Criminology as Lovemaking: An African-Centered Theory of Justice

Abstract

This paper explores the potential role of love in criminal justice and jurisprudence by excavating ancient and modern philosophies of justice to reveal the puzzling evasion of love in attempts by various philosophical traditions to engineer a solution to the wobbly foundations of justice exclusively on the quicksand of rationality, authority and truth but without love. The paper will adopt the format of Platonian philosophical dialogue (originally borrowed from Africa) by staging a breaking of bread between Jens A.B. Jacobsen (JJ), a business man who died seeking universal justice through nature rather than through love and Ifi Amadiume (IA), the Nigerian feminist theorist. As in the dramatic dialogues of Plato, the characters JJ and IA are not the actual persons Jacobsen and Amadiume but, to a large extent, fictional characters for me to use in exploring the place of love in justice. The drama opens in Professor Amadiumes dining room where she is about to eat dinner and suddenly a ghost appears at the dinner table reciting from Pushkin and she invites the ghost to join her in breaking bread.