COUNTERSIGN is a podcast hosted by Stewart Motha, Professor of Law at Birkbeck. Stewart and guests discuss books, films, and other materials from across disciplines which open new perspectives on law, difference, and plural existence.
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Discussing New World slavery as irreparable evil with David Scott, Ruth and William Lubic Professor, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University, New York. We consider the destruction of forms of life through slavery, genocide, and colonialism and consider why there is a renewed demand for reparations now. How is responsibility for the past being renegotiated after the end of revolutionary…
Discussion with Prof Tshepo Madlingozi, South African Human Rights Commissioner, on the legacy of colonialism and Apartheid as we approach the 30th anniversary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the adoption of the Constitution of South Africa, signed by President Mandela in 1996. Madlingozi speaks of his childhood lived in the midst of environmental racism and racist capitalism as…
How does art take us closer to the nature of the ongoing catastrophe in Fukushima? I visited the Fukushima nuclear reactor exclusion zone with art curator Jason Waite. The collective art project, 'Don't Follow the Wind', interrogates the nature of nuclear catastrophe with practices that mirror the duration of irradiation. We explore the history of extraction and colonisation of the Fukushima…
Discussing Bernard Keenan's book ' Interception: State Surveillance from Postal Systems to Global Networks ' (MIT, 2025). We discuss the history of state surveillance from the 17th century to the present. Surveillance is tied to the medium of communication; and through this we consider the reflexivity of state power and authority as they shift in response to new technologies.
Discussing student protests, killing of protesters, and deployment of the National Guard - Naeem Mohaiemen and I discuss his latest film, 'Through a Mirror, Darkly'. The archival footage concerns the killing of students in May 1970 at Kent State, and Jackson Mississippi, while the U.S pursues the Vietnam War whose dead are barely memorialised in the West. We consider resonances of this violence…
What are the origins and implications of hyper-transactional thinking coming out of Trump 2.0? I discuss this and other issues with the eminent critical race theorist and legal scholar Patricia J. Williams whose latest book, The Miracle of the Black Leg: Notes on Race, Human Bodies, and the Spirit of the Law (2024) examines the tension between rights in contract and constitutions. At a time when a…
Discussion with international lawyers, Alofipo So'oalo Fleur Ramsay and Watna Mori, on the impacts of climate destruction on the Village of Veraibari, Kikori Delta, Papua New Guinea. Veraibari is emblematic of wider devastation impacting small island communities and States in the Pacific and elsewhere as a result of climate change and biodiversity destruction. The International Court of Justice…
Discussing Marlen Haushofer's novel The Wall (1963) with Anna Richards (Birkbeck). What does it mean to survive a catastrophic event? How can we navigate the barrier between human and non-human animals?
Discussing two books by Dinesh Wadiwel on animals as food: The War Against Animals (Brill, 2015); and Animals and Capital (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). Wadiwel examines animal agriculture as sovereign violence; and the structural place of animal labour in capitalist modes of value generation and reproduction. What are the political and ecological implications of treating animals as food?…
Discussing Alison Stone's book ‘Frances Power Cobbe’ regarding the 19th C philosopher and feminist who developed a moral theory on the status and treatment of animals; founded anti-vivisection societies; and reconciled her Victorian Christian ideas with Darwin's theory of evolution. How is the relative status and value of animals to humans to be judged? What do emotions have to do with morality?…
