Mr Hobbes Goes to Australia: Law, Politics and Difference

Abstract

Using current conservative discourses about the nation state in Australia as an example,the paper notices how the image of the (male-sexed) body is used to enhance theauthority of the same (white ``neutral'' agents of largely foreign capital)against the claims of difference (non-white refugees, women, Aboriginal people).The paper notices that far from protecting minority and difference, as liberalismleads one to expect, the law uses the same body image of itself to repeat theoppression. Legal education inscribes the masculinity of the phallus in thebodies and minds of its students. Other masculinity, the female, the``native'' are identified by the law rather than self-identifiedin the law after negotiation with the law.