DOCSLIB.ORG

The Freedom of the Heart

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Freedom of the Heart Drucilla Cornell. At the Heart of Freedom: Feminism, Sex and Equality. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998. xvi + 254 pp. $62.50, cloth, ISBN 978-0-691-02897-2. Reviewed by Avital H. Bloch Published on H-Women (April, 2000) At the Heart of Freedom: Feminism, Sex, and only proposes a feminist theory of rights, but also Equality is Drucilla Cornell's latest contribution in a set of legal reforms and hope for social change. her series of works on feminist jurisprudence Cornell centers her book on a concept she published throughout the last decade. Cornell, a calls the "imaginary domain" and the principle of professor of law, political science, and women's freedom on which it rests: "The freedom to create studies at Rutgers University, has approached the ourselves as sexed beings, as feelings and reason‐ relationship between feminism and law by focus‐ ing persons, lies at the heart of the ideal that is the ing on the issues of deconstruction and justice, imaginary domain" (p. ix). This concept is not feminist culture and theory, and postmodern the‐ new, as Cornell had frst developed it in her previ‐ ory of ethics. ous book The Imaginary Domain.[1] It offered the Along with scholars of women and gender principle of the imaginary domain as an answer studies during the last two decades, Cornell un‐ to three problems that haunt the relationship be‐ derstands contemporary feminist thought as in‐ tween sex and equality and with which feminism separable from the recent approaches in cultural has been struggling for the last decades: abortion, and critical theory. In this theoretical set, especial‐ pornography, and sexual harassment. At the ly as it relates to gender, she anchors political phi‐ Heart of Freedom contributes more topics to the losophy and legal thought. She intends to follow discussion of feminist politics, no less controver‐ her own dictate: "To give symbolic form to what is sial and, in some aspects, even broader. Work, being claimed in actuality is part of the role of adoption, family, parenthood, and prostitution in ideals in political philosophy" (p. 178). Cornell ad‐ the United States, and human rights in postcolo‐ dresses the realities of law, culture, social struc‐ nial and non-Western countries, are treated as ture, and politics by tying together philosophy, le‐ gender issues that affect a wide range of people's gal studies, and gender thinking. Thus, she not lives and to which, therefore, the law and feminist politics must give satisfactory answers. H-Net Reviews The author's mission is to analyze gender is‐ ory of rights misses the protection of what is elab‐ sues by bypassing the obstacles formal equality orated at the imaginary domain. feminism has encountered. She argues with liber‐ The imaginary domain is the space where the al feminists about expectations to eliminate all emotional, imaginative, spiritual, and aesthetic differences between men and women in order to self is expressed and recreated. In this view we achieve legal equality. This quarrel with the equal imagine ourselves as "sexuate beings" turned to‐ rights feminist movement is not new in academic ward particular objects of desire. Through the feminism. Cornell, for example, echoes historian sexuate expression we claim ourselves as our Joan Wallach Scott's discussion on the history of own persons. In this space a complete sense of French feminism in Only Paradoxes to Offer. Scott identity is found and intimate life is determined. emphasizes the constant contradictions of femi‐ Cornell draws from psychoanalytical thought to nists in their long battle to reconcile sexual differ‐ emphasize how the body and the libido are pro‐ ences and universal equality for women as citi‐ jected in the imaginary domain. She counts on zens.[2] psychoanalytic works of Freud and Lacan, and on In Cornell's opinion as well, feminists have neurologist Oliver Sacks and feminist scholar failed to consider crucial differences between Nancy Chodorow.[3] women -- sexual, racial, economic, national, reli‐ These theorists show the importance of the gious. Attempts to claim equality with men, to body's image, integrity, senses, and libidinal de‐ whom citizenship has been attached, cause injus‐ lights, and how, by projecting the body, the indi‐ tice for women when they do not ft into the male vidual comes out to the world. At any point in ideal. time, the way we orient ourselves as sexuate be‐ Moreover, such feminism essentializes men. ings dictates how we feel, think, and behave. The Here Cornell refers to the educated, professional, imaginary domain is as much a site for aesthetic middle-class feminists of her generation. Since the expression. Cornell borrows from female writers 1970s they have aspired to equalize rights with such as bell hooks and Virginia Woolf to illustrate men, as they have known and perceived them: of the necessity of such space as it is analogous to the same social class and cultural orientation. Woolf's image of the "room of one's own.[4] It Other women, however, have been left out. To in‐ means a locus where, through narration and tegrate all women into an equal right justice sys‐ resymbolization, a woman claims her own person tem requires an articulation of a new definition of as independent of men.