Left Legalism/Left Critique

Brown Wendy

Description

In recent decades, left political projects in the United States have taken a strong legalistic turn. From affirmative action to protection against sexual harassment, from indigenous peoples' rights to gay marriage, the struggle to eliminate subordination or exclusion and to achieve substantive equality has been waged through courts and legislation. At the same time, critiques of legalism have generally come to be regarded by liberal and left reformers as politically irrelevant at best, politically disunifying and disorienting at worst. This conjunction of a turn toward left legalism with a turn away from critique has hardened an intellectually defensive, brittle, and unreflective left sensibility at a moment when precisely the opposite is needed. Certainly, the left can engage strategically with the law, but if it does not also track the effects of this engagement-effects that often exceed or even redound against its explicit aims-it will unwittingly foster political institutions and doctrines strikingly at odds with its own values.Brown and Halley have assembled essays from diverse contributors-law professors, philosophers, political theorists, and literary critics-united chiefly by their willingness to think critically from the left about left legal projects. The essays themselves vary by topic, by theoretical approach, and by conclusion. While some contributors attempt to rework particular left legal projects, others insist upon abandoning or replacing those projects. Still others leave open the question of what is to be done as they devote their critical attention to understanding what we are doing. Above all, Left Legalism/Left Critique is a rare contemporary argument and model for the intellectually exhilarating and politically enriching dimensions of left critique-dimensions that persist even, and perhaps especially, when critique is unsure of the intellectual and political possibilities it may produce.Contributors: Lauren Berlant, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, Richard T. Ford, Katherine M. Franke, Janet Halley, Mark Kelman, David Kennedy, Duncan Kennedy, Gillian Lester, Michael Warner

Sujets

• USA
• Political party
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 22 novembre 2002
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822383871
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

L E F T L E G A L I S M / L E F T C R I T I Q U E

Left Legalism / Left Critique

E D I T E D B Y W E N D Y B R O W N A N D J A N E T H A L L E Y

D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S / D U R H A M & L O N D O N 2 0 0 2

∫2002 Duke University Press

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Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

‘‘Sexuality Harassment.’’ Copyright∫2002 by Janet Halley. ‘‘Is Kinship

Always Already Heterosexual?’’ Copyright∫2002 by Judith Butler.

C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgments / vii

Wendy Brown and Janet Halley Introduction / 1

Richard T. Ford Beyond ‘‘Difference’’: A Reluctant Critique of Legal Identity Politics / 38

Janet Halley Sexuality Harassment / 80

Lauren Berlant The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy, and Politics / 105

Mark Kelman and Gillian Lester Ideology and Entitlement / 134

Duncan Kennedy The Critique of Rights in Critical Legal Studies / 178

Judith Butler Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual? / 229

Michael Warner Beyond Gay Marriage / 259

Katherine M. Franke Putting Sex to Work / 290

Drucilla Cornell Dismembered Selves and Wandering Wombs / 337

David Kennedy When Renewal Repeats: Thinking against the Box / 373

Wendy Brown Suffering the Paradoxes of Rights / 420

Contributors / 435

Index / 439

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

The making of an anthology, and particularly one that involves the collab- orative authorship of an introduction, is a more labor-intensive and socially extended process than appearances might suggest. We have been fortunate to have superb assistance in this work. For their critical readings of early drafts of the introduction, we are grateful to Judith Butler, Gail Hershatter, David Kennedy, and Duncan Kennedy. We benefited from thoughtful en- gagement with the text at the Jurisdictions Conference at Ohio State Uni- versity in May 2000 and at Cornell University Law School in March 2001. In addition, anonymous readers for the manuscript at Duke University Press offered valuable suggestions for improvement. We are grateful for the research and technical assistance offered by Anne Marie Calareso, Robyn Marasco, and Deeni Stevens. Robyn Marasco also prepared the index. Financial support of the project was generously pro- vided by the Dorothy Redwine Estate, Richard W. Weiland, the Robert E. Paradise Faculty Scholarship for Excellence in Research and Teaching (all of Stanford University), the Harvard Law School, and the Academic Senate Committee on Research of the University of California, Berkeley. For their permission to reprint previously published material, we ac- knowledge the following. Lauren Berlant, ‘‘The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy, and Politics’’ appeared in a longer version inCultural Plural- ism, Identity Politics, and the Law (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). Mark Kelman and Gillian Lester, ‘‘Ideology and Entitle- ment,’’ was originally published inJumping the Queue: An Inquiry into the Legal Treatment of Students with Learning Disabilities(Cambridge, MA:

viii

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

Harvard University Press. Copyright∫1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College). Duncan Kennedy, ‘‘The Critique of Rights in Critical Legal Studies,’’ is drawn from material that originally appeared inA Cri- tique of Adjudication (fin de siècle)(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Copyright∫1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College). Michael Warner, ‘‘Beyond Gay Marriage,’’ appeared in a longer version in The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999). Katherine M. Franke, ‘‘Putting Sex to Work,’’ was originally published in theDenver University Law Review75 (1998). Drucilla Cornell, ‘‘Dismembered Selves and Wandering Wombs,’’ appeared in a longer version inThe Imaginary Domain: Abortion, Por- nography, and Sexual Harassment(New York: Routledge, 1995). David Kennedy, ‘‘When Renewal Repeats: Thinking against the Box,’’ appeared in a different version in theNew York University Journal of International Law and Politics32 (2000). Wendy Brown, ‘‘Suffering the Paradoxes of Rights,’’ originally appeared inConstellations7.2 (2000). Judith Butler, ‘‘Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual?’’ originally appeared indifferences: a journal of feminist cultural studies13, no. 1 (spring 2002).

W E N D Y B R O W N A N D J A N E T H A L L E Y

Introduction

A colleague of ours was giving a paper on the vexed problem of veiling among ∞ contemporary Islamic women and Western feminist responses to it. From the audience, an American woman of South Asian descent challenged our col- league, a feminist Arab secularist, for intervening in a domain properly belong- ing toreligiousArab women: ‘‘What right haveyouto be saying such things?’’ ‘‘Right?’’ our colleague responded. ‘‘I have no right—I have a critique!’’

This collection emerges from conversations enjoyed and endured by the coeditors as we explored the intersection of certain progressive political projects we care about and certain intellectual undertakings we were pursu- ing. We were both veterans of various feminist, antiracist, multicultural, sexual liberationist, and antihomophobic efforts. We were both engaged, in different ways, in teaching, thinking, and writing about nationalism. We were both convinced that contemporary traditions of social, political, and literary theory offer rich hypotheses that can be vital ways of testing our own political situations and desires. And we shared an absorption with the many ways that the political projects in which we are involved depicted various elements in the legal system as ‘‘the problem’’ to which they address themselves and framed strategies for social change—indeed, models some- times of justice itself—that turned in some crucial way on law reform. Our intellectual and political concerns were thickly intertwined: if we could help identify effective ways to loosen the grip of gender strictures at work, in sex, at home; beat back even by an inch the effects of racism on the educational environments in which we work and social environments in