Rosenbury @UFLawDean on Postmodern Feminist Legal Theory

Laura A. Rosenbury, University of Florida College of Law, is publishing Postmodern Feminist Legal Theory: A Contingent, Contextual Account in Feminist Legal Theory in the United States and Asia: A Dialogue (Cynthia Grant Bowman, ed.; 2016) (Forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

Of all of the existing schools of feminist legal thought, postmodern feminist legal theory is the most difficult to define and categorize. Postmodernism itself is not a fixed concept. Moreover, the various approaches to postmodernism challenge and resist attempts to establish foundational truths or universal meanings. Feminist legal theory rooted in postmodernism therefore necessarily eschews stable understandings of feminism, law, and theory in favor of understandings that are fluid and shifting. If one embraces these principles, any attempt to conceptualize postmodern feminist legal theory immediately becomes contingent and contextual, if not also suspect. This Essay nonetheless analyzes the ways that legal scholars in the United States have developed and deployed postmodern feminist legal theory over the past thirty years. In doing so, the Essay provides one approach to postmodern feminist legal theory rooted in context and time. The Essay also highlights some of the distinctive aspects of postmodern feminist legal theory in this time and location, situating it in relation to other schools of feminist legal thought. Finally, the Essay emphasizes why these distinctions matter by viewing two areas of feminist law reform through this conceptualization of postmodern feminist legal theory.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.