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.