FOUCAULT'S MONSTERS AND THE CHALLENGE OF LAW by ANDREW N. SHARPE
| Date | 01 December 2010 |
| Author | GARY WICKHAM |
| Published date | 01 December 2010 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2010.00529.x |
FOUCAULT'S MONSTERS AND THE CHALLENGE OF LAW by
ANDREW N. SHARPE
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2010, pp. xv + 184, £70.00)
One of the rites of passage for all legal and socio-legal scholars is to give at
least some consideration to the fundamental norms of modern liberal rule
(relating to the freedom of individuals and their bodies from interference by
other individuals, or by state or private agencies), particularly to the role
played by law in the development and maintenance of such norms. As such,
most legal and socio-legal scholars would fancy themselves able to
recognize a book that is likely to make an impact in this much-trod field,
either to embrace it, to criticize it, or perhaps to avoid it. I doubt, however,
that many legal or socio-legal scholars would instantly recognize the book
under review in these terms, not with the couplet Foucault's Monsters at the
head of its title. Yet it is indeed an attempt to speak to this rite-of-passage
topic. It is, moreover, a very good attempt. It could perhaps have achieved
slightly more than it has ± it is let down by two weaknesses, which I shall
deal with later ± but, nonetheless, Andrew Sharpe is to be congratulated for
his contribution to this longstanding debate.
In telling the story of the way English law, in particular (he also
discusses some other jurisdictions, mainly for comparison), has handled
three forms of being ± transsexuals, conjoined twins, and human/animal
hybrids ± Sharpe is also presenting an argument that the law is far less of a
shining protector and promoter of liberal values than most of its
practitioners think it is. In his conclusion, for example, after restating Lord
Justice Walker's claim (made in 2000) that `there is no longer any place in
legal textbooks . . . for expressions . . . such as ``Monster'' . . . which are
redolent of superstitious horror', Sharpe insists that, while it should not have
a place, nonetheless:
The monster is [still] a category of the law; it has a legal life . . . [A]lternatives
include the leper, the idiot, the lunatic, and the deformed or the disabled . . .
[But] they remain human. What distinguishes the monster is the fact that it is
legally constructed as non-human and is located outside the law (p. 145).
By employing the category monster in the twenty-first century, he continues,
liberal law is faced with a challenge: `The challenge is . . . not only in
relation to the ways in which law constructs bodies and/or desires as
``unnatural'', but also through its rigid categorical structures' (p. 149).
`In the West', Sharpe proposes in his chapter-length summary of the
history of `monsters' in English law (pp. 58±84), `the monster category is
traceable to Roman law and in the context of English law features from the
mid-thirteenth century into modernity' (p. 22). He highlights the role of
Bracton, Swinburne, Coke, Hobbes, Locke, and Blackstone, amongst others,
in formulating and/or perpetuating the legal category monster in English law
(pp. 61±84, 113). Sharpe makes considerable use, as his title suggests, of the
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ß2010 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2010 Cardiff University Law School
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