Overview

The essays in Erotic Justice address the ways in which law has been implicated in contemporary debates dealing with sexuality, culture and 'different' subjects - including women, sexual minorities, Muslims and the transnational migrant. Law is analysed as a discursive terrain, where these different subjects are excluded or included in the postcolonial present on terms that are reminiscent of the colonial encounter and its treatment of difference. Bringing a postcolonial feminist legal analysis to her discussion, Kapur is relentless in her critiques on how colonial discourses, cultural essentialism, and victim rhetoric are reproduced in universal, liberal projects such as human rights and international law, as well as in the legal regulation of sexuality and culture in a postcolonial context. Drawing her examples from postcolonial India, Ratna Kapur demonstrates the theoretical and disruptive possibilities that the postcolonial subject brings to international law, human rights, and domestic law. In the process, challenges are offered to the political and theoretical constructions of the nation, sexuality, cultural authenticity, and women's subjectivity.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ratna Kapur (Centre for Feminist Legal Research, New Delhi, India)
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge Cavendish
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.20cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.470kg
ISBN:  

9781904385240

ISBN 10:   1904385249
Pages:   228
Publication Date:   03 February 2005
Audience:   College/higher education ,  General/trade ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

Introduction; New Cosmologies: Mapping the Postcolonial Feminist Legal Project; Erotic Disruptions: Legal Narratives of Culture, Sex and Nation in India; The Tragedy of Victimization Rhetoric: Resurrecting the `Native' Subject in International/Postcolonial Feminist Legal Politics; The `Other' Side of Universality: Cross-Border Movements and the Transnational Migrant Subject.

Reviews

'In this elegantly argued book, [Kapur] provides a rich account of a series of disruptions that, in itself, is a welcome act of political resistance.' - Social & Legal Studies 'Kapur demonstrate[s] the continuing importance of gender and sexuality as sites for critical engagement with liberalism, citizenship, nationalism, and postcolonialism. These are interventions that challenge much recieved orthodoxy and they deserve careful reading.' - Social & Legal Studies

'In this elegantly argued book, [Kapur] provides a rich account of a series of disruptions that, in itself, is a welcome act of political resistance.' - Social & Legal Studies 'Kapur demonstrate[s] the continuing importance of gender and sexuality as sites for critical engagement with liberalism, citizenship, nationalism, and postcolonialism. These are interventions that challenge much recieved orthodoxy and they deserve careful reading.' - Social & Legal Studies

'Kapur's transformative goals in Erotic Justice are fully realised, as the text not only presents another challenge to liberal legalism's imperialism, but it is also a clear demonstration of the disruptive and theoretical possibilities the subaltern subject can bring to law.' Sydney Law Review. September 2005. 'This book draws on the variety and richness of an Indian past that continues to suffuse the present. Kapur's consideration of numerous issues ranging from media representations and criminal law to human trafficking provides a text that is both comprehensive and encompassing. The central theme that runs throughout the book is perhaps best summed up by the phrase coined by Indian sex workers, '[w]e want bread. We also want roses' (p. 127). This symbolizes the duality and non-homogeneity of Indian feminism and that this multiplicity of feminist approaches cannot be encapsulated by a singular and discrete approach. For Kapur, what seems to be essential is that postcolonial feminists be given the opportunity to open up a 'space for new political possibilities and imaginations.' Feminist Theory , autumn 2005. Toni Johnson, University of Kent.

Author Information

Ratna Kapur is the Director of the Centre for Feminist Legal Research, New Delhi.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions