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PALGRAVE SOCIO-LEGAL STUDIES

A Jurisprudence
of the Body

Edited by
Chris Dietz · Mitchell Travis · Michael Thomson
Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies

Series Editor
Dave Cowan
School of Law
University of Bristol
Bristol, UK
The Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies series is a developing series of monographs
and textbooks featuring cutting edge work which, in the best tradition of
socio-legal studies, reach out to a wide international audience.

Editorial Board
Dame Hazel Genn, University College London, UK
Fiona Haines, University of Melbourne, Australia
Herbert Kritzer, University of Minnesota, USA
Linda Mulcahy, University of Oxford, UK
Rosemary Hunter, University of Kent
Carl Stychin, University of London, UK
Mariana Valverde, University of Toronto, Canada
Sally Wheeler, Australian National University College of Law, Australia

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14679
Chris Dietz • Mitchell Travis
Michael Thomson
Editors

A Jurisprudence
of the Body
Editors
Chris Dietz Mitchell Travis
School of Law School of Law
University of Leeds University of Leeds
Leeds, UK Leeds, UK

Michael Thomson
Faculty of Law
University of Technology Sydney
Sydney, Australia
School of Law
University of Leeds
Leeds, UK

Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies

ISBN 978-3-030-42199-1    ISBN 978-3-030-42200-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42200-4

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 Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to our contributors for giving so freely
of their important ideas. Whilst the initial idea for the collection was ours, it
is the contributors to this collection who have added so much to this project
and made it worthwhile. We have been inspired by their work and we hope
this collection goes on to inspire others. We are thankful to the Socio-Legal
Studies Association (SLSA) conference convenors in Leeds 2019 for allowing
us to convene a Jurisprudence of the Body stream. This enabled us to test some
of our ideas in the supportive and engaged environment that the SLSA always
provides in its conferences and other events. The Leeds conference also helped
us to make important connections with people who would go on to be
contributors to this collection. We are very grateful for the input of our pool
of reviewers: David Griffiths, Marie-Andrée Jacob, Amanda Keeling, Sam
Lewis, Stu Marvel, Jose Miola, Craig Purshouse, Sally Sheldon, and Jens
Thielen. Each provided the generosity, clarity, and insight that we have come
to expect from them over the years. Thanks are also due to the editorial team
at Palgrave—David Cowan and Liam Inscoe-Jones—whose assistance has
helped us get over the finishing line. Finally, our thanks also go out to our
colleagues in the Centre for Law and Social Justice, University of Leeds. This
creative and productive space has allowed the ideas that sparked this book to
be explored and developed.

v
 Praise for A Jurisprudence of the Body

“Health law offers a key site for rethinking the place of the body in legal systems.
With its definitive focus on wellness and vulnerability, death and reproduction, the
law’s role in producing bodies in all their variety is especially clear. As this timely
collection demonstrates, the ‘turn to the material’ in feminist theory and its concern
with social practices of embodiment, offer an opportunity to review the field critically
and to take stock of the political contexts and normative implications of health law’s
many bodies. It also challenges us to consider again what we mean by health law: who
are its audiences, who is heard, who is seen, who goes unseen? These challenges are
ably taken up in the rich, engaging and coherent set of essays which make up A
Jurisprudence of the Body.”
—John Harrington, Professor of Global Health Law, Cardiff University
 Contents

1 Nobody, Anybody, Somebody, Everybody: A Jurisprudence of

the Body  1
Chris Dietz, Mitchell Travis, and Michael Thomson

Part I The Body of Health Law  15

2 Reasoning from the Body: Universal Vulnerability and Social

Justice 17
Martha Albertson Fineman

3 Studying Public Health Law: Principles, Politics, and

Populations as Patients 35
John Coggon

4 Bioinequalities: Rethinking Legal Responses to the Biological

and Intergenerational Harm Caused by Inequality 63
Karen O’Connell and Isabel Karpin

5 Healthcare, Well-being, and the Regulation of Diversity in

Healing 91
Emilie Cloatre and Nayeli Urquiza-Haas

ix
x Contents

Part II Bodies of Health 117

6 Temporal Bodies: Emergencies, Emergence, and Intersex

Embodiment119
Fae Garland and Mitchell Travis

7 Death Before Birth: Liminal Bodies and Legal Frameworks149

Karolina Kuberska, Danielle Fuller, Jeannette Littlemore, Sheelagh
McGuinness, and Sarah Turner

