Variegated Visions of Humanity: The Ambiguous Legacy of the People
2009 SCA DISTINGUISHED LECTURER
DRUCILLA CORNELL
October 7 2009
6pm-8pm
20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor
How is justice achieved in nation states in which different intellectual heritages ground very different conceptions of the meaning of law, society and the person? John Rawls attempted to address this question through the concept of the Law of the Peoples. Yet Rawls does not examine the ambiguous legacy of colonial situations, in which the law of the peoples is the law of the others, the non-citizens. What has this ambiguous legacy come to mean in the "New" South Africa where the other's law is the written customary law recorded by the colonizer which has little or nothing to do with the living customary law of the black majority? What does it mean to Africanize the South African Constitution, and why has this question become such a burning controversy right now? By examining an actual case, the lecture asks how the pursuit of justice might move beyond troublesome ideas of indigenous authenticity on the one hand and naturalization of Anglo-American or European notions of law on the other.
Drucilla Cornell is a national research foundation chair in customary law, indigenous values and the dignity jurisprudence in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cape Town . She is the codirector (with Dr. Chuma Himonga) of the uBuntu Project. Professor Cornell is an advocate and researcher for Khulamani, an on the ground organization of people who suffered under apartheid and are now struggling to find new and creative ways to counter the devastation that remains because of the system of racialized capitalism. In the United States, she has been a founding figure in the fields of critical legal studies and feminist legal theory. She is Professor of Women's Studies at Rutgers University. Prior to becoming an academic, Professor Cornell was a union organizer in California, New Jersey, and New York. After 9/11 she organized a feminist peace group with Professor Ann Snitow at the New School.
Drucilla Cornell's books include Beyond Accommodation: Ethical Feminism, Deconstruction and the Law (1991), The Philosophy of the Limit (1992). The Imaginary Domain: Abortion, Pornography, and Sexual Harassment (1995), At the Heart of Freedom: Feminism, Sex, and Equality (1998), Just Cause: Freedom, Identity, and Rights (2000), Between Women and Generations: Legacies of Dignity (2002), Defending Ideals: War, Democracy, and Political Struggles (2004), Moral Images of Freedom: A Future for Critical Theory (2007). She has just completed a book on Clint Eastwood and American masculinity.
