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12 L. & Critique 1 (2001)

handle is hein.journals/lwcrtq12 and id is 1 raw text is: MICHAEL KING* THE CONSTRUCTION AND DEMOLITION OF THE LUHMANN HERESY ABSTRACT. Among social theories, autopoiesis achieves an almost unequalled level of complexity and abstraction. Yet this has has not in any way deterred commentators from among the ranks of legal and socio-legal academics from launching critical attacks on the theory. This article argues that many of these detractors miss their mark, because their authors either misinterpret the theory by failing to recognize its radical nature and the new paradigm that it introduces, or, in the more extreme cases, project onto the theory immoral or irrational ambitions which are nowhere to be found in the writings of Niklas Luhmann or other autopoietic theorists. All this brings to mind Nabokov's novel Pale Fire, which also is concerned with criticism, projection and misinterpretation (as well as self-reference and insanity). In that novel the text is a poem, while the plot, concerning a paranoid literary critic, unfolds in the notes commenting on this poem. This article reverses this device by placing the main commentaries and criticisms in the main text and the 'autopoietry', extracts from the writings of autopoietic scholars, which form the subject of the critical attacks, in the footnotes. KEY WORDS: autopoiesis, criticism, jurisprudence, responsibility, social theory FOREWORD I can remember being a member of a small audience in a very large auditorium at a session of the Law and Society Association's Amsterdam Conference of 1990 at which Niklas Luhmann listened to and answered assessments of his work from members of the Cardozo Law Faculty. After the session, which lasted some three hours, there was an informal reception and opportunity to meet Luhmann. At the coffee urn I found myself chat- ting with an American law student, who declared herself to be an fervent admirer of Luhmann and said that she was thinking of going up to him to ask a question about law and autopoiesis. When she told me her question - I forget exactly what it was - it was clear to me that she had very little understanding of autopoietic theory. Rather naughtily, I encouraged her * I should like to thank Anton Schutz, Michael Schillmeier and David Nelken for their helpful comments. I am also grateful to the conveners of and participants at the Cardiff Workshop on The Consequences of the Autopoietic Theory of Law, at which an earlier version of this paper was presented. LA Law and Critique 12: 1-32, 2001. O © 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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