ABSTRACT
The question addressed by this book is: what is meant by the terms ‘se lf, ‘person’ and ‘individual’? The operation of the law of obligations has provided the context in which this question has been considered. I have argued that it is unnecessary to move from a ‘modem’ to a ‘postmodern’ view of the self, both of which are based upon the image of males as the paradigm case. It is possible to think about universals, the category of women, without such universals being ‘global’, i.e. relating to the species as a whole. Deconstruction is inadequate to this task, as is illustrated by Spivak’s’493 concern that she could not be a pure deconstructionist and attack sexism. This is not a problem inherent to all philosophy, but with a type of philosophy that is currently popular within feminist legal theory. One of my aims has been to illustrate that there are better theoretical approaches that do not produce such dissonance.