[5] gender differences. The attempt to accommodate liberal femi‐ This involves a change that that considers nism to differences involves adjusting liberalism more than the simple biological differences be‐ to contemporary postmodernist thought. Thus, tween men and women. It should respond to a sit‐ Cornell utilizes recent concepts that problematize uation feminists have ignored: "the reality that gender identification beyond the previous liberal- 'hearts' continue to starve" (p. ix). What must be modernist binary definitions. In the articulation added to feminist liberalism is the notion of per‐ of the imaginary domain, she replaces themes of sons as sexed creatures. This idea, which takes permanent entities, clear boundaries, and im‐ into account the matters of the heart, should be posed meanings for thoughts about constant in‐ the source for the understanding of gender and stability, multiplication, and fluidity. difference and on it any discussion of rights must In perceiving the process that takes place in be based. The book's title, At the Heart of Free‐ the imaginary domain as a process of becoming, dom, conveys the idea that what the feminist the‐ Cornell echoes other gender theorists. She refers 2 H-Net Reviews to Judith Butler's Gender Trouble and Bodies that of rights for women's but also for all sexual identi‐ Matter, and shares ideas with Scott and feminist ties --gays and lesbians -- who are ignored by the political philosopher Seyla Benhabib.[6] Each ap‐ legal system and the mainstream culture. proaches sexual and gender identification as a The frst target in this project is Kant. His narrative, an unfixed process and a journey with principles have been central for Cornell, but she endless possible results. Identities are created and tries to adapt his Enlightenment philosophy to the re-produced by reflecting each other just as they contemporary multicultural reality.[8] From Kant, mirror the dominant "normative" system and its Cornell adopts the concept of right as the source ideological construction. of representation of sexuate differences, but Kan‐ Through the "sexual imago" of the body and tianism does not include rights for women as free psyche people can define themselves anew -- not and equal persons and rules out their member‐ only historicized by context, but also based on ship in the moral community of persons. In as their free aspirations. Gender entity, therefore, much as Kant has inspired American liberal should no longer be seen as stable or as simply philosopher John Rawls, with whom Cornell basi‐ bound to two biological sexes. In this regard, like cally agrees, she seeks to adapt Rawls's A Theory Butler, Cornell critiques the Belgian-French of Justice and Political Liberalism to feminism.[9] philosopher Luce Irigaray, whose work she other‐ In this context women must be recognized as wise cites favorably.[7] free persons and sexuate beings. Cornell points to Cornell questions Irigaray's distinction only the right of people to claim equality and freedom between two sexes and her perception of women to exercise their imaginary domain and live as as the only persons who are dismissed by the sexuate beings the way they choose. She urges us dominant masculine normative regime. Cornell "to 'see' that there is a prior moral space of evalu‐ agrees with Butler that Irigaray fails to recognize ation of the entities" in moral procedures, even differences among women in order to see the ex‐ before any egalitarian theory is agreed upon (p. clusion of non-heterosexual positions, and to ac‐ 15). According to this notion, women are persons knowledge an endless variety of identities and as an initial matter. They should not lose the free‐ practices. dom attached to this status because of the choices Since Cornell conceives the imaginary do‐ they make. As free persons, women must not be main as a fundamental part of identity formation automatically compared to heterosexual males that enables individuals "to share in life's glories" and thus able to claim only rights given to hetero‐ (p. x), protecting it is a matter of moral and legal sexual men. Theory of rights ought to allow them right in any society that calls itself liberal. It can‐ to be evaluated for their sexuate differences from not be displaced even if other rights are already males, and among themselves, as expressed in the gained and its freedom must be included in any process of the imaginary domain, and yet as equal gender thought about freedom.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Rethinking Feminist Ethics
    RETHINKING FEMINIST ETHICS The question of whether there can be distinctively female ethics is one of the most important and controversial debates in current gender studies, philosophy and psychology. Rethinking Feminist Ethics: Care, Trust and Empathy marks a bold intervention in these debates by bridging the ground between women theorists disenchanted with aspects of traditional ‘male’ ethics and traditional theorists who insist upon the need for some ethical principles. Daryl Koehn provides one of the first critical overviews of a wide range of alternative female/ feminist/feminine ethics defended by influential theorists such as Carol Gilligan, Annette Baier, Nel Noddings and Diana Meyers. She shows why these ethics in their current form are not defensible and proposes a radically new alternative. In the first section, Koehn identifies the major tenets of ethics of care, trust and empathy. She provides a lucid, searching analysis of why female ethics emphasize a relational, rather than individualistic, self and why they favor a more empathic, less rule-based, approach to human interactions. At the heart of the debate over alternative ethics is the question of whether female ethics of care, trust and empathy constitute a realistic, practical alternative to the rule- based ethics of Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill and John Rawls. Koehn concludes that they do not. Female ethics are plagued by many of the same problems they impute to ‘male’ ethics, including a failure to respect other individuals. In particular, female ethics favor the perspective of the caregiver, trustor and empathizer over the viewpoint of those who are on the receiving end of care, trust and empathy.
    [Show full text]
  • Deconstruction, Feminism, and Law: Cornell and Mackinnon on Female Subjectivity and Resistance
    082205 CLARK.DOC 11/11/2005 9:18 AM DECONSTRUCTION, FEMINISM, AND LAW: CORNELL AND MACKINNON ON FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY AND RESISTANCE M. J. CLARK* In examining familiar things we come to such unfamiliar conclusions that our very language is twisted and bent even as it guides us. Writing “under erasure” is the mark of this contortion.1 What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors metonymies, anthropomorphisms . truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions coins which having lost their stamp, are now regarded as metal and no longer as coins.2 Yet a gaze averted from the beaten track, a hatred of brutality, a search for fresh concepts not yet encompassed by the general pattern, is the last hope for thought. In an intellectual hierarchy which constantly makes everyone answerable, unanswerability alone can call the hierarchy directly by its name.3 Sexual difference is one of the major philosophical issues of . our age. According to Heidegger, each age has one issue to think through, and one only. Sexual difference is 4 probably the issue in our time which could be our “salvation” if we thought it through. I. INTRODUCTION: POSTRUCTURALISM AND LAW In 1967, Jacques Derrida published three philosophical works that altered the critical and philosophical landscape of the late twentieth century. Those works—Of Grammatology, Speech and Phenomena, and Writing and Difference— attempted to rethink the very fabric of thinking itself, and aimed at displacing a mode of reasoning that Derrida argued intrinsically required dominance as a condition of its operation.5 In brief, Derrida argued that Western philosophy, and by inference Western modes of rationality and being, were based on a desire * Michael J.
    [Show full text]
  • Liberalism, Radicalism, and Legal Scholarship Steven H
    Cornell Law Library Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository Cornell Law Faculty Publications Faculty Scholarship 8-1983 Liberalism, Radicalism, and Legal Scholarship Steven H. Shiffrin Cornell Law School, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub Part of the Law and Philosophy Commons, and the Legal History, Theory and Process Commons Recommended Citation Shiffrin, Steven H., "Liberalism, Radicalism, and Legal Scholarship" (1983). Cornell Law Faculty Publications. Paper 1176. http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/1176 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Cornell Law Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Cornell Law: A Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ARTICLE LIBERALISM, RADICALISM, AND LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP Steven Shiffrin*t INTRODUCTION In the eighteenth century, Kant answered the utilitarians.I In the nineteenth century, without embracing utilitarianism, 2 Hegel * Professor of Law, UCLA. This project started out as a broad piece entitled "Away From a General Theory of the First Amendment." It has taken on un- bounded proportions and might as well be called "Away From A General Theory of Everything." During the several years I have worked on it, more than thirty friends and colleagues have read one version or another and have given me helpful com- ments. Listing them all would look silly, but I am grateful to each of them, especially to those who responded in such detail. I would especially like to thank Dru Cornell, who served early in the project as a research assistant and thereafter offered counsel, particularly lending her expertise on continental philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Remembering Liberal Feminism in Radical Ways: Locating Conservative Strategies in the Narratives of Dr
    University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 1-1-2009 Remembering Liberal Feminism in Radical Ways: Locating Conservative Strategies in the Narratives of Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers, Tammy Bruce, and Dr. Laura Schlessinger Jenni Marie Simon University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Simon, Jenni Marie, "Remembering Liberal Feminism in Radical Ways: Locating Conservative Strategies in the Narratives of Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers, Tammy Bruce, and Dr. Laura Schlessinger" (2009). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 929. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/929 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. REMEMBERING LIBERAL FEMINISM IN RADICAL WAYS: LOCATING CONSERVATIVE STRATEGIES IN THE NARRATIVES OF DR. CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS, TAMMY BRUCE, AND DR. LAURA SCHLESSINGER __________ A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of Social Sciences University of Denver __________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy __________ by Jenni M. Simon November 2009 Advisor: Dr. Christina Foust Author: Jenni M. Simon Title: REMEMBERING LIBERAL FEMINISM IN RADICAL WAYS: LOCATING CONSERVATIVE STRATEGIES IN THE NARRATIVES OF DR. CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS, TAMMY BRUCE, AND DR. LAURA SCHLESSINGER Advisor: Dr. Christina R. Foust Degree Date: November, 2009 ABSTRACT This dissertation identifies and challenges post-feminist narratives that remember the second wave or 1960s and 1970s liberal feminism as a radical form of activism.
