KEEPING PREFIGURATIVE LAW IN PLAY: UTOPIANISM, FAILURE, AND THE PROBLEM OF LEGAL SEX

ABSTRACT

This talk reconsiders critiques of radical legal reform as “failed” or “not-real” by drawing on utopian studies. Focusing on the proposal to decertify sex and gender in law, it explores how failure and the not-real can be revalued as productive, even necessary, aspects of utopian legal imagination.

BIO

Davina Cooper is Research Professor in Law and Political Theory. An interdisciplinary scholar, her work explores concepts, transformative politics, state activism, and experimental communities. She directed the ESRC-funded Future of Legal Gender project (2018-22) and previously held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship on “Gender and the Conceptual Imagination.” She is the author of numerous books, including Feeling like a State (2019) and Everyday Utopias (2014).