Generating Comparison-in-Law: Embodied Epistemologies, For the Love of Knowledge

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of embodied epistemologies in comparative law and reimagines comparative law as a space of unbounded knowledge production without political end. Drawing on feminist, decolonial and undisciplined gestures this paper interrogates the questions of who, where, when and why in relation to comparative law to expose the coloniality and gendered logic of comparison. To move beyond this, the paper proposes philosophies of comparison-in-law as a fecund intermediary generative milieu, building on Eros. The paper explores intergenerational exchange and kaleidoscopic comparison as knowledge generating. Through the everyday object of the chair, the paper interrogates comparative law’s relation to power to understand futures of comparative law in relation to the historical contingencies that contour it. Comparative law is thus understood as reflexive, embodied, constituted through numerous plural “projects” and driven by a philosophical and epistemological curiosity to question everything. This reveals comparative law to be much more than a “discipline.” Rather it is understood as a doing, an oscillating body of philosophical projects in law that overlap and diverge to enhance knowledge of law and society without seeking to have the last word. Building on embodied philosophies, the paper argues for transformation through embodied epistemologies that expose the fallacy of the separation of knowledge and experience in law and provide a space for reimagining encounters and others in law.