Description:
Beyond Recognition offers a groundbreaking rhetorical analysis of transgender antidiscrimination law, revealing how legal actors, advocates, and critics alike are driven by a cultural desire for certainty in sex. Drawing from landmark cases and legislative debates, Laura Jane Collins reframes these legal struggles not as efforts to resolve identity but as reflections of our collective anxieties about recognition, power, and the instability of legal meaning.
Review Quotes:
"Collins's expertise in both law and rhetoric give her a rare ability to tackle this project. Beyond Recognition demonstrates a deep familiarity with the conversations regarding transgender antidiscrimination law, contemporary rhetorical theory, and the relationship between law and rhetoric. It is a timely, important, and compelling book." --Elizabeth C. Britt, author of Reimagining Advocacy: Rhetorical Education in the Legal Clinic
"Beyond Recognition is a well-written, thought-provoking contribution to the field of rhetoric and law. The author tackles a wrought genre of law-antidiscrimination law-that works at the nexus of so many issues: identity, individualism, intentionality, proof, bureaucracy, and justice, to name just a few." --M. Kelly Carr, author of The Rhetorical Invention of Diversity: Supreme Court Opinions, Public Arguments, and Affirmative Action