Article – On Feminist Legal Methodologies: Spilt, Plural and Speaking Subjects

Authors

  • Gina Heathcote SOAS University of London

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22024/UniKent/03/fal.667

Keywords:

Nicola Lacey, feminist legal methodology, intersectionality, Unspeakable Subjects, legal subjectivity, feminist jurisprudence, indigenous knowledge practices

Abstract

This article uses Nicola Lacey’s 1998 book Unspeakable Subjects as a prompt to consider the potential of feminist jurisprudence to develop methodologies that focus on the foundational dimensions of law. I therefore explore possibilities for a feminist account of legal subjectivity that uses Lacey’s account of critique, utopias and reform to articulate three interlocking feminist methodologies which I label split subjectivities, plural subjectivities and political responsible listening. I argue that these feminist inspired methodologies draw in understandings of difference and of the centrality of inter-subject relations as the important dimensions of humanness that accounts of autonomy overlook, before challenging the text to further consider which voices, and knowledge practices, remain silenced by feminist legal methodologies. To realise these ideas in strategies for law reform I argue for feminist listening that exercises care through the centring of accounts that emerge from those whose normative universe is more often particularised or discounted in law arrangements. As such, the article addresses legal subjectivity through the lens of intersectionality but with a jurisprudence that seeks to transcends the constraints of identity politics and through attention to indigenous Australian feminisms.

Author Biography

Gina Heathcote, SOAS University of London

Reader in Gender Studies and International Law, Centre for Gender Studies and School of Law, SOAS University of London, UK.

Published

21-12-2018

How to Cite

Heathcote, G. (2018). Article – On Feminist Legal Methodologies: Spilt, Plural and Speaking Subjects. Feminists@law, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.22024/UniKent/03/fal.667

Issue

Section

Celebrating 20 Years of Nicola Lacey's Unspeakable Subjects