The Construction and Demolition of the Luhmann Heresy

Among social theories, autopoiesis achieves an almost unequalled level of complexity and abstraction. Yet this has has not in any way deterred commentators from among the ranks of legal and socio-legal academics from launching critical attacks on the theory. This article argues that many of these detractors miss their mark, because their authors either misinterpret the theory by failing to recognize its radical nature and the new paradigm that it introduces, or, in the more extreme cases, project onto the theory immoral or irrational ambitions which are nowhere to be found in the writings of Niklas Luhmann or other autopoietic theorists. All this brings to mind Nabokov's novel Pale Fire, which also is concerned with criticism, projection and misinterpretation (as well as self-reference and insanity). In that novel the text is a poem, while the plot, concerning a paranoid literary critic, unfolds in the notes commenting on this poem. This article reverses this device by placing the main commentaries and criticisms in the main text and the `autopoietry', extracts from the writings of autopoietic scholars, which form the subject of the critical attacks, in the footnotes.