[Reader-list] Launch and Discussion of Sarai reader 05: Bare Acts

[Lawrence Liang]

Dear All

Following the launch of Sarai Reader 05 in New Delhi, ALF and Sarai would
like to invite you for a launch cum discussion of Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts
in Bangalore on the 3rd of October 2005.


The discussants are :

1. Eshah Shah, Fellow, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment
and Development

2. Sitharamam Kakarala, Senoir Fellow, Center for Study of Culture and
Society

3. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Faculty, National Law School

Venue:

Center for Education and Documentation (Domlur), at 6 PM . Take the left
turn on the Shanti Sagar intersection on Airport road, and follow the road
till you reach a prominent red brick building.  For further details  see
www.doccentre.org



About the Reader

Every year , for the past five years, Sarai has bringing  out an independent
Reader based on specific  conceptual themes. The past 4 readers have raised
critical  questions about

1. The Public Domain
2. The cities of everyday life
3. Shaping Technology
4. Crisis Media
 
The theme for the Reader this year is "Bare Acts', and includes over fifty
articles written by a range of people cutting across disciplines and
interests. The Reader is also available for free to download on
www.sarai.net.


We hope you will join us for this discussion


Lawrence Liang

========


>From the Reader
The ŒBare Act¹ is an expression used to specify the content of law, bereft
of any
interpretative gloss. In a legal library in India and many parts of the
English-speaking
world, a Bare Act is a document that simply codifies a law without
annotation or
commentary. The ŒBare Act¹ is legality pared down to its textual essence. It
expresses only what the law does, and what it can do.

The enactment of law, however, is less a matter of reading the letter of the
law, and
more a matter of augmenting or eroding its textual foundation through the
acts of
interpretation, negotiation, disputation and witnessing. The law, and
practices within and
outside it, stand in relation to a meta-legal domain that can be said to
embrace acts and
actions in all their depth, intensity and substantive generality. This too
is a stage set for the performance of Œbare acts¹, of what we might call
Œnaked deeds¹ ­ actions shorn of
everything other than what is contained in a verb.

The ŒBare Act¹ that encrypts the letter of the law, the wire frame structure
that demands
the fleshing out of interpretation, and the Œbare act¹ that expresses and
contains the
stripped-down kernel of an act, of something that is done, are both
expressions that face
each other in a relationship of tense reflection and intimate alterity. Bare
Acts generate bare acts, and vice versa. With this book we hope to
consolidate and take forward a process of considered examination of this
troubled mirror image.