Countersign

In brief

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 to consider new perspectives on law, difference, and being in common.

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Animals as Food: Violence, Labour, Capital

Feat. Dinesh Wadiwel 05 Aug 24 1h 6m Information

What is the Matter with New Materialism?

Feat. Richard A. Lee Jr. 23 May 23 1h 11m Information

Climate Wreckage, Pagan Vitalities, and Truth

Feat. William E. Connolly 29 Mar 23 1h 4m Information

Provincializing the Anthropocene

Feat. Dipesh Chakrabarty 23 Dec 22 1h 4m Information

Corporations are Psychopaths

Feat. Joel Bakan 20 Oct 22 1h 8m Information
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The Tyranny of the Deal: Race, Contract, and the Spirit of the Law

Feat. Patricia J. Williams 27th March 2025 1h 3m

A discussion with Patricia J. Williams on her latest book, The Miracle of the Black Leg: Notes on Race, Human Bodies, and the Spirit of the Law (The New Press, 2024) which examines the tension between rights in contract and constitutions. At a time when a hyper-transactional mentality has taken over diplomacy, eroded the rules-based international order, and rolled back the gains of the Civil Rights Movement – we consider the implications through histories of racialisation and the afterlife of slavery.

Patricia J. Williams is University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities at Northeastern University, and James L. Dohr Professor of Law Emerita at Columbia Law School. She is one of the most provocative intellectuals in American law and a pioneer of both the law and literature and critical race theory movements in American legal theory.

Professor Williams has published widely in the areas of race, gender, literature and law. Her books, including The Alchemy of Race and Rights (Harvard University Press, 1991), illustrate some of America’s most complex societal problems and challenge our ideas about socio-legal constructs of race and gender. Her work remains at the cutting edge of legal scholarship. Drawing on her prior interrogation of race, gender and personhood, Professor Williams’ current research raises core questions of individual autonomy and identity in the context of legal and ethical debates on science and technology. Her work in the area of health and genetics, for example, questions how racial formation is shaped by the legal regulation of private industry and government. Her work on algorithms grapples with the auditing function of technology in our everyday lives — shaping how we understand who we are.

Patricia J. Williams
Book: The Miracle of the Black Leg