"Are we all feminists now?" : wyzwania ze strony Feministycznej Jurysprudencji wobec tradycyjnej teorii prawa

Abstract

The potential of Feminist Jurisprudence is mainly built on its criticism of Traditional Jurisprudence. Through the deconstruction of the latter’s main categories such as objectivity, justice, equality, and rationality, Feminist Jurisprudence aims to demonstrate that Traditional Jurisprudence tends to mask inequality, exclusion and lack of recognition rather than being able to bring about change or provide the values under research. What is more, FJ indicates a wide range of topics that are not explored by Traditional Jurisprudence and thus have no chance to be dealt with using traditional tools. As a result, Feminist Jurisprudence provides a separate language, a different epistemology and methodological tools that can broaden access to justice including all subjects by giving them recognition. What follows from these two approaches to jurisprudence and two distinct sets of epistemological assumptions is a different understanding of the subject and a different vision of social relations. As Feminist Jurisprudence convincingly shows, traditional law, with its inclination for objectivity defends legal norms as part of the legal and social order rather than an individual autonomy and integrity of subjects. In this paper I would like to suggest a middle-way solution going beyond the dualistic categories of objectivity and subjectivity. The proposal calls for a deep structural change of the legal discourse as the only one that really matters from the feminist point of view.