Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:17:47.590Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Foucault's rhetorical challenge to law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2012

Sarah Burgess*
Affiliation:
Department of Communication Studies, University of San Francisco

Extract

For scholars of law, the turn to Michel Foucault's works almost inevitably invokes an apology, a qualification, or a caveat. With the acknowledgement that Foucault never offers a sustained account of law as an ‘object of inquiry’ comes a sense that his work might nonetheless offer important insight into contemporary forms of law and modern legal problems. The difficulty with which many scholars struggle is how to begin from the position of this ‘nevertheless’ or ‘however’ that marks the contingent ground from which they argue. That is, scholars grapple with how to make Foucault say something about law when what he says is indirect or culled from several different works.

Type
Review essay
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bauman, Zygmunt (1993) Postmodern Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Beck, Anthony (1996) ‘Foucault and Law: The Collapse of Law's Empire’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 16: 489502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burgess, Sarah (2009) ‘The Politics of Medico-Legal Recognition: The Terms of Gendered Subjectivity in the UK Gender Recognition Act’, in Murray, Stuart J. and Holmes, Dave (eds), Critical Interventions in the Ethics of Healthcare: Challenging the Principle of Autonomy in Bioethics. Farnham: Ashgate, 147–62.Google Scholar
Constable, Marianne (2005) Just Silences: The Limits and Possibilities of Modern Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ewald, François (1988) ‘The Law of Law’, trans. Fraser, Iain, in Fraser, Iain, (ed.), Autopoietic Law: A New Approach to Law and Society. New York/Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 3650.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel (2003) Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1974–1975. Marchetti, Valerio and Salomoni, Antonella (eds), trans. Burchell, Graham. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Girard, René (1986) The Scapegoat. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Alan and Wickham, Gary (1994) Foucault and Law: Towards a Sociology of Law as Governance. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Sharpe, Andrew N. (2002) Transgender Jurisprudence: Dysphoric Bodies of Law. London: Cavendish Publishing Limited.CrossRefGoogle Scholar