ABSTRACT
Property law today is a tapestry of concepts of possession, ownership and title. Its threads are of different lengths and colours and some of the images it embroiders are fading with time. It is not adequate to an understanding of law to approach these central concepts believing they come from nowhere. The vocabulary and discourse of property does not transcend place and culture; it is not universal. Law has origins in time and in place. Property law is spoken of today in abstract terms. Property theorists have even contended that property is an illusion. In such an illusory relationship, how real can ‘real property’ be? What is the proper place for it? We are at a distance today from the time and place of origin of our contemporary property law, but we must interrogate the conditions of this history and geography to adequately grasp whether these conditions sufficiently reside here and now to warrant the residue of this past in our words today. Because we ‘cannot be concerned with the law, or with the law of laws, either at close range or at a distance without asking where it has its place and whence it comes’ (Derrida 1992a: 191).
