A question of definition: feminist legal scholarship, socio-legal studies and debate about law and politics

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Law, Violence, and Sexual Consent

This essay approaches the question of law and violence through the category of sexual consent, as it is articulated, interpreted and theorized in rape law in India. While the incorporation of an explicit definition of sexual consent has been seen as a feminist move in the criminal law in India, I argue that consent, being grounded in the liberal models of abstract individualism, is premised on an under-theorized conception of sexuality as well as ‘desire’. It is my claim that if law seeks to perform an ‘educative role’ and feminist legal scholarship and pedagogy is an attempt at an ‘uncoercive re-arrangement of desires’,i then we need to produce more nuanced accounts of the sexual and desiring subjects. The dominant frames of sex-negative and sex-positive feminisms may not offer us any insights into this and may inadvertently become complicit with legal violence in its foundational as well as interpretive moments. In this backdrop, I will argue that we need to push towards a more complex understanding of consent based on a more grounded theory of the subject at the centre of law and feminism which takes into account the complexities, contradictions, complicities, and violence that form human subjectivity, sexuality, and desire. The essay critically examines the definition of consent introduced in 2013 criminal law amendments and argues for a reading of sexual consent within a relational psychoanalytic framework that takes desire seriously.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

This article offers a review of shifts in feminist legal theory since the early 1990s. We first use our respective histories and fields of expertise to provide a brief overview and highlight some key themes within feminist legal theory. We then examine Social & Legal Studies ( SLS), asking whether it has met its key goal of integrating feminist analyses at every level. Our review suggests that SLS has offered many important contributions to feminist legal scholarship but has not fulfilled its lofty goal of integrating feminist analyses at every level of scholarship. It features feminist work quite consistently and some degree of mainstreaming is evident, as is the international reach of SLS. Too many articles fail, however, to incorporate or even mention feminist approaches. We end with thoughts about, and hopes for, the future of legal feminism, examining efforts to revitalize the field and suggesting possible directions for the future.

In praise of legal feminism

This paper reflects on the achievements of feminism within the legal academy. Rather than offer an encyclopaedic account of feminist legal scholarship, it seeks instead to define, in broad terms, the aims, the spirit and the methods of legal feminism, identifying the commonalities among feminist scholars. It suggests that it is the critical study of law as ‘a form of life’, to borrow from Wittgenstein, which perhaps best characterises the shared endeavour of legal feminists. The paper identifies the major intellectual and political difficulties encountered, and also engendered, by feminists in the course of their work, and it assesses the impact of feminism on mainstream jurisprudence.

The Incredible Woman: Power and Sexual Politics by Jocelynne A Scutt

This article is a book review of Jocelynne A Scutt The Incredible Woman: Power and Sexual Politics (Artemis Publishing, Melbourne, 1997) (vol 1, 336 + xiv pages, $AUS34.95; vol 2, 354 + xvii pages, $AUS34.95). The book is an anthology of scholarship that acts as a catalogue of the wrong standards that the law has applied to women's performances and women's experiences. Petersson stresses the importance of this book for feminist legal scholarship as it increases the volume of such works, increasing the possibility of political change. Scutt's book is praised for being an exemplary voice for raising awareness in this area by making the message clear and accessible.