Book Review: Unspeakable Subjects: Feminist Essays in Legal and Social Theory
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399900800308 |
| Date | 01 September 1999 |
| Author | Rosemary Auchmuty |
| Published date | 01 September 1999 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
BOOK REVIEWS
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conception of the private is vital to the dignity and well-being of a growing underclass
for whom the state, or a state-sanctioned private agency, is a daily superintendent. And
history provides numerous accounts of others who have been denied visibility and/or
privacy based, inter alia, on race, sexual orientation and physical or mental disability.
Finally, both collections interrogate the broader ‘ideological matrix’ (Buss, in Boyd,
p. 390) around public and private, in particular the gendered nature of the dichotomies
associated with the divide. They illustrate how conventional notions about public and
private values, especially the idea that the public sphere is rational and free from the
corrupting influence of emotion or affectivity, have become blurred amidst the ‘fem-
inisation’ of government and claims that the future is feminine. These developments
mean that being free of the ‘stigmata of affectivity’ (Thornton, p. 13) is no longer so
important for late modern governments or workplaces; in fact, corporate giants now
claim that ‘feminine’ people skills, flexibility, intuition and emotion will be the prized
values in the millennial ‘public sphere’. Unfortunately, it is not clear that this public-
sphere ‘feminisation’ is any more than a political or market-driven ruse, or that it has
any connection with feminist aims and objectives. Overall, it may simply mean that
ever larger numbers of working people will get a raw deal (Owens, in Thornton;
Ocran, Kay, and Boyd, in Boyd).
REFERENCES
Cooper, Davina (1998) Governing Out of Order: Space, Law and the Politics of
Belonging. London: Rivers Oram Press.
Fraser, Nancy (1997) Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’
Condition. New York: Routledge.
Lacey, Nicola (1998) ‘Theory into Practice? Pornography and the Public/Private
Dichotomy’, in Unspeakable Subjects: Feminist Essays in Legal and Social
Theory. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
Morgan, Derek (1998) ‘Frameworks of Analysis for Feminisms’: Accounts of Repro-
ductive Technology, pp. 189–209, in Sally Sheldon and Michael Thomson (eds)
Feminist Perspectives on Health Care Law. London: Cavendish.
THERESE MURPHY
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