Shameful Subjects, Queer Passions, and Law’s Stained-Glass Closet: A Feminist Critique of Kantian Discourse Concerning TWU’s Law Degree

Abstract

This dissertation employs the queer phenomenology of Sara Ahmed and the critical discourse analysis method of Norman Fairclough to analyze the dispute concerning Trinity Western University’s (TWU) proposed juris doctor program. The dispute provides a case study to demonstrate the changing “feeling rules” within Canadian constitutional culture over roughly 23 years, from approximately 1995 to 2018. The project critiques (hetero)sexist shame as an often- harmful technique of moral discipline and emotional regulation, showing how Canadian constitutional culture deploys shame to determine who will belong to law and who will be (partially) beyond its boundaries. A crucial aspect of the struggle to define the law’s parameters are disputes over what it means to act reasonably. Because this dissertation argues that reason is highly gendered, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant provides indispensable conceptual tools through which one can critique (hetero)sexism while uncovering its foundational assumptions. The frequency and intensity with which many subjects of Canadian constitutional culture deploy shame to enforce their conception of what the Constitution demands illuminates a perhaps intractable problem within human rights discourse; namely, that shame is both necessary for and antithetical to the concepts of human dignity and rational agency, upon which rests much contemporary Kantian human rights discourse. In light of this problem, the best normative justification for denying TWU’s application was the need to prevent unjustified shame based on morally extraneous characteristics, even as this justification cannot entirely redress the problem of shame in Canadian constitutional culture.