On Colonial Universality and other Legal Prerogatives: Reflections on Peter Fitzpatrick’s The Mythology of Modern Law

2017 marked the 25th anniversary of Peter Fitzpatrick’s The Mythology of Modern Law. An eloquent and incisive critique of Occidental law’s pretensions to secular origins, Fitzpatrick’s text remains of prime significance to scholars engaged with the constitutive forces of race, racism, and colonialism in the structure and political, philosophical and psychoanalytic imaginaries of modern law. The significance of the book cannot be understated; simply put, it laid the groundwork for the development of studies in law and colonialism and elevated race – perhaps one of the ultimate (and sustaining) myths of modernity - to an object of serious theoretical inquiry, an all too rare move in the field of British critical legal theory.

Central to the book’s overall endeavour was a theorisation of modern law’s relationship to the secular and its theological tendencies, insights that remained opaque if not entirely hidden from the view of major scholars of jurisprudence such as Hart. 

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