Law and Body Politics

The metaphor of the Body Politic found in the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes, amongst others, has been drawn upon by feminists to permit investigations of the politicization of the body and the saturation of the body with political meaning. Feminists have shown that whilst the female body has emerged as a site of struggle and a focus of legal fascination, the legal system has at the same time played a role in silencing women and rendering women's needs, if not their bodies, invisible.;In unmasking the alleged impartiality and neutrality of law and in exposing the extent to which the legal subject is gendered, women have been shown to be alien to the legal system. This has led in some quarters to an expression of concern as to how, when, indeed whether at all women should resort to law. The premise of this book is that it is not necessary to accept or reject wholesale legal rules and procedures, and that different strategies can be advocated in response to different issues. Each chapter is concerned with an exploration of points at which law and the female body make contact and with strategies through which the nature and meaning of that contact can be reformulated. Areas such as women's reproductive lives, female circumcision, sterilization and violence against women are dealt with.