Karin van Marle

Ambiguity, Entanglement, Equality

Introduction

Ambiguity, entanglement, equality. Explore how De Beauvoir's philosophy of ambiguity and entanglement can enhance substantive equality jurisprudence, challenging one-dimensional legal narratives.

Abstract

I consider, tentatively, the possible contribution that De Beauvoir’s philosophical insights can bring to substantive equality jurisprudence, maybe also to jurisprudence in general. I focus mainly on De Beauvoir’s reflections on becoming, freedom, ambiguity and judgement, which are all interrelated. My contention is that the main thing that is lacking in how courts, and much of the scholarship on substantive equality, approach equality, is ambiguity. One might have expected that an approach that places difference at the centre of its analysis will have a sense of ambiguity, and of the impossibility of making grand claims. However, it seems to have turned out quite the opposite. Drawing on De Beauvoir and the extent to which substantive equality scholarship hasn’t relied on her insights, I contemplate the question whether and how ambiguity could come into the picture. I read entanglement alongside ambiguity to consider if, instead of relying so strongly on difference, substantive equality may benefit by entanglement as ‘a term which may gesture towards a relationship or set of social relationships that is complicated, ensnaring, in a tangle, but with also a human foldedness’ (Nuttal 2009:1). At the heart of entanglement lies for me an ambiguity that highlights the flaws in the certainty of one-dimensional grand narratives.

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