ABSTRACT

In chapter two “Epistemologies of Jurisdiction,” the quiet, bubbling, glowing environment of lava is explored through Hawai'i's indigenous knowledge of the spectacle against the backdrop of the illusory containment of lava and law's management of the untamed Kīlauea. To manage access to the spectacle, law serves to visually regulate the view as well as to control access to the spectacle itself. National parks and areas of legal reserve are created to protect the spectacle as well as people from the spectacle. Visitation for purposes of experiencing spectacle generates with a sense of legal perspectivism in which we witness and experience (even regard with awe) law as a spectacle in the same way – through watching/beholding yet being wary of eruptions, movement, and the earth bubbling from a safe distance. Yet, instability (either in law or in the kinetic environment) never disappears as law's positivist capacity is always in question (as demonstrated by the constitutive relationship between law and place/everyday life) and volcanic environments are active and rumbling.