La nouvelle vague: Epiphanies, encounters, events

A recent collection of essays, Feminist Perspectives on Law and Theory, is here taken as the starting point for an analysis of the political trajectory of feminist jurisprudence. The 'new wave' of feminism borrows much of its inspiration from continental theory - from Derrida, Deleuze and Irigaray - and has been subject to criticism for its attention to language and its turn towards culture and aesthetics. Reviewing the materialist bases of the new wave, and particularly its concern with the immediacies of the body and events, it is argued here that it represents a return to the radicalism of feminist legal theory.