9 THE ITALIAN LAW JOURNAL NO. 2 (2023)
Belonging, Things and Time(s).
by Veronica Pecile This article presents two proposals to enable the legal recognition of a not-one, collective, assembled subject: property conceived as belonging and legal time as made up of multiple temporal layers. First, it provides a genealogical reconstruction of how the category of belonging has percolated through modern legal thought since Roman jurists identified it as a much broader and richer relation to things than that denoted by owning. Linked to belonging as a potential model for the relationship between individuals and things is a conception of things as not ontologically pre-given, but rather constructed through legal technique. Secondly, the paper argues that one of the effects of the ongoing ecological and climate crisis on the machine of abstraction of Western modern law is the questioning of legal time as the institution through which a linear, historical and chronological conception of time has been legitimised and reinstated. What is emerging is a set of seemingly contradictory, diverse, non-human temporalities that have been marginalised by modern legal thought and are increasingly demanding legal recognition. The article concludes by stating that property as belonging and legal time as multiple are fundamental elements for a legal technique that aims at instituting the collective. DOI 10.23815/2421-2156.ITALJ ISSN 2421-2156
Elements for a Spatio-Temporal Perspective on Law
