The Sex of the Body Politic: Questioning the Legal Constraints on Genderism between Law and Literature
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Alessandra Cordiano
Alessandra Cordiano is Associate Professor of Private Law at the Law Department of the University of Verona (Italy) and Adjunct Professor of Private and Family Law and Medical Law courses at the Faculty of Education, Social Services, Law and Medicine. Her fields of research include Family Law, Tort Law, Medical and Health Law. Among her publications, the monograph
Identità della persona e disposizioni del corpo (Roma, Aracne, 2011) about Predictive Medicine and its legal effects.
Abstract
The acknowledgement of the concept of gender identity is a somewhat recent conquest that has come about thanks mainly to the accomplishments of science and modern technology. The Italian system outlines the generally dominant judicial categories and gives only a partial idea of the historical and judicial evolution of the story of gender. History shows that past societies were more tolerant, or simply more accepting of issues of sexuality. Their more relaxed attitude was reflected in culture and literature and in their more open approach towards matters regarding homosexuality, transsexuality, intersexuality and even transvestism. But it was with Shakespeare that the supremacy of heterosexuality and the sexual canons of the dominant culture saw a major shake-up. Shakespeare used devices like the feminization of the male and women playing male parts as narrative pretexts to comment on themes such as the rivalry between the sexes in the contention for power, conflicts that give rise to a symbiosis between genders and disfigurements of the body that overturn the social order that is shaped by gender binary.
About the author
Alessandra Cordiano is Associate Professor of Private Law at the Law Department of the University of Verona (Italy) and Adjunct Professor of Private and Family Law and Medical Law courses at the Faculty of Education, Social Services, Law and Medicine. Her fields of research include Family Law, Tort Law, Medical and Health Law. Among her publications, the monograph Identità della persona e disposizioni del corpo (Roma, Aracne, 2011) about Predictive Medicine and its legal effects.
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus: Articulating the Body Politic: Intersections in Law, Culture, and Society
- The Sex of the Body Politic: Questioning the Legal Constraints on Genderism between Law and Literature
- Shelley’s Mask
- An Uneasy Character: John Calhoun’s Cameos in The Gorgeous Hussy and Amistad
- Unrepresented and “Circumlocuted” People: Public Institutions and Citizens in Dickens’ Little Dorrit
- Representative Government and Constitutional Reality: Spain between Literature and Political Thought
- House of Cards: Comparing the British and the American TV Series from a Constitutional Perspective
- Turning Vanity Fair into The Cœlestial City: England’s Legal Narratives of the Body Politic from Bunyan to Thackeray
- Research
- Justice in Crisis? On the Popular Jurisprudence of Weimar Film
- Is Dr. Frankenstein Still Alive? From Twix to Apple: Commercializing Monstrosity
- Women, Power & the Decline of the West: Richard Sherwin’s Ethical Wisdom, Krzysztof Koslowski’s Tricolor-Red, & Machiavelli’s Mandragola
- The Popularization of Environmental Rights in TED Talks
- Book Review
- Book Review
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus: Articulating the Body Politic: Intersections in Law, Culture, and Society
- The Sex of the Body Politic: Questioning the Legal Constraints on Genderism between Law and Literature
- Shelley’s Mask
- An Uneasy Character: John Calhoun’s Cameos in The Gorgeous Hussy and Amistad
- Unrepresented and “Circumlocuted” People: Public Institutions and Citizens in Dickens’ Little Dorrit
- Representative Government and Constitutional Reality: Spain between Literature and Political Thought
- House of Cards: Comparing the British and the American TV Series from a Constitutional Perspective
- Turning Vanity Fair into The Cœlestial City: England’s Legal Narratives of the Body Politic from Bunyan to Thackeray
- Research
- Justice in Crisis? On the Popular Jurisprudence of Weimar Film
- Is Dr. Frankenstein Still Alive? From Twix to Apple: Commercializing Monstrosity
- Women, Power & the Decline of the West: Richard Sherwin’s Ethical Wisdom, Krzysztof Koslowski’s Tricolor-Red, & Machiavelli’s Mandragola
- The Popularization of Environmental Rights in TED Talks
- Book Review
- Book Review