    [Show full text]
  • On Postmodern Feminist Legal Theory
    On Postmodern Feminist Legal Theory Maxine Eichner° Postmodernism has, in the past two decades, swept through the academy. While there is no agreement regarding what, exactly, postmod- ernism means,' it is clear that many of the principles associated with it " B.A., Yale College, 1984; J.D., Yale Law School. 1988. A number of people have read drafts and given me comments along the way that made this a much better artcle. including Susan Bickford, Katharine Bartlett, John McGowan. Stephen Leonard. Michael Lienesch, Stephen Kellert, Christina Ewig, Christina Reilly. Carisa Showden. and the edi- tors of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Conversations sith Louis Bilionis, Thomas Spragens, and Maria Savasta Kennedy helped me clarify views atspecific points in the article. Two scholars, in particular, read and responded to my work with far more attention and care than I could even have hoped: Pamela Conover and Marion Crain. The results of their thoughtful engagement show, I hope. throughout this Article. Finall) my thanks to Eric Stein who, as usual, tirelessly and uncomplainingly edited countless drafts. IScholars, even those generally considered amenable to postmoderism, disagree over what the term means and whether it is even a helpful designation. In John McGowan's words: Everyone begins the discussion of postmodernism by asking what the word could possibly mean ....One of the reasons that postinodernismt has been so slippery a term is that we don't know whether it names the kind of theorizing now rampant in the academy, the kind of architecture now cluttering our downtowns. and the kind of novels being written by Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Mirquez.
    [Show full text]
  • Seyla Benhabib Judith Butler Drucilla Cornell Nancy Fraser
    llDKmg ,-,eDuer lited by Linda Nicholson so published in the series minismlPostmodernism nda Nicholson mder Trouble dith Butler ords of Power Idrea Nye mininity and Domination ndra Bartky sciplining Foucault na Sawicki 'yond Accommodation :ucilla Cornell nbattled Eros ~ven Seidman otic Welfare nda Singer aterialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse )semary Hennessy 1 Ethic of Care ary Jeanne Larrabee minist Epistemologies nda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter mder Politics and Post-Communism anette Funk and Magda Mueller 1genderings aomi Scheman minist Theory and the Classics ancy Rabinowitz and Amy Richlin )stmodern Revisionings of the Political lna Yeatman oral Dilemmas of Feminism lurie Shrage rbjection and Subjectivity iana Tietjens/Meyers Feminist Contentions A Philosophical Exchange Seyla Benhabib Judith Butler Drucilla Cornell Nancy Fraser Introduction by Linda Nicholson Routledge • New York and London Published in 1995 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE Copyright © 1995 by Routledge Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Streit urn Differenz. English Feminist contentions: a philosophical exchange / Seyla Benhabib ... let al.l : with an introduction by Linda Nicholson. p. cm. - (Thinking gender) "First published as Der Streit urn Differenz (Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag, 1993)" - CIP introd.
