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Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos

University of Westminster, School of Law, Faculty Member

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Andreas is Professor of Law & Theory at the University of Westminster, London, and Director of The Westminster Law & Theory Lab. He is also an artist working with photography, performance, text and installation. And a fiction author with work published in various languages.

Andreas has read Law in Thessaloniki, Greece, as well as in other European cities. He completed his LLM at King's College, London, and his PhD at Birkbeck College, London.

Andreas's research interests are radically interdisciplinary and include critical legal theory, autopoiesis, philosophy, ecophilosophy, object-oriented ontology, theology, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, geography, art, and their critical instances of confluence. He has published in the above areas.

He has permanent professorial affiliations with The Copenhagen Business School, Centre for Politics and Philosophy, and the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, IUAV, Venice.

He is Doctoral Research Director, the Staff and Graduate Students Research Seminars Convenor.
Address: School of Law
University of Westminster
4-12 Little Titchfield Street
London
W1W 7UW
UK

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Published Texts by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos

Adapt, but Otherwise: Repairing Waters in the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025

Anthropocenes, 2025

A report on the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025, in which I critique the overwhelming offering ... more A report on the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025, in which I critique the overwhelming offering of technological solutions to Anthropocenic problems in the Biennale, but also focusing on some more healing, repairing aspects of the exhibition, with particular emphasis on an aquatic horizontality as an antidote to techno-saving.

Performing Law, Performing the City

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2021) McGill GLSA Research Series: The City: An Object or a Subject of Law? , 2021

My recent ethical challenge has been to bring together my academic and my artistic practices. I a... more My recent ethical challenge has been to bring together my academic and my artistic practices. I am a legal academic, as well as a practicing artist. And while law has often been part of what I do as an artist, bringing my art practice into law has been harder. For this chapter, I reflect on the theory of the lawscape, namely the tautology of law and urban space, as well as on atmospherics and spatial justice, through a performance lecture I gave online on the issue of Law and the City.

format_quoteThe 'lawscape' is defined as the relationship between law and urban space, embodying an epistemological and ontological integration.format_quote

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 'Ad Vitam Aeternam: a legal text that remains relevant'

The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws, Peter Goodrich and Thanos Zartaloudis (eds), London: Routledge, 2020, 2020

This is an imaginary legal draft about eternal human life and the illegality of death. The follow... more This is an imaginary legal draft about eternal human life and the illegality of death. The following legal draft, with few alterations, eventually became the basis for one of the first laws established by the Communities under Aeternity – the others being the regulation of parallelisms, the deep-water striation and the series of cyclonopedic bylaws. While technically not the first law to be passed by the Communities, it is now considered the most important. It is generally acknowledged that Ad Vitam Aeternam has come to characterise the whole subsequent production of laws of constitutional import, as well as localised regulations and policies.

The Water Constellations

VESPER, 2019

A short story between prose and poem, about slow water, inhospitable mountains, impossible tasks,... more A short story between prose and poem, about slow water, inhospitable mountains, impossible tasks, inane repetition, vast temporalities, screaming superegos and aquatic releases. It is of course a story about Venice. Commissioned for the inaugural issue of VESPER: JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURE, ARTS AND THEORY: 1 SUPERVENICE

The Palimpsests of Andre Kunkel

Andre Kuenkel 2012-2019, 2019

This is a text about Andre Kuenkel's paintngs and the role of time. Time here is an elastic band,... more This is a text about Andre Kuenkel's paintngs and the role of time. Time here is an elastic band, circumventing the surface of the painting, framing the absolute now, linking it to other paintings (there is always another painting, be it in the diptych, in the triptych, in the series, in the collection). Each painting is a future that is never fully formed and that at the same time goes deeper in the palimpsest of each painting. With every dive, a past is brought forth that comes to haunt the surface. Desire and pathos bloom on the skin of the painting like pre-edenic flowers.

Covid: The Ethical Disease by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos

Critical Legal Thinking, 2020

The ethics of withdrawal before Covid is a show of a planetary collectivity, where we finally und... more The ethics of withdrawal before Covid is a show of a planetary collectivity, where we finally understand that our bodies are all connected, and that taking precautions in London will mean that more people will survive in the refugee camps or in the less developed world with more fragile health systems.

