Erotic justice: Law and the New Politics of Postcolonialism - Softcover

'Kapur's transformative goals in Erotic Justice are fully realised, as the text not only presents another challenge to liberal legalism's imperialism, but it is also a clear demonstration of the disruptive and theoretical possibilities the subaltern subject can bring to law.' Sydney Law Review. September 2005. 'This book draws on the variety and richness of an Indian past that continues to suffuse the present. Kapur's consideration of numerous issues ranging from media representations and criminal law to human trafficking provides a text that is both comprehensive and encompassing. The central theme that runs throughout the book is perhaps best summed up by the phrase coined by Indian sex workers, '[w]e want bread. We also want roses' (p. 127). This symbolizes the duality and non-homogeneity of Indian feminism and that this multiplicity of feminist approaches cannot be encapsulated by a singular and discrete approach. For Kapur, what seems to be essential is that postcolonial feminists be given the opportunity to open up a 'space for new political possibilities and imaginations.' Feminist Theory , autumn 2005. Toni Johnson, University of Kent.

The essays in Erotic Justice address the ways in which law has been implicated in contemporary debates dealing with sexuality, culture and `different' subjects - including women, sexual minorities, Muslims and the transnational migrant. Law is analyzed as a discursive terrain, where these different subjects are excluded or included in the postcolonial present on terms that are reminiscent of the colonial encounter and its treatment of difference.

Bringing a postcolonial feminist legal analysis to her discussion, Kapur is relentless in her critiques on how colonial discourses, cultural essentialism, and victim rhetoric are reproduced in universal, liberal projects such as human rights and international law, as well as in the legal regulation of sexuality and culture in a postcolonial context. Drawing her examples from postcolonial India, Ratna Kapur demonstrates the theoretical and disruptive possibilities that the postcolonial subject brings to international law, human rights, and domestic law.  In the process, challenges are offered to the political and theoretical constructions of the nation, sexuality, cultural authenticity, and women's subjectivity.