ABSTRACT
An individual’s concrete experience is recognized in the legal discourse of a modern state at the cost of the concealment of the experience itself. The legal discourse belongs to the knower of a very special vocabulary and grammar, and juridical agents isolate special terms from that vocabulary. In this way, the indigenously experienced harm of a non-knower is re-presented by signs which only the knower can claim to know. It helps that the knower belongs to a profession which carefully controls who can claim to know the legal signs. Juridical officials differentiate one legal doctrine from another, one pertinent “fact” from another, by situating the appropriate sign in a network of familiar signs. The juridical agents privilege some signs, ignore others and exclude others as just not relevant to the practice of law. The sign which represents the winning doctrine or “fact” becomes “magical” in such a network, although the sign may have little signification for the non-knower since the web of special signs is usually configured in a manner which denies the knower ‘s active role in constructing a cognitive object. A legal rule, a doctrine, a principle or a policy exemplifies such a cognitive object.