The foundational paradox of Gunter Teubner

Critical theory and legal autopoiesis, 2019

At the heart of Gunter Teubner's work, there is a foundational paradox. The work, as attested in ... more At the heart of Gunter Teubner's work, there is a foundational paradox. The work, as attested in this long-awaited collection of Teubner's texts that span a few decades, is erudite, expansive, involved with the world, and of high theoretical merit. It is populated with references as varied as von Kleist, Derrida, Latour, Kafka, and of course Luhmann; but also global financial markets, Africa and HIV pharmaceuticals, private law and contract, politics, media, protest movements: a kaleidoscope of issues and references that attempt to capture the world, to describe and indeed to change it for the better. Yet at the same time, the work refuses to be captured by the world. It never allows itself to become a simple blueprint, an incontestable theoretical suggestion with pretences of universality, or even a text devoid of deliberate ambiguity, and closed to the contingent and the differently interpreted. The work hardly ever surrenders itself to the world. Rather, it superimposes a layer onto the world, an exegetic membrane that offers both distance and a reassurance that this is how things 'really' are: complex, multiple, closed, engaged in cumbersome internalisations and externalisations, fighting with absences, compulsions and addictions, extreme pressures and deft steerings, riddled with anxiety about identity, limits, otherness. Teubner's world is an apparatus of capture, seductive and indeed optimistic; yet, it offers no space of rest, no finite certainty of how things should or even can possibly carry on. It is often the case that, right when the reader thinks, 'aha, this is what Teubner is getting at', a reversal takes place that unsettles the previous balance, throwing one into yet another perspective, another way of understanding the world-in this way making sure that neither the world nor we as readers would ever freeze in any one, permanent position. This does not mean that we are faced with a form of relativist thinking. Quite the opposite: Teubner is a pragmatist through and through, and he understands well the need for realistic descriptions of society. But in the same vein, he understands too the uselessness of any universal position, the overarching necessity of not succumbing to 'pure' critique without the possibility of simultaneous action, and the supreme reign of paradoxes over conflicts (supreme also by necessity, hence the normative indictment, in Niklas Luhmann's footsteps, of never, whatever happens, question the foundational paradox). The intense flirtation with the paradox, and especially with the observation of deparadoxification, that permeates Teubner's oeuvre, finds full expression in the way the ideas are put forth in the texts included in this collection: in a performatively paradoxical way, the texts often arrive at what could be seen as abrupt conclusions, where matters are left unresolved, in progress, hanging there. All this, despite frequent bullet-pointed directions, suggestions for future solutions, practical recommendations: undoubtedly strong and sound normative directions, which, however, rely on such fine and complex manoeuvring that may never be followed to the letter. Rather than detracting, this adds to the conviction that Teubner's work remains this rare combination of scholarship that is both solid and fleeting, both actionable and highly critical, both practical and evanescent. Beyond and below all this, if one cares to look, one might come upon the crux of Teubner's foundational paradox: on the one hand, the desire to be connected, involved in and engaged with the world; and on the other, an equally strong desire to take leave from the shackles of such connection, and to carry on building upward spires of theoretical inventiveness that keep on spreading layers of different perspectives on top of existing ones. The paradox, to put it in a slightly more author-focussed way, is the delicate coexistence between the craftsman and the visionary, the scholar dedicated to techne and solution-finding on the one hand, and the thinker who wants to immerse himself in the intricacies of a beautiful theory.

format_quoteJustice symbolizes the integration of non-legal elements into legal systems, prompting reflection on limits and system ends.format_quote

Writing Beyond Distinctions

Doing Socio-Legal Studies: A guide to theory and methods, Naomi Creutzfeldt, Marc Mason, Kirsten McConnachie (eds), London: Routledge, , 2019

Legal research is increasingly moving beyond the traditional distinctions between socio-legal and... more Legal research is increasingly moving beyond the traditional distinctions between socio-legal and critical legal thinking or law and its context, and towards an emplaced, embodied and material understanding of law. In this chapter, I argue that this move should also be reflected in the way we write. I offer some observations on why these distinctions have already become obsolete in legal essay writing practice, despite the fact that they remain quite unconsciously practiced by most of us, especially when it comes to teaching legal writing to our students. I then suggest a few ways in which legal writing can move even further in this theoretically rich yet emplaced and contextualised direction. Some of the most important steps is to rethink of the essay as truly an essay (i.e., trial, experiment); to take risks by not trying to provide consistence but allow the text to unfold as a true legal body and agent; to reserve a prominent position for the ‘I’ in its affective experiential presence as well as its multiplicity; to embrace the collective front towards a more just law without falling into old distinctions. I conclude by summing up the most important distinctions that we need to overcome, and suggest an ultimate one between law and justice.

