Autori: Seatzu, Francesco, Carrillo Santarelli, Nicolás
Titolo: Re-humanizing legal thinking and strengthening the universal protection of human dignity through storytelling and literature
Periodico: Jura Gentium
Anno: 2025 - Volume: 22 - Fascicolo: 2 - Pagina iniziale: 5 - Pagina finale: 31

Tolstoy argued that art can transmit emotions and sensations. Permits people to become aware of the experiences of other human beings in relation to legal abuses and gaps that are addressed in literary works, in ways that positivist readings and explanations may fail to convey. Literature can shout alongside Antigone, telling us that the law and political processes can be dehumanizing and oppressive. Regardless of the fate of characters in novels and stories, we catch glimpses of the richness and inimitability of every single individual life. We get to empathize with others beyond our identity circles and realize how following the law for the sake of it is not an end goal in itself. Aristotle's Poetics already engaged with the exploration of existential dilemmas through storytelling. Indeed, oftentimes readers do not end up admiring the bureaucratic and authoritarian constructions they read about, or about technological misuses, which despite their fictitious nature point to human concupiscent tendencies, but instead side with those whose dignity is ignored by others invoking ideological considerations, as happens with the character of Shatov in Dostoyevsky's "The Possessed". By exploring audiovisual stories such as Andor's, and texts of authors such as Franz Kafka, Philip K. Dick, and others, we will analyze how literature can expose the ways in which legal and ideological considerations can be instrumentalized, despite claims of authority and "normalcy". Since the law does not restrict its effects to those versed in it, storytelling provides a popular venue to raise awareness of risks of oppression and inform about dilemmas and the value of every life.




SICI: 1826-8269(2025)22:2<5:RLTAST>2.0.ZU;2-2
Testo completo: https://www.juragentium.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/JG2025_2_1.-Carrillo-Santarelli-Seatzu.pdf

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