Widely regarded as one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century science fiction, Philip K. Dick crafted speculative worlds marked by hyper-legal regimes of surveillance and post-apocalyptic ruins. In these dystopian imaginaries, law is more than a background structure: it emerges as the condition of possibility of dystopia itself, both constitutive of, and corrosive to, the ‘human condition’. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the distinction between humans and androids turns upon the empathy-measuring Voigt-Kampff test, a protocol that renders humanness a matter of measurable affective response. Yet sex – whether understood as form, function, or performativity – unsettles this regime of distinction by foregrounding the traits and things through which humans recognise and relate to one another. By placing speculative fiction in dialogue with sex, this seminar explores how legal imaginaries shape, and are shaped by, the problem of representing sex – and how this, in turn, bears on the question of who/what counts as human, under what conditions, and according to which norms of attachment, agency, and discipline.

Commentary by: António Brito Neves (FDUL/CIDPCC)

^{The seminars will take place on Zoom. Participation is free, but advance registration is required. Upon registration, participants will receive Moodle login instructions and credentials to access all materials for the discussion.}

Bio notes

Ana Oliveira is a sociologist and researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, hired under the Individual Scientific Employment Stimulus Competition of the Foundation for Science and Technology. Ana Oliveira holds a PhD in Feminist Studies (University of Coimbra) and conducts research in the field of social and cultural studies of law, with a focus on the legal status of sex. Coordinator of the research project LAWCUS.

António Brito Neves holds a degree and a Master’s in Criminal Law, and a PhD in Legal Sciences, from the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon (FDUL). Guest Assistant at FDUL from 2012 to 2023, he is a Guest Assistant Professor at FDUL since 2023. He is an Integrated Researcher at CIDPCC – Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Sciences and, since 2025, has served as Legal Adviser to the Supreme Court of Justice. He has lectured at the Military Academy, SEF (Immigration and Borders Service), the National Republican Guard School, and ISCPSI (Higher Institute of Police Sciences and Internal Security). He was Scientific Adviser to the journal Anatomia do Crime between 2014 and 2025. António Brito Neves is the author of several publications in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law.
 

The “Law and Books” series is organised by Ana Oliveira and Tiago Ribeiro, and takes place within the scope of the LAWCUS project – reference 2023.12608.PEX, funded by national funds through the Foundation for Science and Technology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.54499/2023.12608.PEX