failures, and even their production of trauma). Trauma and Memory reflects the ways in which, over the last several decades, a growing interest in the social and cultural contexts of law and medicine has transformed the study of both these professions. The authors provide new readings of social and political phenomena—such as immigration, public health, gender discrimination, and transitional justice—in terms of trauma. Finally, they address the therapeutic dimensions of trauma and their relationship to reconciliation via alternative processes such as mediation, truth committees, and other new forms of justice.

Pragmatism and Law provides a textual reading of the American legal discourse, as it unfolds through various genres of pragmatism, which evolve and transform during the twentieth century. The historical narrative, which the book weaves, traces the transformation of the pragmatic idea from the forefront of philosophical intellectual inquiries at the turn of the twentieth century to a common sense lawyers’ practical rule of action at the turn of the twenty-first century. During this sequence, a fresh look at American history and legal history in particular is offered through the emphasis on recurring discursive structures which assume incommensurable treatments of basic liberal notions like justice, politics, and truth. Underlying the writing is an interpretative mode of inquiry, based on European post-structural methodologies, while claiming to represent their next intellectual phase. This contemporary mode of inquiry is that of a reading which insists on healing through the paradoxes. It is the same mode that sets, in the author’s view, the updated interpretative model of dispute resolution studies.