Law,Archive and Crisis: Rethinking Constitutional Memory in Times of Emergency

Abstract

The proposed article addresses crisis, emergency and normalcy as legal and socio-legal phenomena framing our perception within collective constitutional memories. In this way, it aims to bind together two strands of constitutional research: the analysis of constitutional polycrisis and emergency constitutionalism, together with constitutional memory and identity. In doing so, it aims to probe the limits of constitutional discourse by focusing on how crisis is archived, thereby entering within the ambit of constitutional thought and praxis. Drawing on Hans Kelsen’s theory of law and Jacques Derrida’s understanding of the archive, we consider the interaction between law’s archive and the possibility of its erasure under historical tensions. We start by exploring the interaction between constitutional law, memory and history, then we move towards understanding law together with Kelsen, Freud and Derrida, in its relation to culture, power and mnemonic politics. In the last part of the paper, we consider the concept of constitutional memory and its politics in times of crises, under the conditions of the dissolution of the law.