    [Show full text]
  • Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University
    [Expositions 7.2 (2013) 41–51] Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 Interview: Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University HEATHER COLETTI Immaculata University Drucilla Cornell is a Professor of Political Science, Women’s Studies, and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. She has taught previously at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City and the Rutgers School of Law in Newark. A major voice in the world of feminist legal and ethical theory, she is perhaps best known as one of the organizers of the conference on deconstruction and the law at Cardozo, resulting in the landmark collection Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (1992)1. As this interview indicates, her work has taken a new direction with her discovery of uBuntu, a system of relational ethics practiced in South Africa. I spoke with Dr. Cornell about uBuntu and other matters in May of 2013. Below is a transcript of that conversation. Coletti: The question I would just start with – and you can go in any direction you want with this – is, Why South Africa? Cornell: I think that’s a really good question. I’m not sure that I can answer it except by being rather personal. I went to South Africa in 2001. I had been getting invitations as an academic since the election of Nelson Mandela. People were interested in the Imaginary Domain, and how to think about gay and lesbian rights, and “multicultural rights,” to use a commonplace phrase. I was invited to give some named lectures at the University of Stellenbosch, and to give some lectures in the Western Cape of South Africa, and at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg.
    [Show full text]
  • Derrida-Force-Of-Law.Pdf
    ECONSTRUCTION OSSIBILITY USTICE EDITED BY DRUCILLA CORNELL MICHEL ROSENFELD DAVID GRAY CARLSON New YcMrk • London T Published in 1992 by Routledge j tt n t An imprint of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. 29 West 35 Street New York, NY 10001 Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane Contents London EC4P 4EE Copyright © 1992 by Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14 copyright © 1990 in the names of the authors of the essays. Chapter 9 was previously published in Gregory Leyh, ed.. Legal Hermeneutics (Univer­ sity of California Press). Copyright © 1992 The Regents of the University of California. Acknowledgments vii Reprinted with permission. Introduction , ix Chapter 12 was previously published in Agnes Heller, Can Modernity Survive?, and is reprinted with permission of the University of California Press and Polity Press (UK). Chapter 13 will appear in Alan Wolfe, Human Difference, forthcoming bom the Uni­ Law, Violence and Justice versity of California Press, and is reprinted with permission. 1 Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority” 3 Jacques Derrida Printed in the United States of America on acid free paper. 2 The Philosophy of the Limit: Systems Theory and 68 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or Feminist Legal Reform utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now Drucilla Cornell known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in > any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing Deconstruction and Legal Interpretation from the publishers.
    [Show full text]
  • Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy
    APA Newsletters Volume 06, Number 1 Fall 2006 NEWSLETTER ON FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY FROM THE EDITOR, SALLY J. SCHOLZ ABOUT THE NEWSLETTER ON FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY SUBMISSION GUIDELINES AND INFORMATION NEWS FROM THE COMMITTEE ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN, ROSEMARIE TONG ARTICLES SHARON CRASNOW “Activist Research and the Objectivity of Science” CARMELA EPRIGHT “Praxis and the “F” Word: Young Women, Feminism, Fear” BOOK REVIEWS Naomi Zack: Inclusive Feminism: A Third Wave Theory of Women’s Commonality REVIEWED BY CLEA F. REES Sharyn Clough: Beyond Epistemology: A Pragmatist Approach to Feminist Science Studies REVIEWED BY NANCY M. WILLIAMS © 2006 by The American Philosophical Association ISSN: 1067-9464 Cassandra Pinnick, Noretta Koertge, and Robert Almeder: Scrutinizing Feminist Epistemology: An Examination of Gender in Science REVIEWED BY SHARYN CLOUGH Christina Erneling and David Martel, eds.: The Mind as a Scientific Object REVIEWED BY CARMEL FORDE Elizabeth Grosz: Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power REVIEWED BY CATHERINE VILLANUEVA GARDNER Rebecca Kukla: Mass Hysteria: Medicine, Culture, and Mothers’ Bodies REVIEWED BY LAURA NEWHART Maurice Hamington and Dorothy C. Miller, eds.: Socializing Care REVIEWED BY LAUREN FLEMING Lisa Adkins and Beverly Skeggs: Feminism after Bourdieu REVIEWED BY CHRISTINA SMERICK Maria Falco, ed.: Feminist Interpretations of Niccolò Macchiavelli REVIEWED BY MINDY PEDEN Peter Knox-Shaw: Jane Austen and the Enlightenment REVIEWED BY MONICA SHORES Lorraine Code, ed.: Feminist Interpretations of Hans-Georg Gadamer REVIEWED BY JAMEY FINDLING Jane Duran: Eight Women Philosophers: Theory, Politics, and Feminism REVIEWED BY MAURICE HAMINGTON Sally J. Scholz and Shannon M. Mussett, eds.: The Contradictions of Freedom: Philosophical Essays on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Mandarins REVIEWED BY ROBIN MARGARET JAMES Margaret A.
