Introduction: Interruptions

This chapter argues that the secret to law's authority remains partially obscured within legal theory and in the contemporary governance of racial and gendered hierarchies. This concealment is paradoxically made visible in the rhetorical tropes of night, such as darkness, blackness, sleepiness, and shadow, and in the material and sociological consequences for law and legality of bodies needing sleep, of persistent civilian and police vigilantism, and of some forms of political activism for social justice. Night has long cultural associations with danger and with freedom, and the book chapters are introduced as studies revealing law's responsiveness to this fundamental tension. The aims of this book are presented as similarly riven: to explore the significance of night for legal subjectivity and the control and production of violence, and to draw from these experiences of law their overlooked potential to enliven a more egalitarian social life.