Blog 3: Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: An Anthropocene Judgments Experiment, Prof. Folúkẹ́ Adébísí

When I was 14, I begged a sea freight company to let me intern with them. I was intrigued about the business life of freights and ships. Little did I know that they would send me off to live on a ferry on the Baltic Sea. On the Baltic Sea, I experienced a new habitat, a new reality—the sea as a mystical carrier and guardian. So beautiful, it never bored me to stare out of the window. Yet during that time, I also learned about the sea as a living and workspace. Most of the cabin crew had spent their lives on the sea and did not know it any other way, whether as engineers or chefs. Since then, I was secretly fascinated by Maritime Law and spent my undergraduate years researching about legal issues of armed conflict and sea pollution. Therefore, I was touched and surprised when I joined the Zoom call a little late, just to find Prof. Adébísí centring the sea and its inhabitants in the legal imaginary. A body that covers 70% of the earth's surface and 60% of our human subsistence only appears in law in relation to its use and exploitation.

I had already read Prof. Adébísí's book “Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility” (2023 Bristol University Press) to convince my supervisor about decoloniality as a methodology and was very excited to hear Prof. Adébísí talk about the Anthropocene of judgments. The overexploitation of natural resources and land incited by colonialism also shifts over to the overexploitation of human relationships. With reference to the notorious case of Gregson v. Gilbert [1783] 3 Doug. KB 232, in which a slave-owner sought insurance compensation for the killing of over 130 enslaved African people by the crew of the British slave ship, Prof. Adébísí mentions the ‘hyperbolisation of law’ and its historical baggage. She explains that the ‘hyperbolisation of law’ indicates that law schools and law books often over-amplify landmark events that are not reflective of everyday mundanity. Instead, she suggests referring to extra-legal sources to regulate climate change-related cases that would not be reduced to dramatised events, such as grand oil spills, but would target everyday environmental issues such as littering and the like.

In attempts to define extra-legal sources, Adébísí draws analogies to Science-fiction, arguing that it allows us to imagine radical worlds and realities; and thus could serve as theoretical frameworks to disrupt the legality of climate change. Prof. Adébísí urges us to think about how far we can go to bend these ideas and how we understand our presence as a construction of the past. In her talk, Prof. Adébísí weaves in references to Afro-Futurism and urges us to think of the unimaginable. Especially, alternative dispute resolution and indigenous jurisprudence here offer a way to reconfigure the legal relationship to land, environment, and the centring of indigenous rights to serve as theoretical frameworks for the legal disruptiveness of climate change.

Prof. Adébísí expressed her desire to embody music into her latest book “Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility” (2023 Bristol University Press)  to give it a sound, to sing to us. After a follow-up question about which song, she would have chosen as a soundtrack, she responded with 'We are the Wave' by Harry Belafonte and 'Small Axe' by Bob Marley. As I do not know any of these songs, I cannot help but have the latest song by YG Marley (Bob Marley’s grandson) “Praise Jah in the Moonlight” (2024) playing in the back of my head every time I think of the book cover. Maybe the imaginary has already manifested itself; by sharing her thoughts about the sounds of the book, it became a lived experience.

Prof. Adébísí's talk offers a clear contrast to the strict segregation of terminology and methods laid out by Prof. Salaymeh in the previous Decolonising Law Discussion Group meeting. Instead, she references non-legal textual sources (Science-Fiction) and music sources and walks hand in hand with Audre Lorde’s mantra that ‘Poetry is Not a Luxury’. She suggests that a decolonial approach to law starts with thinking in parallel with law, as opposed to law as a means to compensation and possession. By this, she draws an interesting example of financial compensation and harm reduction referring to the killing of a black person in the US. While the victim’s family would most likely receive financial compensation, the individual witnessing the killing and their vicarious trauma would not be a subject for justice. Therefore, we must accept that law itself is limited. We left the discussion group meeting urged to think about the limitations of law and to think of hope itself as a political tool.