Almost Happiness, But Not Quite: Reluctant Rule by Law and Thai Legal History in Seni Pramoj’s Legal Autobiography

This article engages with Thongchai Winichakul’s intellectual history of “Rule by Law” by using Greta Olson’s law and affect approach as a departure from the traditional field of law and literature, which focuses solely on discursive practices. It foregrounds the non-cathartic affect of reluctance, a less canonized emotion in Seni Pramoj’s autobiography as a meta-feeling that underpins all emotions such as pride, happiness, and shame in the meta-narrative of conservative Thai legal history. Introducing the concept of “Reluctant Rule by Law” and applying Sianne Ngai’s concept of ugly feelings, Lorianne York’s notion of reluctant celebrity, and postcolonial studies as a main framework, this article argues that Seni’s Janus-faced characteristic, navigating between Western legal modernity and Thai tradition, infused a reluctant tone into his historical works. This autobiographical reluctance reveals how the conservative Thai jurist upheld royalist nationalism while addressing semi-colonial ambiguities, perpetuating a semi-colonial reluctance that shapes the meta-narrative of conservative Thai legal history and constitutionalism based on royalist nationalism.