judge

the question of the judge became what turns out to be what to make of the possibility of judgement in the face of the absence of any criteria that might determine what makes a judgement just…

It was in the dying days of neoliberalism, perhaps a year before it fell into terminal crisis and became something far worse. In other words the cracks in the concrete were becoming obvious and only the willing slaves were unaware of the scale of the crisis that was beginning. So here I was walking up the hill still thinking about the text I’d read about the developing situation for which there were no humane solutions. Walking walking walking up the hill from the office to the music/cafe in Exmouth Market, the one opposite the bookshop. In the years before the bookshop closed down and the owner migrated to Canada. The Music/Cafe is on the opposite side of the road from the bookshop and above the bookshop are two flats that serve as safe houses. The Music/Cafe occupies the ground floor and a large basement. I I I arrive in the late morning, midday around twelve and occupy a table to the far right of the cafe, in the shade with a good view of the market street. The cafe has double doors to the left which are on air hinges which open both inwards and outwards. The doors automatically close in soft swish. There are rubber wedges lying on the floor which are used to hold the doors open when necessary. There is a sight step upwards from the pvc backed coir doormat, which had a rising sun pattern on it, onto a dark wooden suspended floor. Inside the vacant space beneath the raised floor are the power and network cabling for the points around the walls. On the left wall opposite the the counter where food and coffee and tea were supplied from the silver and red La Marrazzo commercial coffee machine. The tables were a mixture of circular tables with a single aluminium support column with five aluminium legs that emerge from the bottom with black disk feet that stand on the floor. The circular table tops were of white melamine with a black plastic protector on the edge. The larger rectangular tables were of wood with four legs, one in each corner. The chairs varied in styles. Lights hang down over the tables on white cables. The chairs I sat on were Fritz Hanson plywood chairs with aluminium supports and wooden arms. Some of the other chairs are made of plywood on black tubular metal frames, the backs are slightly curved whilst the seats are flat and ungiving. There was a courtyard at the back of the cafe which you entered through steps into the garden, downstairs, then up a few steps. There were walls on three sides, the building to one side. a few trees and shrubs, an ant nest or two. Dry and warm beneath the branches of the elderberry tree… Anyway in my visits to the music/cafe, i would occasionally buy CD’s, but mostly I’d drink coffee and eat a sandwich or something. It was there I would sit down and chat to the Judge and sometimes to other people, the Judge was someone from the area, perhaps a few hundred metres away, more than a few side streets away towards the north. But this is simply a vague and uncertain hypothesis, as i never saw him get on or off a train, or on and off a bus. Just walking to and from the music/cafe sometimes. I did once see him enter the court buildings down the hill, I believe he worked in the family court — mostly passing judgements on whether people could stay in this country or not. But anyway however trivial this work is, and we have plenty of reason to think tht the work is trivial in intent and delivery. Anyway the judge was and is a ‘higher up’ as they say in Korean dramas. Not quite in the 1 or 2% but a fully employed member of the repressive state apparatus. Which is why his support for the neoliberal aspects of judicial practice was inevitable. I suppose thinking about it now I did not appear to be a ‘higher up’ to him, being guarded, reserved and careful is now my second nature. The music/cafe owner said that as well as family law cases the judge also did other minor cases, it was simply the case that we crossed paths in the music/cafe once or twice a week for a year or so. The judges family law cases covered three main areas; matrimonial, finance and child law and the related areas of immigration law; deportations, citizenship and protection measures. The ideologies dripped from his eyes, a simulcra of repressive care. Perhaps he thought ‘what does this person want?’ but what he could not know is that I did not want anything. Did he know what I did for a living? Could he know? So here we are sitting one sunny day in the Music/Cafe, where were we sitting I wonder? Not much is remembered of course — but my notebook of the time contains some of his words: “ How I hate imposing sentences, being a judge is an impossible profession. So often its pure presumption… This morning I deported a wife and child. Will they go? probably across the seas to…. this afternoon i have to abuse the rights of two men and separate them from their wives…” He hesitates