2003 Articles

On Discipline and Canon

Franke, Katherine M.

It is exciting that we can claim, and we can claim credibly, that we are writing in a field called feminist legal theory. There is a thing there; there is a field there; there is a discipline there. But it is exactly these moments in field formation that I think are quite dangerous as we risk being disciplined by the field, by the canon, and by our more prominent scholars. In some ways and in some places we hear the charge that you are not doing feminism if you are not asking the question in such and such a way, according to either a set of substantive commitments, starting points, or accepted methodologies that are widely accepted as feminist.