Elizabeth Comack

What Work of Feminist Legal Scholarship Over the Past Twenty Years Has Been Influential or Important to You, and Why?

The call for paragraphs generated many different kinds of responses. It was atreat reading the different approaches and having an occasion to listen in asothers reflected on the question. In their own voices, here are a variety of theresponses.Parmi toute la recherche fe´ministe en droit produite au cours des dernie`resvingt anne´es, quel texte a e´te´ le plus important pour vous ou encore, lequel vousa le plus influence´, et pourquoi? L’invitation a` re´diger des paragraphes enre´ponse a` cette question a ge´ne´re´ une grande diversite´ de textes. Ce fut un re´elplaisir de lire les diffe´rents choix et d’avoir l’occasion d’eˆtre a` l’e´coute alors qued’autres re´fle´chissaient sur la question pose´e. Voici un e´ventail de ces re´ponses,re´dige´es chacune dans sa propre voix.I would have to say anything written by Ngaire Naffine, CarolSmart, and Laureen Snider, as their works are provocative, risky,and guaranteed to push your thinking about women, feminism, andthe law onto a whole new terrain.Elizabeth ComackSociology, University of Manitoba‘‘Oh well,’’ said Mrs. Hale’s husband, with good natured superiority,‘‘women are used to worrying over trifles.’’—From Susan Glaspell’s A Jury of Her Peers

Book review: Sex, Violence, and Crime: Foucault and the ‘Man’ QuestionHoweAdrianSex, Violence, and Crime: Foucault and the ‘Man’ QuestionLondon: Routledge/Cavendish, 2008. 248 pp. ISBN: 1904385109

concepts as discipline and security. These have allowed us to shelter from larger and more consequential questions of how we should react to punishment per se. Why do we resist punishment, and should we be negative, especially as Foucault himself thought there was ‘nothing scandalous’ about punishment for breaking accepted rules? This interesting—although largely rhetorical question—resurrects the idea of a master who can license our intellectual ventures. But in the end, perhaps it points to an issue Harcourt probably would not mean to raise: is it time, if certainly not to forget Foucault, then to move on?