Between the Legal Subject and the Insurgent Body:

Feminist Methods as Counter-Hegemonic Strategies in the Legal Field

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The discussion on feminist methods in law calls into question the idea of neutrality and abstraction in legal norms and entails scrutinizing the meanings that the concept of impartiality—both in research and in legal practice—assumes in deeply unequal societies such as Brazil. The very category of “gender” is also challenged through other markers such as race, class, and sexuality, insofar as, when understood in an abstract way as signifying a “universal woman,” it fails to account for the concrete experiences of injustice faced by real women. We adopt decolonial critiques of law as an instrument for reproducing social hegemony in order to, from this premise, reflect on the possibilities for feminist methods to produce counter-hegemonic legal dynamics. Within this critique, the category of “body” places pressure on the category of “legal subject.” Qualitative methods gain relevance here because they allow us to empirically identify which bodies have been treated by law as “subjects” and which have been “objectified” or even “dehumanized.” We conducted a literature review of works on Brazilian law that employ qualitative methodologies, particularly the publications featured in four feminist methodological dossiers released in Brazilian law journals.