ABSTRACT
The Rape Contract is part of a larger project that investigates the relationship between art and law, part of the growing field of legal aesthetics. The reception of The Artist's Contract by artists, collectors and gallerists has served as a microcosm for the limited utility of social contract theory. Fundamental to Western legal scholarship is the problematic metaphor of the social contract: the idea that a person's moral and political obligations are dependent upon a shared social contract or agreement to form the society in which they live. Aimed at securing liberal values of freedom and self-will via individualised, adversarial negotiations, social contract theory has instead whitewashed the subjugation of the ‘feminine', the ‘racial other' and the ‘sexually deviant' within this competitive contractual framework. Litigation stands in opposition to a different in that it presupposes a system by which the dispute can be resolved within the law.