Law and the aesthetic turn: Law is a stage: from aesthetics to affective aestheses

Research Handbook on Critical Legal Theory, Emilios Christodoulidis, Ruth Dukes and Marco Goldoni (eds), Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019

Legal aesthetics is increasingly less about looking at law and aesthetics or art together, and ra... more Legal aesthetics is increasingly less about looking at law and aesthetics or art together, and rather about understanding the aesthetic practices the law employs in order to prove itself socially relevant. This is not an isolated legal phenomenon but largely a consequence of a shift in aesthetics as a whole, from the ontology of definition (beauty, art, sublime) to the new ontology of apparition (or staging). This means that the law must stage itself in a consumer-oriented way, to market itself in a socially-engaging way, and to package itself in a media-appetising way in order to legitimise itself and its continuous social role. From the society of discipline (Foucault) to that of control (Deleuze), and now to that of self-staging, the law deals with the need for legitimation by marketing itself as desirable. This legal ‘selfie’, as it were, relies on manipulation of affects to generate an atmosphere in which the law can carry on proving itself relevant. In this chapter, after surveying the established connection between law and art/aesthetics, I engage with the shift from aesthetics of definition to aestheses of immersion, namely immersion into affects that involve sensorial and emotional responses. In order to demonstrate this empirically, I look into the experimental performance ‘No Feedback’ (London 2015) that dealt with issues of atmosphere engineering, distinction as aesthetic choice and aesthesic immersion.

Keywords

Legal Aesthetics
Aestheses
Atmosphere
Affect
Body/Corporeality

To have to do with the law: an Essay

in Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (Ed), The Routledge Handbook of Law & Theory, London: Routledge, 2018, 2018

This is an experimental text with three voices. The first one is an autoethnographic study of bei... more This is an experimental text with three voices. The first one is an autoethnographic study of being called on jury service at the Old Bailey, London. The second is a theoretical voice, analysing the theory of the lawscape as I have developed it in my writings, in combination with issues about atmospherics, enclosures, control of bodies and spaces, and temporalities of law. The third voice operates as commentary on the other two and the whole chapter as such, offering an antilogos to the traditional understanding of essay writing, especially for law students but also for academics. This last voice suggests the disruption of the flow of textuality in order for materiality to flood in.

The Spectacle of the Cuming Collection

Sophy Rickett and Judy Aitken (eds), Elephant Atlas: A publication on the exhibition Elephant Atlas, London: LCC, 2018, 2018

The archival spectacle unfolds only for the ones who have the time and dedication to look closely... more The archival spectacle unfolds only for the ones who have the time and dedication to look closely; but even then, it never unfolds fully. Every archive withdraws. In its core, there is an impenetrability that can never be pierced through. The Cuming Museum Collection, however, is a notch more impenetrable than usual. No doubt, one can ask to see the objects in the boxes, look them up numerically in the archive, or browse some of them (1753 to be precise) online. Yet the object pales behind the digital, in its turn doubling up as numerical catenation and rough, carton surfaces. The collection has withdrawn behind a curtain of digits.

The City of Justice (english version)

in Ilaria Giuliani and Paola Piscitelli (eds), Città, sostantivo plurale, Milano: Feltrinelli, 2019, 2019

Defining the city requires a spanning of matter and meaning, corporeality and abstraction, tangib... more Defining the city requires a spanning of matter and meaning, corporeality and abstraction, tangibility and inaccessibility, humanity and nonhumanity. The most prominent difficulty in defining the city is that, while the city is often considered to be constituted by signs, it continually distances itself from them. Nobody puts this better than Italo Calvino in his description of the city of Tamara: “The entrance to the city is through streets full of signs coming out of the walls. The eye meets no things, but shapes of things that imply other things;...If a building has no signpost or figure on its walls, then its shape and position in the city plan are enough to reveal its function;...Even the merchandise the salesmen spread on their benches have a value, not in themselves but as signs of other things;...The stare runs through the streets as though they were written pages: the city dictates everything that you are supposed to think, it makes you repeat its own words, and while you think that you are actually visiting Tamara, you do nothing else but register the names with which the city defines itself and all its spaces.” While organising itself in terms of its signs, the city deliberately distances itself from them, disabling any enduring coincidence between signified and signifier. The city is located on the boundary between confluence and conflict, projecting itself on this very pulling and pushing with its signifiers. There is an urban revolt against the city’s own textual organisation, thus re-instituting the rupture between its description and its self-description -in other words, its signifiers and signifieds.

Andreas PM - The Inconclusive Spatial Justice

Sophie Watson (ed.), Spatial Justice in the City, London: Routledge, 2019, 2019

Spatial justice as a concept seems to be at home in many disciplines, such as geography, sociolog... more Spatial justice as a concept seems to be at home in many disciplines, such as geography, sociology, law, politics, philosophy and so on. Precisely because of this, its nature, definition, context and repercussions are yet to be worked out to a satisfactory degree. The contributions in this volume help advance the discussion, adding context and expanding the modes of defining and experiencing spatial justice. It is remarkable, for example, that spatial justice can inform contexts as varied as the gulf states, british self-defence manuals for women, water religious rituals, post-war housing reclamations, Instagram tags, waste transport and art practices – and likewise be informed by these new contexts. It attests to the richness but also potential vagueness of the concept.

