'there is no politics without
fantasy': Gender, Sexuality and Cultural Studies in
Law
Organised by the AHRC Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality
Wednesday 19 and Thursday 20 April 2006@ Keele
University
Plenary Speakers: Vicky Bell & Reina Lewis
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Abstracts
Event Poster
The title quotation by Theresa de Lauretis invites
an engagement with the role of fantasy, narrative and
storytelling within political projects from a variety
of different perspectives.
Stories of fear and hope inform global political phenomena,
domestic legislation and policy, the activities of social
movements, and personal political projects. There has,
for example, been recent interest in the politics of
fear. Commentators have questioned the extent to which
recent global political shifts and domestic legislation
and policy developments may rely on myths or stories
determined to instil fear. At the same time there has
been a return to the utopian within political discourse.
How does fantasy help us to critique the present and
imagine more egalitarian futures? Feminist theorists
and activists have long engaged with the potential of
the triangulation of fantasy, gender/sexuality and equality.
This workshop aims to bring together academics from
a range of disciplines in order to investigate the many
different uses of fantasy in gender, sexuality and law
scholarship.
The priority research questions in relation to CentreLGS’s
Law & Culture project are:
