Sex @ the end of the twentieth century: some re-marks on a minor jurisprudence.

Abstract

This article offers a re-reading of Goodrich’s essay, ‘Law in the Courts of Love’. My contention here is that the idiom of love that Goodrich provides us with in this essay cannot address the complexity of sexuality and sexual politics that inhabit our contemporary ‘technoscientific’ culture. In so doing, I will juxtapose his essay with Laven Berlant and Michael Warner’s essay, ‘Public Sex’. This article will be divided into three sections. In the first section, I will evaluate and review Goodrich’s genealogical approach to law and the image of justice that arises out of his approach. The second section will be a re-reading of Goodrich’s ‘Law in the Courts of Love’ through feminist and technoscientific discourses. Its aim is to problematise and re-think not only the idiom of feminine justice that Goodrich offers, but also to question the presuppositions upon which his work is based, primary presuppositions surrounding issues of privacy, sexuality and sexuated rights. Finally, in the third section I will conclude by suggesting that the re-figuration of justice necessitates a re-figuration of the relationship that law has with time and space.