ABSTRACT
It is useful to juxtapose the work of two contemporary feminist philosophers, Christine Battersby and Adriana Cavarero – working within the Continental tradition – because they both go well beyond feminist critique to produce different images of self-identity and conceptions of the political. Both reject traditional positions on selfhood but also (in different ways) stress the materiality of bodies and refuse the ways in which women have been considered in the work of post-structuralists, such as Judith Butler. I will not be able to do justice to the richness of either of these complex positions. My aim in this chapter is to draw out some of the politico-legal implications of their differing images of selfhood. In the final section I then apply both their (different) approaches to the concept of self to ask how their respective arguments can inform contemporary political questions regarding consensus and dissensus.
