Incomplete Correspondence: An Unsent Letter to Mary Joe Frug

Abstract

Dear Mary Joe: I think A Postmodern Feminist Legal Manifesto is bold, original, provocative, and fabulous. Following the title of manifesto with your equally confident statement of worry about the title expresses perfectly the comfort with tensions that characterizes the entire piece. I am most impressed with your effort to articulate and then live with multiplicity and tension as urged by postmodernists2 despite appearances of singularity or uniformity. At the same time, I am intrigued by the points at which you choose to limit the exploration of multiplicity, perhaps guided by the substantive commitments of feminism, and perhaps guided by a desire to prevent multiplicity itself from becoming routine and predictable. I will explain both parts of this reaction as I also elaborate on what I find new and important in the Commentary. With your focus on the female body, you join other feminists in examining the allegedly most natural and immutable source of gender difference.3 By addressing the legal meanings of female bodies, you frame the social construction discussion to integrate concrete images,