RICHARD COLLIER, 'Waiting Till Father Gets Home': The Reconstruction of Fatherhood in Family Law
| Published date | 01 March 1995 |
| Date | 01 March 1995 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399500400106 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
ABSTRACTS
RICHARD
COLLIER,
’Waiting
Till
Father
Gets
Home’:
The
Reconstruction
of Fatherhood
in
Family
Law
,
In
recent
debates
about
the
form
and
function
of
the
family
much
attention
has
focused
on
the
deleterious
consequences
deemed
to
attach
to
father-absence
(for
example,
in
relation
to
issues
around
child
support
and
the
criminality
of
male
youth).
At
the
heart
of
these
debates,
though
it
is
seldom
addressed
as
such,
is
the
question
of
what
being
a
’father’
actually
involves.
This
article
seeks
to
relate
changes
in
legal
conceptions
of
fatherhood
to
wider
shifts
in
the
historical
construction
of
heterosexuality
and,
in
particular,
to
the
emergence
of
a
distinct
discourse
of
a
’respectable’
familial
masculinity.
In
contrast
to
ideas
of
’undomesticated’
and
’dangerous’
masculinities,
it
is
argued
that
the
idea
of
the
family
man
has
come
to
signify
in
law
a
range
of
(frequently
contradictory)
ideas
about
heterosexual
masculinity.
The
law
continues
to
valorize
a
particular
male
heterosexual
subject
position,
though
importantly,
the
mechanisms
by
which
it
does
so
have
changed
from
the
late
nineteenth
century
to
the
present
day.
Through
reference
to
this
reconstruction
of
paternal
masculinity
in
law,
this
article
questions
the
idea
that
we
are
now
witnessing
a
form
of
contemporary
’crisis’
in
masculinity
and
the
family.
BRAD
SHERMAN,
Appropriating
the
Postmodern:
Copyright
and
the
Challenge
of the
New
it
seems
that
copyright
law
is
permanently
m
a
state
ot
crisis,
Indeed,
it
seems
that
no
sooner
has
copyright
law
recovered
from
the
shock
of
accommodating
some
new
form
of
creativity,
than
it
is
presented
with
a
new
problem
to
resolve.
The
latest
and,
for
some,
the
most
serious
challenge
to
copyright
law
comes
from
postmodern
art,
which
is
said
to
undermine
and
threaten
the
basis
of
copyright
law.
In
particular,
it
is
said
to
challenge
the
legal
idea
of
authorship
and
originality.
Arguing
against
this
approach,
this
paper
suggests
that
to
claim
that
copyright
law
is
undermined
by
postmodern
art
is
to
represent
copyright
law
as a
closed
and
stable
entity.
More
specifically,
in
order
to
be
in
a
position
to
argue
that
postmodern
artistic
practices
challenge
the
legal
idea
of
originality,
it is
necessary
to
ignore
the
fluid
and
open
nature
of
the
copyright
work.
In
conclusion,
it
is
argued
that
despite
the
claims
to
the
contrary,
these
recent
critiques
share
much
in
common
with
those
from
whom
they
are
distancing
themselves.
- -
.
~
._-~
~ -
..
SARA
AHMED,
Deconstruction
and
Law’s
Other:
Towards
a
Feminist
Theory
of Embodied
Legal
Rights
This
article
considers
how
feminist
theory
can
develop
a
non-essentialist
model
of
the
relation
between
law,
legal
rights
and
gender
inequalities.
Drawing
on
recent
deconstruc-
tive
theory,
as
shaped
by
Jacques
Derrida’s
writing
on
justice,
it
is
suggested
that
law
operates
as
a
citational
practice
in
which
bodies
are
gendered
in
the
process
of
being
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