'Ideology' after 'Discourse': A Reconceptualization for Feminist Analyses of Law

Abstract

Of the many challenges faced by feminist legal scholarship in recent years, the post-modernist challenge to the use of overarching theoretical frameworks to 'explain' women's position under law has been characterized as one of the most 'destabilizing'.2 Theories derived from the analytical concept, 'ideology', and advocating 'consciousness-raising' as the means of redressing women's inequality under law have been the subject of most frequent criticism due (in part) to their reliance upon unsustainable essentialist notions of truth and femininity. Yet, increasingly, 'discourse', the postmodern successor to ideology, has come under attack from feminists concerned with maintaining a reformist stance towards law. In response to postmodern critiques of ideology and to the more recent claim that, in focusing exclusively upon discursive deconstruction, discourse theory is unable to do more than challenge law's treatment of women at an abstract theoretical level, I argue a case for retaining aspects of both concepts. I explore a reconceptualization of ideology which, borrowing insights from discourse theory, recognizes the strategic necessity of coupling feminist analyses of dominant discursive constructions of femininity with efforts to disrupt and resist the material effects of their reproduction in law.