Regulatory fictions: On marriage and countermarriage

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

This chapter focuses on two unlikely sources of legal innovation to expand the thinking about marriage alternatives: literature and anti-gay law. It explores a world beyond the marriage regime by looking to some unusual sources: fiction and anti-gay law. The chapter also focuses on fictional sources to canvass some unusual visions of what marriage might be. These include exploding marriage, three-strikes marriage, line marriage, renewable marriage, self-marriage, and exculpatory marriage. The chapter describes another unlikely source for imagining countermarriage possibilities for all: anti-gay laws, in the form of state Defense of Marriage Acts. It explores a regulatory universe even further afield from current marriage law. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe novel Elective Affinities entertains different countermarriage regimes that play with the permanence of marriage. The novel implies that it is dangerous to question the commonplace pieties about love, marriage, and permanence.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationNussbaum and Law
PublisherTaylor and Francis
Pages403-440
Number of pages38
ISBN (Electronic)9781351556033
ISBN (Print)9781472443441
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 1 2017

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Robin West.

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • General Social Sciences

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