Restorative Lab's Public Lecture Series: Lighting A Spark – Feminism, Emotions, and the Legal Imagination Of Campus Sexual Violence
Join the Restorative Lab for their first annual Public Lecture Series showcasing the work of the Lab's Fellows and Associates.
Lighting A Spark – Feminism, Emotions, and the Legal Imagination Of Campus Sexual Violence will be presented by Daniel Del Gobbo, Fellow, McGill University.
This talk will explore how feminist law and policymakers have been inspired by collectively generated experiences of emotion that help to shape what counts as justice and injustice in campus sexual violence cases. Focusing on events surrounding the Faculty of Dentistry at Dalhousie University in 2014-2015, Daniel will explain how emotional incitements in the case contributed to a political and discursive infrastructure that supported formal, adversarial, and punitive responses to campus sexual violence. Correspondingly, Daniel will explain why alternative modes of legal and political formation that challenged the premises of the formal law, including the restorative justice process employed in the case, were misread by some commentators as being a form of "weak justice" and therefore outside the bounds of feminist action. Daniel's claim is not that particular emotional reactions to campus sexual violence are right or wrong – they just are – but that feminist law and policymakers should critically reflect on and assess their political force. Considering the ways that emotions are mobilized reveals the benefits and drawbacks of engaging with the law in ways that feel emotionally gratifying and therefore legally and politically necessary, but which can lead to harmful consequences that contradict feminist goals.
Categories
Speaker Series, Research, Faculty Interest, Student Interest
Time
Location
Virtually via Zoom.
Cost
This event is free.
