Where Is Your Body?

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Georgetown law professor Matsuda is one of the leading exponents of critical race theory, the radical school of minority scholars who use storytelling and other unconventional techniques to undermine "neutral principles" that serve to enforce racial hierarchy. As a coauthor of Words That Wound, she has written in detail about curbing "hate speech." Here, however, her contributions are mostly lectures and speeches, mainly addressed to the already sympathetic, and they often lack detail. Nevertheless, Matsuda's essay "When the First Quail Calls" has become popular with law students; in it, she recommends "multiple consciousness," a deliberate decision "to see the world from the standpoint of the oppressed." Her lectures on property law and criminal law note that women's concerns have often been ignored. The title essay reminds activists to follow their rhetoric with concrete action. Regarding hate speech, Matsuda cogently attacks the current Supreme Court distinction between content and presentation, but her proposed distinctionregulate against "the choice to subordinate others"raises questions in itself, given the impossibility of protecting people from psychological attack. A final section on Asian issues includes the useful point that, while Asians may decry affirmative action in college admissions, they may require it in workplace situations. If Matsuda's leftism is not convincing (crime is simply "a product of social injustice"), her consciousness-raising, in which she asks people what they do when they hear racist or sexist comments, is a useful exercise for all. (Dec.)

Library Journal

In her latest work, Matsuda (law, Georgetown, coauthor of Words That Wound, Westview, 1993) questions why the American legal system has been created to favor wealthy white men at the expense of people of color, women, and the poor. Her book, a collection of essays and speeches given to other legal scholars and law students, is divided into three parts: the first discusses general issues of racial identity and legal theory; the second centers on limitations to racist speech; and the last describes her personal experiences as an Asian American. Matsuda stresses that people of color, women, and the poor have a broader view of justice, which encompasses such issues as guaranteed employment, limitations to overtly racist speech, and abortion rights. Thus, her politically progressive outlook places her in the same league as Lani Guinier and other "critical race theorists." However, Matsuda's terminology and personal insights speak solely to other legal academics rather than the disadvantaged whom she is ultimately trying to assist. For larger academic libraries.-Steven Anderson, Baltimore Cty. Circuit Court Law Lib., Towson, Md.

Booknews

A collection of Matsuda's essays revisiting her own experiences as a Japanese-American woman and outspoken legal critic of hate speech groups and crimes. The essays offer feminist postmodern insights into racism and identity, deconstructing jurisprudence and assumed patriarchy while underscoring an agenda for progressive civil liberties. Specific discussions consider critical race theory, violence and linguistic space, Asian images, and the intersections of protest and social transformation. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Kirkus Reviews

A small order of leftist jurisprudence to go, by a self- described "female Asian-American radical law professor who does theory."

Matsuda (Law/Georgetown Univ.) collects 16 brief speeches delivered to legal and lay (mostly academic) audiences on her outsider status in the law, in academia, and in Clinton's America. A Japanese-American, Matsuda describes how her "woman-of-color consciousness" both alienates her from the law, which often displays a pro-male bias, and binds her to it, its procedures offering the means to attack injustice on behalf of the oppressed. She extols in a general way the contributions of "critical race theorists," academics whose starting point for analysis is racial identity and whose mostly descriptive scholarship is dismissed by some as "lightweight, the academic equivalent of a Kwanzaa cookbook." Matsuda urges race theorists to "intersect" their analysis with the work of feminist libertarians, whose understanding of the dynamics of oppression led them, for example, to oppose the 1994 crime bill (its mandated death penalty for crimes against women was racist). The irony of these essays is that even as Matsuda defends outsider analysis against charges that it is too grounded in personal experience rather than in theory, she seems preoccupied with positioning herself among various ivory-tower theoretical camps (e.g., "neoformalists" and "ecofeminists"). When she urges reform, it's standard liberal- issue: quality child care, affirmative action, free health care, etc. Her most impassioned and complex speeches deal with a purely academic subject: campus hate speech, which she would like to outlaw on the grounds that it subordinates women and minorities. A final section on Asian-American identity is compelling but sketchy, overlooking the sometimes tense relations between Asians and other people of color.

Correctness for the pre-law set.