ABSTRACT
There is something magical about Patricia J. Williams's The Alchemy of Race and Rights. In this chapter, the author piece together two distinct but related lines of inquiry Williams offers in her effort to turn the leaden law into gold. Second, and related, Williams's relationship to the metaphor of alchemy also speaks to the speculative dimensions of intersectionality as a theoretical paradigm. Early in Alchemy, Williams describes a horrifying scene in the dining car of a transcontinental Amtrak trip. The parable, according to literary critic Northrop Frye, is a more highly developed form with a greater tendency to contain its own moral. Williams holds the polar bear until the book's conclusion until she gives in to what she describes as “polar-bear musings”; “Hungry and patient, impassive and exquisitely timed. Williams's speculative, parabolic imaginary rewrites the parameters and scripts of contemporary legal doctrine.
