Face off: The ironic, the irenic and the face between

The formation of a school, whether feminist, critical, Marxist or other involves the establishment of a doctrine - literally a teaching - and a group of students or followers - the disciples who form the discipline. No doctrine without disciples has been the history of the schools and the formative principle of academic movements. They exist in the end to convert their students, old to young, male to female, female to male, or female to female, or any other possible combination of orientations. And conversion implies orthodoxy, institutionalization and hierarchy or at least a relation to hieros and hierarchy. This paper examines these themes in terms of the specific example of feminist legal studies and a curious recent discursive event, a polemical exchange on the identity of the movement, the face of feminist legal studies, as viewed through a eulogy and a challenge to that praise.