Matterphorics

On the Laws of Theory

By: Daniela Gandorfer

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Paperback | 10 March 2026

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Paperback
320 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.6 x 15.1 x 1.9

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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.

Industry Reviews

"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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