8 Depathologising Gender: Vulnerability in Trans Health Law179

Chris Dietz and Ruth Pearce

9 Feminist Activism in the Context of Clinical Trials and Drug

Roll-Out205
Aziza Ahmed

Part III Reframing Health Law Through Bodies 225

10 Establishing Boundaries for Speculation About Artificial

Wombs, Ectogenesis, Gender, and the Gestating Body227
Claire Horn and Elizabeth Chloe Romanis

11 A Relational Responsibilities Framework for Children’s

Healthcare Law255
Jo Bridgeman

12 Embodied Integrity, Shaping Surgeries and the Profoundly

Disabled Child281
Marie Fox, Michael Thomson, and Joshua Warburton

Index315
 Notes on Contributors

Aziza Ahmed is a Professor at Northeastern University School of Law. Her

scholarship examines the legal, regulatory and political environments
regarding health in US domestic law, US foreign policy and international law.
She was a member of the Technical Advisory Group on HIV and the Law
convened by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and has
been an expert for many institutions, including the American Bar Association
and UNIFEM. Her latest monograph Feminism’s Medicine: Law, Science,
Race, and Gender in an Epidemic is forthcoming with Cambridge
University Press.
Jo Bridgeman is Professor of Healthcare Law and Feminist Ethics at the
University of Sussex where she teaches Perspectives on Healthcare Law, Tort,
Gender Equality, Feminism, Law and Society. Her research adopts a critical
feminist perspective informed by and developing the feminist ethics of care in
consideration of parental, professional and state responsibilities to children.
Her work on the medical treatment of children, including the care of children
with complex needs, parental responsibility for children undergoing treat-
ment for cancer, withholding/withdrawal of life-­sustaining treatment from a
child and issues arising from the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry, has been
published widely. This chapter develops the conceptual framework advanced
in her book, Parental Responsibility, Young Children and Healthcare Law
(2007). She is working on a book which examines the development of the law
governing the medical treatment of children over the past four decades within
the changing social, political and legal context.

xi
xii Notes on Contributors

Emilie Cloatre is Professor of Law at the University of Kent. Her research

focuses on the relationship between law and ‘science in society’, and in
particular between law and medical practices. She is Principal Investigator on
a Wellcome Investigator Award entitled ‘Law, Knowledges and the Making of
“Modern” Healthcare’ (2017–2022).
John Coggon is Professor of Law at the University of Bristol Law School,
where he is a member of the Centre for Health, Law, and Society. He is also a
member of the University’s Centre for Public Health and Population Health
Science Institute, and an honorary member of the UK Faculty of Public
Health. His research interests lie primarily in the areas of mental capacity law
and public health ethics and law, and his publications include the mono-
graph, What Makes Health Public? A Critical Evaluation of Moral, Legal, and
Political Claims in Public Health (2012), and the textbook, co-authored with
Keith Syrett and A.M. Viens, Public Health Law: Ethics, Governance, and
Regulation (2017).
Chris Dietz is a Lecturer in Law and Social Justice at the School of Law,
University of Leeds. His work considers the regulation of gendered embodi-
ment, with a focus on trans health. He has undertaken visiting fellowships at
the Unit of Gender Studies, Linköping University; the Centre for Gender
Studies, Karlstad University; and the Centre for Gender Studies, University of
Copenhagen.
Martha Albertson Fineman is an American jurist, legal theorist, and politi-
cal philosopher. She is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory
University School of Law. Since 2008, Fineman has directed the Vulnerability
and Human Condition Initiative at Emory, as well as the Feminism and Legal
Theory Project, which she founded at the University of Wisconsin in 1984.
Her work considers the legal, social, and political implications of universal
dependency and vulnerability, formulating a robust theory of social justice
that is an alternative to a rights-based model for determining state or collec-
tive responsibility for individual and societal wellbeing.
Marie Fox holds the Queen Victoria Chair of Law in the School of Law and
Social Justice, University of Liverpool. Her research is concerned with the
legal governance of human and animal bodies, legal conceptions of embodi-
ment and regulation of reproduction. Her projects (funded by the Dunhill
Medical Trust, Wellcome Trust and Socio-legal Studies Association) focus on
pet loss and the place of companion animals in care homes, governance of
assisted reproductive technologies, abortion law reform in Northern Ireland
 Notes on Contributors xiii

and legal regulation of genital cutting. She is a co-ordinating editor of the

journals Social & Legal Studies and Medical Law International.

