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Matterphorics

On the Laws of Theory

Cover of Matterphorics features a dense, colorful abstract design made of pixel‑like dots in bright green, blue, pink, orange, and black. Below the artwork, the title appears in large yellow text, with the subtitle in smaller pink text. Read the Introduction

Book

Pages: 300

Illustrations: 6 illustrations

Published: March 2026

Author: Daniela Gandorfer

In Matterphorics, Daniela Gandorfer challenges modernist legal theory’s separation of concepts from matter, developing a mode of theory attuned to indeterminacy, relationality, and material entanglement. Gandorfer offers a method for generating legal concepts that respond to ontological complexity rather than reducing the world to fixed categories or representational entities. Through a range of recent case studies ranging from outer space exploration and Red Bull’s high-altitude freefalls to seabed mining, cryonics, and the copyrighting of DNA, she shows how law is unsettled when confronted with technological frontiers and planetary transformations. Instead of treating law as an abstract system, she proposes it as a creative and situated practice—one that must continually reimagine its concepts in response to shifting relations between matter, technology, and thought. In so doing, Gandorfer formulates legal theory as a creative and situated response to planetary and technological transformation.

Praise

“Ever since first encountering Gandorfer’s exorbitantly novel concept, I have been encountering, designating, observing and expatiating upon matterphors and matterphorics in a constant rhythm of sensible ambulations, reveries, and cogitations. This magnificent neo-materialist work constantly brings us crashing back to ground zero.” - Peter Goodrich, author of Judicial Uses of Images: Vision in Decision

“Matterphorics is an ambitious and exciting interdisciplinary book on the relationship between law, literature, theory, and the materiality of life. This is a scholar who has mastered a wide-ranging canon of political theory, philosophy, feminist studies, security studies, but also can discuss phenomena as diverse as nuclear fission and maritime law. An outstanding work.” - Debarati Sanyal, author of Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe's Edge

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Daniela Gandorfer is Lecturer of Law at the University of Westminster and coeditor of Research Handbook on Law and Literature.

Table Of Contents

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Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. How to Begin? A Guide  1
Part I. Synaesethics of Thought: Doing Theory Matterphorically
1. Thinking-with Matter(s): Unloving Thought, Unfriending Theory  15
2. Metaphor and Nuclear Equations: On the Sunny Side of Theory  27
3. Matterphorics of ?-Human(ism): Theory for Loyal Traitors  37
4. Unreasonable Canons: Laws of Thinking  57
5. Minds Fucking, Making Love: Expansionist Theory  77
Part II. Forces of Law: A Matterphorical Case Study on Man Falling
6. Drinking the Kool Aid Red Bull: A Matterphorical Case Study  99
7. I Am Free, Free Falling  109
8. Home of the Mind: I Am Representing, Therefore I Am  119
9. Under Pressure: Falling Deeper for Power  143
Part III. Cutting-Edge Theory: (Life) Story Telling
10. Matterphorics of Life: An All-Too-Real Story  167
11. When Theory Crashes (Into) Life  173
12. The Right to Narrate (a) Life: Cutting Theories  183
13. Matters of Indeterminacy: Stakes of Concepting  203
Epilogue. A Concept Yet to Come: A Decentralized Right to Breathe  211
Notes  219
Bibliography  261
Index  279

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Sales/Territorial Rights: World

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Additional Information

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Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-3295-3 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-2947-2 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-6168-7 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478061687