Anna Loretoni

The Rule of Law and Gender Difference

The philosophical and legal project of modernity has been described by many authors in terms of a gradual establishment of individualism. The experience of the modern individual, set free from the traditional social bonds that would place her within a preset order, is that of an isolated ego. According to Norbert Elias’s insightful account, in previous stages individuals perceived themselves as members of communities, classes, and family groups with a predominance of “we-identities”, whereas with modernity individual identity (the “I-identity”) has come to play a decisive role. Thus, the experience of modern identity is totally new: it is no longer circumscribed by the clear-cut and rigid boundaries of a fully controllable environment, but is rather the reflective outcome of an open-ended individual project.1 Yet, it now appears that the group identity processes2 that seemed to connote only the pre-modern stages of social development are instead a constant of Western democracies – a paradoxical product of modernity, according to some authors – which is far from being a contingent relic. Hence, today’s critical reflection on the rule of law has to deal with this issue. The emergence of differences claiming recognition in the public space – both legal and political – calls for the allocation of goods and resources to individuals with a specific collective identity. This is a crisis factor, or anyhow an unprecedented challenge, for the role and function of law in contemporary societies. Above all, the increasing presence of groups on the political scene has put under significant strain the traditional characteristics of the rule of law in its liberal, nineteenth-century version. This strain has even led some authors to speak of a crisis, if not the very end, of the classical formulation of the rule of law.3 The traditional features of law were shaped against a social background very different from the present one: it was a highly individualistic social arrangement where collective identities were rather unusual. The many examples of so-called sector legislation, lobbied for

Gender, Identity and Belonging: New Citizenships beyond Orientalism

Abstract By applying the gender perspective to the concept of Orientalism elaborated by Edward Said, the article debates how the Orient is not only a cultural construction, but also a sexual one. This lens is able to disclose the gender rhetoric through which the Western feminist eye has framed the ‘Other Woman’, depicting her as bounded by cultural ties. This is well exemplified by the stereotype of the Muslim woman as veiled, victim and powerless. The deconstructive strategy and the intersectional approach will fruitfully interact with the vivid experience of some Italian and British Muslim women activists, to show that the agency of Muslim women emerges in different contexts, thus breaking the Western mainstream essentialist perspective. The concept of fluid identity is proposed to make sense of the processes of identity formation with a focus on the intertwining of religious, gender and political dimensions vis-à-vis controversial practices such as the veil and arranged marriages. It is the voices of these women that challenge and re-signify fundamental principles such as democratic citizenship and personal autonomy, creating the basis for a transnational feminism that, from the recognition of women’s specificities and global inequalities, proves able to devise shared, more equitable and empowering pathways.