Before Law

Electrocuting the Elephant

Evoking the circus elephant deemed unfit for its job, and therefore executed as public performance over a century ago, Electrocuting the Elephant highlights the performative nature of the law, and its web of entanglements and violences. In this collection, works consider the ways in which the law as public spectacle continues to generate social capital, and perpetuate harms that take on many shapes, and are persisted by many structures: neo-colonialism, gentrification, financialization, and contemporary capitalism.