No abstract

This article offers a method of reading the courtroom which produces an alternative mapping of the space. My method combines a reading of Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty with a Deleuzian theoretical analysis. I suggest that this is a useful method since it allows examination of the spatial praxes of the courtroom which pulsate with a power to organize, terrorize and to judge. This method is also able to conceptualize the presence of ‘‘screaming’’ bodies and living matter which are appropriated to build, as well as feed the presence and functioning of the courtroom space, or organism. By using a method that articulates the cry of these bodies in the shadow of the organism, it becomes clear that this cry is both unwelcome and suppressed by the courtroom. The howl of anxious bodies enduring the process and space of the law can be materialized through interruptions to the courtroom, such as when bodies stand when they should not and when they speak when they should be silent. These vociferous actualizations of the scream serve only to feed the organism they seek to disturb, yet if the scream is listened to before it disrupts, the interruption becomes-imperceptible to the courtroom. Through my Artaudian/Deleuzian reading, I give a voice to the corporeal gasp that lingers before the cry, which is embedded within the embodied multiplicity from which it is possible to draw a creative line of flight. The creative momentum of this line of flight produces a sustainable interruption to the courtroom process, which instead of being consumed by the system, has the potential to produce new courtroom alignments. My text therefore offers an alternative reading of the courtroom, and in doing so also offers a refined understanding of how to productively ‘‘interrupt’’ the courtroom process.

This paper sets the groundwork for a new methodological movement. I claim that methodological strategies must take as their object the laws with found sexual identity, or rather should be 'fucking with' law by creatively confronting, occupying and agitating limiting ethical frameworks that control access to the field. The movement is ethnographic, since it finds research ethics and 'straight' academic space' to be where these rules are the most harmful in limiting access to the field, for female researchers in particular. The approach (but also to some extent the target) is Deleuzian and post-Deleuzian philosophy whose theoretical leaps have sought to shift and cause slippage in laws of sexual identity. However, when these laws are tested by researchers proposing to access the field, specifically ethnographically and autoethnographically, it is clear they have not 'slipped' at all. This is clear through the questions raised by ethics committees. Fucking law therefore becomes a methodological movement intimately connecting ethical agendas and sex as an encounter in the field. I claim the methodological movement of 'fucking' law captures, or at least attempts to capture, the slipperiness of the body, the encounter, the research project and sex itself. The movement that is 'fucking law' is essential in agitating and occupying not only philosophy, but limiting institutional research agendas and their ethical frameworks. The implications of 'Fucking Law' will be necessarily unpredictable, but the main practical and connected social implication is a questioning as to why more women are not practically questioning arguably one of the biggest questions: the ethics of sexuality. Fucking law argues for the questioning of these laws with bodies, and experimenting with philosophies which underpin and create institutional ethical rules.

A systematic study of electrochemically roughened (ECR) thin film platinum (Pt) microelectrodes for glutamate, GLU (a major excitatory neurotransmitter) detection is presented. Scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, surface profilometry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and amperometry techniques were applied to investigate the effect of high-frequency electrical pulses on Pt microelectrode roughness, electroactive area, charge transfer resistance, and sensitivity and selectivity to hydrogen peroxide, a by-product of enzymatic biosensors and GLU. An increase in the mean surface roughness from 9.0±0.5 to 116.3±7.4 nm (n=3) was observed which resulted in a 55±2% (n=3) increase in the electroactive area. An ECR microelectrode treated at +1.4 V and coated with a selective coating produced a GLU selectivity value of 342 ± 34 (n=3) versus ascorbic acid and the highest GLU sensitivity of 642 ± 45 nAμM−1cm−2 (n=3) when compared to other surface-treated Pt microelectrodes reported in the literature. An impedance model was created to elucidate the microstructural and electrochemical property changes to the ECR microelectrodes. The ECR surface comprises of uniformly distributed homogenous pores with very low impedance, which is ∽6-times lower when compared to a methanol cleaned electrode. The model could lay a foundation for the rational designing of biosensors for enhanced neurotransmitter detection.