Judge Dredd
dreaming of instant justice
pp. 917-941
in: Anne Wagner, Richard K. Sherwin (eds), Law, culture and visual studies, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
This chapter explores the phenomenon of "instant justice" at the site of possible worlds. The context that accommodates this task is the English science-fiction comic Judge Dredd 2000 AD created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra in the 1970s. The main character of the comic strip is action hero Judge Dredd, an officer of the law from a distant postapocalyptic future. Unlike other superheroes who act in the name of justice, Judge Dredd has justice in his name. His character is a singular embodiment of police officer, detective, judge, jailer, and executioner. Situated at the imaginary edge between text and image, the comic discloses the symbolic meaning of law and justice as "instant justice." After a preliminary elaboration of this phenomenon with Gilles Deleuze, I offer two additional illustrations of instant justice with Franz Kafka and Fridrich Dürrenmatt. In the last part of this chapter, I theorize instant justice further with Plato, Sigmund Freud, and Jacques Lacan. The main objective of this theorizing is to disclose the relationship between the idea of instant justice and its semiotic phenomenality.