    [Show full text]
  • Revisiting Beyond Accommodation After Twenty Years
    feminists@law Vol 1, No 1 (2011) _____________________________________________________________________________________ Revisiting Beyond Accommodation after Twenty Years Drucilla Cornell* Beyond Accommodation was part of the Thinking Gender series in which a number of feminist theorists and philosophers questioned the adequacy of essentialist or empirically based notions of gender as foundational to feminist theory and practice.1 The very notion of being gendered was critiqued as a kind of prison in which women could not break out of a symbolic order that stamped them with a certain kind of being in the world. Many feminists built on Judith Butler’s path-breaking notion of gender as performance, to challenge the idea of “woman,” or even a conception of any shared reality of “woman” that could be the basis of some kind of account of gender that could give us a comprehensive notion of women’s oppression and women’s freedom.2 Before turning to the trajectory of my work, I need to say something about my own political background, because it will help illuminate why I wrote of “ethical feminism” from the beginning. First, and most importantly, my work as a theorist is deeply influenced by my activism in Marxist-Leninist groups throughout my twenties. Unlike many of my generation, Icontinue to consider myself a kind of Marxist, and certainly someone committed to socialist transformation. The reason I * Professor of Political Science, Comparative Literature and Women’s Studies, Rutgers University, USA. [email protected]. 1 Drucilla Cornell, Beyond Accommodation: Ethical Feminism, Deconstruction and the Law. New York: Routledge, 1991. The Thinking Gender series was edited by the feminist scholar Linda Nicholson and promoted and protected by Maureen MacGrogan, who was then an editor at Routledge Press.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rescaling of Feminist Analyses of Law and State Power: from (Domestic) Subjectivity to (Transnational) Governance Networks
    The Rescaling of Feminist Analyses of Law and State Power: From (Domestic) Subjectivity to (Transnational) Governance Networks Mariana Valverde* Introduction .................................................................................................................... 325 I. Feminist Legal Theory Rescaled: Geography, Cultural Difference, and the Invisibilization of “Ordinary” Feminine Subjectivity .................................. 330 II. Whatever Happened to the Critique of Marriage and Domesticity? ............... 344 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 350 INTRODUCTION In the mid- and late 1980s—a time that could arguably be described as the golden age of feminist legal thought, for North America at any rate—empirical researchers as well as theorists were virtually obliged to take sides in the cross- disciplinary debate (or dialogue of the deaf) concerning “postmodernism.”1 The intrafeminist fights often focused on the work of feminist philosopher Judith Butler. Butler’s analyses were not primarily focused on legal mechanisms,2 but the implications of postmodern theorizations of gender such as those developed by Butler for legal studies loomed large in the investigations of feminist legal thinkers, both those who were “in favour” (e.g., Drucilla Cornell, Janet Halley, Wendy Brown, Nicola Lacey, Carol Smart) and those who were “against,” who included not only mainstream liberals like Martha Nussbaum, but also socialist feminists such
    [Show full text]
  • The Theory of Law As Literature
    Buffalo Law Review Volume 49 Number 1 Article 7 1-1-2001 The Theory of Law as Literature Dennis Patterson Rutgers University, School of Law (Camden) Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/buffalolawreview Part of the Law Commons, and the Legal Theory Commons Recommended Citation Dennis Patterson, The Theory of Law as Literature, 49 Buff. L. Rev. 477 (2001). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/buffalolawreview/vol49/iss1/7 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Buffalo Law Review by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BOOK REVIEW The Theory of Law as Literature DENNIS PATTERSONt Literary Criticisms of Law. By Guyora Binder & Robert Weisberg. Princeton,N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pp. 544. $75.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. Of the various "movements" in law, few have seen the growth and diversity found in law and literature. While the causes and explanations of this are surely diverse, a material part of the explanation has to be the fact that law can be looked at both as a literary artifact and as a subject of literary study. That is, it is possible both to study the ways in which law is represented in literature (e.g., Charles Dickens' Bleak House) and to evaluate the law as literature. In their comprehensive and important work, Guyora Binder and Robert Weisberg take up this second aspect, the study of law as literature.
    [Show full text]