Feminism and the Siren Call of Law

Abstract

Feminists have so often declared and celebrated the fecundity of the relationship between feminism and legal reform that critique of legal doctrines and norms, together with proposals for their reconstruction, have become the hallmarks of the modern feminist engagement with law. Yet today the long-cherished 'truth' about law's potentially beneficial impact on women's lives has started to fade and the quest for legal change has become fraught with problems. In responding to the aporetic state in which feminist legal scholarship now finds itself, this paper offers a recounting of the relationship between feminism and the politics of legal reform. However, in so doing, it seeks to neither support nor oppose these politics. Instead, it explores the historical contingencies that made this discourse possible. Utilizing Foucault's concept of eposteme, it demarcates the nineteenth century as the historical moment in which this discourse arose, and tracing the epistemic shifts underpinning the production of knowledge, locates it's positivities ad the interface of the time's episteme and the discourse of transcendental subjectivity that it endangered

Similar works

Full text

thumbnail-image

Kent Academic Repository

redirect
Last time updated on 02/07/2012

This paper was published in Kent Academic Repository.

Having an issue?

Is data on this page outdated, violates copyrights or anything else? Report the problem now and we will take corresponding actions after reviewing your request.