And For Law: Why Space cannot be understood without Law

Law, Culture and the Humanities, 2018

Doreen Massey, the iconic political geographer, whose book For Space has influenced the way vario... more Doreen Massey, the iconic political geographer, whose book For Space has influenced the way various disciplines understand space, has largely ignored law in her work. In fact, just as most non-legal scholars she replaces law with politics. Here, I read Massey through law, arguing that often, non-legal writing is characterized by a misapprehension of the law. Through an analysis of her arguments against some understandings of space (such as systemic, negative, closed, textual), I mount a critique against the standard understandings of law (as precisely all these things) and suggest instead a lawscaping way of understanding the connection between law and space, as well as issues of spatial justice and responsibility.

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Critical Environmental Law as Method in the Anthropocene, in A. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos and V. Brooks (eds), Edward Elgar, 2017

A. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos and V. Brooks (eds), Research Methods in Environmental Law A Handbook, Edward Elgar, 2017, 2017

In an attempt to bring Critical Environmental Law to a discussion with the current planetary chal... more In an attempt to bring Critical Environmental Law to a discussion with the current planetary challenges such as the Anthropocene and climate change, and understand the methodological challenges that such a discussion ensues, I suggest three basic tenets from which environmental law can be examined: grammar, perspective and methodology. Grammar refers to the need for new concepts and ways of connecting the various bodies that participate and consist the environment. To this effect, I suggest some terms, such as continuum/rupture, human/nonhuman/inhuman, as well as geologic immersion and planetary withdrawal. Perspective refers to the way current thinking changes or at least is affected by the Anthropocene. Finally, methodology refers to the way critical environmental law must find ways to seek knowledge and the epistemological presuppositions of the limits of such knowledge. In conclusion, I offer four methodological demands of critical environmental law in order for the latter to adapt methodologically and integrate the Anthropocenic grammar and perspective.

format_quoteEnvironmental law must adopt an ethically situated perspective, moving beyond traditional legal frameworks to address urgent planetary challenges.format_quote

The Law of Space: Delivery for Mr Assange

Escenografías de Poder: del estado de excepción a los espacios de excepción/SCENOGRAPHIES OF POWER: FROM THE STATE OF EXCEPTION TO THE SPACES OF EXCEPTION: A Catalogue to the Exhibition, Maite Borjabad López-Pastor (editor/curator), , 2017

Where is Assange? He is the vertigo of virtual freedom, the doyen of transversal movement, the ... more Where is Assange? He is the vertigo of
virtual freedom, the doyen of transversal
movement, the freed up diagonal that reigns
over the virtual as a threat, comeuppance,
justice, truth.
But, where is the “real” Assange, this most
exposed mole of absolute confinement?
His body has become coextensive with the
Ecuadorian Embassy. His room cages him
up: a bat crashing its wings on the iron bars.

This is a short piece, commissioned as a response to !Mediengruppe
Bitnik's installation 'Delivery for Mr. Assange A LIVE MAIL ART PIECE RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRADICALREALTI ME'

Justicia Espacial (el movimiento de la justicia espacial - traduccion en castellan Antonio Giráldez)

by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos and Antonio Giraldez López

Bartlebooth, 2017

Imagina entrar a un auditorio y ver que alguien está sentado en el asiento que habías reservado. ... more Imagina entrar a un auditorio y ver que alguien está sentado en el asiento que habías reservado. Tienes el ticket para demostrarlo y, es más, ese asiento en concreto es tu favorito en todo el teatro. La pequeña pieza de papel que sostienes es tu garantía para probarlo, y solo necesitas a alguien que medie por ti para conseguir el asiento que te corresponde. Encuentras a un acomodador que confirma las plazas y, al acompañarte al susodicho asiento, le pide el ticket para comprobarlo a la persona que ocupa tu asiento. Pero, ¡espera un momento!, ella tiene un ticket con exactamente el mismo número de asiento que el tuyo. ¿Qué haces?

Life: Skin: Aerocene

The Aerocene Reader - Exhibition Road, Studio Tomás Saraceno, Sasha Engelmann, Karina Pragnell (eds), Berlin: Studio Tomas Saraceno,2017, 2017

through an exploration of Tomas Saraceno's project of the Aerocene, I am attempting a definition ... more through an exploration of Tomas Saraceno's project of the Aerocene, I am attempting a definition of 'life' on the basis of simultaneous connectivity (to be a part of) and withdrawal (to stand apart). I am emplying Deleuze's concept of a life in order to understand the singularity of life, and then link it to the responsibility of the Aerocene, namely the self-floating contraption that has been tried out in several parts of the world and recently at Exhibition Road, London. The text is accompanied by a set of photographs by picpoet.