Abstract

This essay proposes a new approach to private law. Against its modern configuration as the opposite of politics and public policies, private law is considered as an actual political realm endowed with its own capacity of producing collectivities. Far from being nothing but a way in which market economy might be formalized, private law is an archive of techniques whereby collective actors could be instituted without resort to the concept of legal person and the technique of representation. Focusing on class action lawsuits, the essay makes an argument for a progressive "tortification" of private law, which is deemed to become more and more the political scene for a new political subject characterized by plurality, multiplicity and heterogeneity.