Self and Subjectivities: Languages of Claim in Property Law

Abstract

It must be stressed that her work is not a true description of women or femininity, a position that is superior to false, patriarchal conceptions (truth, after all, is engaged in precisely the relation of doubles, or mirror reflections that is the hallmark of phallocentrism). Her aim is quite different: it is to devise a strategic and combative understanding, one whose function is to make explicit what has been excluded or left out of phallocentric images. Unlike truth, whose value is eternal, strategy remains provisional; its relevance and value depend on what it is able to achieve, on its utility in organizing means towards ends.1