The struggle for new social imaginaries: Drucilla Cornell, Frantz Fanon and the shape of legal subjectivity

Abstract

The aim of this article is to propose an articulation between the political reflections of Frantz Fanon and Drucilla Cornell regarding social transformation and legal subjectivity. The research adopts Cornell’s reading of Fanon as a starting point, highlighting the way in which his position promotes the struggle for new social imaginaries in the midst of the radical transformation provided by revolutionary practice. Based on these theoretical frameworks, the research seeks to verify whether important transformations for legal subjectivity can be linked to the process of formulating new political demands. The second section of the article brings the two authors together through a parallel between the critique of colonialism and the feminist critique, paying attention to the way in which colonial and female subjectivities bear similarities in terms of how they are conceived in the midst of determined power structures. Finally, the article points out the utopian potential, with regard to the struggle for new social imaginaries, underlying both positions. The article’s conclusion is that the process of subjectivation resulting from colonial struggles described by Fanon complements and strengthens the concept of imaginary domain proposed by Cornell. The article adopts as a methodology a specific literature review of the work of these authors.