Non/referential

One way to describe the cleaving between law and literature is through the problem of reference: law is said to have a proper referential subject whereas literature is properly non-referential, consigned to the domain of the imaginary.  My comments on this roundtable seek to initiate a larger discussion of how reference in law and non-reference in literature might supplement one another in problems of representation as well as in theories of the social and social justice.  What might it mean to have a "non-referential theory of human rights"?  And how might a "non-referential theory of reparations" allow us to redress legacies of colonialism, war, and violence outside strictly legal definitions of victim and perpetrator?