Feminist legal theory provides a healthy skepticism toward legal doctrine and insists that we reexamine even formally gender-neutral rules to uncover problematic assumptions behind them. The article first outlines feminist legal theory from the perspectives of liberal, cultural, and radical feminism. Examples of how each theory influences legal practice, case law, and legislation are highlighte...

Since the onset of the 2008 economic crisis and the resurgence of various forms of transnational radical politics (the Arab Spring, Occupy etc), several left-wing thinkers have argued that the era of left melancholia is now over. This paper examines such claims, paying particular attention to the recent re-engagement with the idea of communism in contemporary critical theory. Foregrounding the ...

A group of established feminist legal scholars are translating third-wave ideas and methodologies into a vibrant legal theory. These scholars do not acknowledge explicitly the influence of third-wave feminism, but they embrace its theoretical commitments as they attempt to redefine the relationship between feminism and the law. This paper explores three works in particular: Janet Halley’s book,...

This essay analyzes the prominent role played by first wave feminism and by women writers between 1898-1903 as the Jamaica Times articulated a broad-based, middle class nationalism and launched a campaign to establish a Jamaican national literature. Largely overlooked, this archival material is significant because it suggests a subtle yet significant modification of anglophone Caribbean feminis...

Defenders of multiculturalism have been recently criticized for failing to address gender inequality in minority cultures. Multiculturalism would seem incompatible with a commitment to feminism. This article discusses two empirical cases that pose a problem for public policy in the Netherlands: a conflict over wearing headscarves (hijab) and requests for surgical hymen repair. These cases evoke...

This article aims to reassemble a feminist genealogy of the posthuman in the arts, with a specific focus on the visual works conceived by female artists after the rise of what has been retrospectively defined as first-wave Feminism. Starting with the main avantgarde movements of the first half of the twentieth century—specifically, Futurism, Dadaism and Surrealism—this genealogy analyses the se...

The status of universalism has been much debated by feminists at the end of the twentieth century. Poststructuralist feminism is readily positioned in these debates as antagonistic to normative universalism. It is criticized as such: how is injustice to be judged and condemned if contestation and the openness of ungrounded universalism are the only ideals? This paper is a ‘sub-philosophical’ en...