Abstract
Flags, Color and the Legal Narrative is the first of six volumes in Springer’s Law and Visual Jurisprudence series, examining how the law visually permeates everyday life. This volume foregrounds flags as exemplars of everyday visual jurisprudence.
Visual jurisprudence is an area of scholarship concerning the legal agency of appearance-dominant things in the legal ecosystem. This area of study engages with disciplines such as visual communication, fine arts, semiotics, media and cultural studies, in addition to law; it includes visual artefacts, including flags, road signs and emoji, as well as the visual elements that constitute such artifacts, including colour, symbols and composition. Engaging insights are offered into the appearance and use of national flags, as well as a range of flags from organizations, social and cultural groups, speculative flags, and flags in art and online.
Part I of this edited volume focuses on the agency of flag colours in building national narratives. The flags of Italy, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of China (ROC), South Korea, North Korea, unified Korea and Australia are discussed. Case studies include the meanings associated with the colour red in the flags of the PRC and ROC, and visual commonalities among the flags of South Korea, North Korea and unified Korea. This part also provides theoretical grounding for the volume, indicating the importance of linguistics, semiotics, identity and memory in visual analysis and visual jurisprudence.
Part II examines the agency-of-appearance of flags in a nation’s history and, by extension, in its present. For example, the Polish flag is discussed as one evolving element of the country’s national identity that has been fashioned by invasion, occupation and independence since the Middle Ages, and the Japanese flag is discussed in antiquity and philosophy. Part II also addresses a variety of other flags, such as use of the EU flag in Moldova and Serbia, and flying the flags of hate, the Nazi and Confederate flags, at public demonstrations. Curiously, the chapter on the French flag is written in French. While this provides a timely reminder of the rich academic traditions that exist beyond those of English speakers, a translation of this chapter via, for example, an HTML link or appendix would benefit readers who do not speak French.
Part III highlights the multivalent agency of flags. Topics include: the multisensorial agency of flags; flags as boundary objects; flags of speculation and experimentation; flags of inclusion and exclusion; flags in art and art history; flags as visual resistance; and the evolution of flags from material objects to digital items. Among these chapters, the Rainbow flag is positioned as a boundary object that crosses national boundaries to represent the international LGBTQI+ community, and the grey American flags, painted and sculpted by artist Jasper Johns, are examined for their political agency. This is an alternative reading to the more familiar art narrative that asserts their formal and stylistic agency.
This book will be of immediate interest to visual communication students, visual researchers and scholars, particularly those investigating the legal, visual, historical or current agency-of-appearance of flags from Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Macau, North Korea, Poland, Portugal, PRC, Scotland, South Korea, Russia and the US.
The multisensorial agency of flags and, by extension, the multisensory agency of appearance-based objects and things may also interest visual scholars. Case studies in this volume on Macau’s flag, the Italian flag and the Flag of Compassion highlight the synesthetic and multisensorial nature of flags. The sensory focus of these chapters, that is not limited to sight, indicates new possibilities for the field of visual jurisprudence. When viewed with other existing literature such as the material, multisensorial approach asserted by West (2020), these chapters demonstrate an interest in expanding visual jurisprudence’s focus on sight and what is seen.
For the field of visual communication, a multisensorial approach aligns with Visuality/Materiality (Rose and Tolia-Kelly, 2012), a concept familiar to many visual scholars, that asserts the inseparability of the visual and the material. In Flags, Color and the Legal Narrative, Visuality/Materiality is exemplified by viewing flags both as images that are seen, and as material objects that wave in the breeze and are present at official occasions or are burnt in protest. The final chapter in this volume highlights the evolving Visuality/Materiality of flags, showing how flags have transferred from material visual objects, such as banners on the battlefield, to digital informational items, such as flag icons for selecting the language translation of text on a website. This move from material object to digital graphic draws attention to the applicability of a multisensorial approach to research addressing visual, material and digital objects and things.
On a final note, Flags, Color and the Legal Narrative could benefit from greater balance between legal and visual perspectives. Contributors to this volume indicate the field of visual jurisprudence is currently dominated by legal voices and legal perspectives on visuality. Such dominance highlights an opportunity for visual scholars to bring their expertise to the field of visual jurisprudence for increased parity between legal and visual perspectives. Furthermore, limited collaborative research in this volume between legal, visual and interdisciplinary scholars indicates another opportunity for achieving more balanced and nuanced appearance-based insights for visual jurisprudence. Regardless of research type, independent or collaborative, Flags, Color and the Legal Narrative is an inspiring resource for visual scholars who may not be aware of visual jurisprudence as a research area, and for those who are looking for a new research focus.
