Love, Rage and Legal Theory

Abstract

Love and rage, I believe, motivate feminist work in law, both in advocacy and in the academy. Love and rage not only move us to action, but they also inform a feminist sense of justice and of morality. This emotional root alone of feminist work in law renders it threatening and alien to mainstream legal discourse. As a consequence, mainstream legal discourse constitutes a tremendously powerful censor of feminist feeling, as well as substantive feminist views on law. The very presence, not to mention the dominance, of mainstream legal discourse and the disciplines it fosters oppress as they "discipline" the feelings that motivate and to some degree even define feminist legal practice and theory.