moving deeper into the shade. “…its a religious action, idolatry in the name of the state. It’s probably the very last one declaring our rights and imposing them on others. I impose rights on others and…” Then he stopped, perhaps he’d said too much perhaps he felt unable to say anymore. I said to him, between mouthfuls of a delicious custard tart; “There is no consensus anymore, perhaps there never was, words have become things that became flesh and made us obey the order words. Society may have vanished as you said the other day, but so has community. People will vanish next, will be unable to know if these words come from a human being or something else. How will you know? This will not bring about any liberation…” He was looking happy his face lit up with the light of the day and the joy of speaking, this creature of the state apparatus, always within sovereignty, channeling violence through the judiciary… “ and yet long live the law! The law as a source of delight one you see in the eyes of children, they don’t judge in the philosophical sense that you speak of, but rather they decide. The fourth and fifth power and we, I wield that power. Imposing my decisions on them its always so serious. the decisions are so serious ahead of us. “ He paused and scratched his head and it was here that he began to stammer. To be with the judge for any length of time is to see the assemblage he existed within, the juridicial assemblage of (law+institution+state) and the repression. And that was it it it, he looked at me and almost laughed. Perhaps he was still speaking in his head. Perhaps he felt it was really a private joke nobody could understand. Perhaps the simulcra of repressive care was real… Except that day in the afternoon the Judge would be dealing with a case of a family being deported, with all the the the appearances of care and fairness written across his face, his body behind the bench, listening to the case. Except on that day the people the Judge was passing sentence on, judging, deporting did not arrive in the court, they vanished from the legal system, vanished from the state apparatus, disappearing from the banal realm the judge and the Music/Cafe existed within. In search of the lost reality, says Mierko in London, the road to lostness is long. What do you mean? He (the Judge) was once a liberal man, but nobody like him is ever anything but a reflection of the world. Logic of simulation, it has nothing to do with the logic of facts, i said. And that was it really, can we say that I understood what he was talking about? As an agent of state morality, he says he judges to maintain the established order. Our judge on that day could not impose his unspeakably cruel justice on the people who come before him. Years have passed since then, the neoliberal phase has ended and he became illiberal, neo-managerial, and speaks well of identity and sovereignty, his agency has not changed… Most of what I know about him has been edited away, deliberately forgotten, except perhaps by those like us who are imprisoned and appropriated by the thing he serves, we accept that we are surrounded by treaties, contracts and agreements. Appropriated and unable to leave, forced to be in one place rather than many. Existing between the states that impose on us… As I sit here typing this sentence looking out in the garden she is killing imaginary enemies with her katana… Anyway it is/was a few weeks later and we have returned with the others, and now the police in the relevant departments have explained that they have been unable to find the missing people, that the couple and their child have vanished without trace. And shortly after reading the report about this I was sitting in the dining room in the Hotel M. listening to the logician and ontologist D. whilst he he he was reading a report in the newspaper, telling me about the questions being asked about the Judge, the head of the police department and how the people who were supposed to be deported had vanished. They are being accused of incompetence, high treason and attempting to overthrow the rule of law, some of which was true. Depending on the intensity of the reporting in the rightwing and liberal extremism of the media sources, I wonder if they can survive this event or would they be sacrificed? D said. They might be, but unlikely. We are very heirarchical, it’s bureaucracy all the way down, and the departments are no no no more neutral than the Judge is in what passes for the judiciary, I said sadly I imagine. It is funny though, what happened that is. D said before losing interest. D was reading another account in the media about a boat full of refugees sinking in the channel, putting the tablet down for a moment. Are you still trying to be invisible? We want to be ignored and forgotten, I replied. Not much chance of that. D said. Showing me a picture on the tablet. You were lucky. D said. You think so? I’d say the ones who vanished are the lucky ones looking out the window at the child eating an ice cream with its mother.