Speaking Out Against Violence – For an Embodied Feminist Law Agenda?

Abstract

A discursive, always already Foucauldian approach to the law question has always seemed to me to suffice for critique to have the desired effect of successfully challenging law’s truth. But is it perhaps past time to move beyond discourse analysis and a purely visceral reaction to phallocratic law’s violence and towards what might be called an embodied feminist law agenda? The inquiry takes the form of a journey in search of new, more embodied ways of speaking out against violence against women. It has involved rethinking the relationship between mind and body and the presumptions about them that underlie fluctuations within feminist thought over time between emphasising discourse compared to emphasising bodies and how they impact on feminist praxis.