Danielle Fuller is a Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies

at the University of Alberta. Her main areas of research are contemporary
cultures of reading and interdisciplinary research methods that combine
textual and empirical modes of investigation. Before emigrating to Canada in
May 2018, she worked for nearly 21 years at the University of Birmingham,
UK. She was the Principle Investigator for ‘Death Before Birth’ project from
its inception to April 2018, and has also led collaborative projects funded by
the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Arts Council England and the
British Academy.
Fae Garland is Lecturer in Law at the University of Manchester where she is
a member of both the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy and the Manchester
Centre for Regulation and Governance. Her work on gender, sex and law has
been widely published in journals such as the American Journal of Bioethics,
Edinburgh Law Review, Journal of Law and Society, Legal Studies and New
Zealand Law Review. She has also co-authored a number of national and
international governmental reports that explore intersex rights and law and
has been PI on a range of empirical projects which consider the impact of law
reform on intersex lives. Most recently, she has been awarded funding by the
British Academy (with Mitchell Travis) to examine the operation of Maltese
legislation which prohibits unnecessary surgeries on intersex infants.
Claire Horn holds a BA from McGill University and an MA from New York
University. She was awarded her PhD in Law at Birkbeck, University of
London, where she was co-supervised by Elena Loizidou and Daniel Monk.
Her dissertation “Gestation Beyond Mother/Machine: Legal Frameworks for
Artificial Wombs, Abortion, and Care,” uses a comparative analysis of the
impact of ectogenesis on abortion law in the UK, US and Canada to argue for
abortion decriminalization and affirmative protections to abortion access
ahead of the development of artificial womb technologies. Horn is a recipient
of the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund 2018–2019, and is continuing
her research on artificial wombs as a Wellcome Postdoctoral Researcher at
Birkbeck Law.
Isabel Karpin is a Professor at the University of Technology Sydney. She
researches on the bioethical implications of laws governing reproductive tech-
nologies, genetic testing and disability. She explores the challenge posed by
xiv Notes on Contributors

new biotechnological developments on legal understandings of normality,

disability, individuality and family.
Karolina Kuberska is a medical anthropologist with a special interest in
understandings of health, wellbeing, and healthcare. She holds her PhD from
the University of St Andrews. Between 2016 and 2018, she was a postdoctoral
fellow in the Death Before Birth research team at the University of Birmingham.
She is a research associate at THIS Institute at the University of Cambridge
where she is involved in a range of projects designed to strengthen the evi-
dence base for improving the quality and safety of healthcare.
Jeannette Littlemore is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department
of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Birmingham. Her
research focuses on metaphor and metonymy and explores the facilitative and
debilitative role played by metaphor and metonymy in language education
and in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication more generally. She
is interested in the creative use of metaphor and metonymy and in the ways
in which figurative meaning is negotiated by speakers with different kinds of
background knowledge and different emotional experiences. Her monographs
include Metaphors in the Mind: Sources of Variation in Embodied
Metaphor (2019).
Sheelagh McGuinness is Reader in Law at the University of Bristol Law
School, where she is Co-Director of the Centre for Health, Law, and Society.
Her research focuses on health law and the regulation of reproduction. She is
interested in the ways in which law and legal frameworks can shape experi-
ence of health care and reproduction and has published across these areas in
law, ethics, and health care journals. She was a co-investigator on the Economic
and Social Research Council funded (ES-N008359) project “Death Before
Birth: Understanding, informing and supporting the choices made by people
who have experienced miscarriage, termination and stillbirth”.
Karen O’Connell is an Associate Professor at the University of Technology
Sydney and an expert in discrimination law and biotechnologies of the body.
Her research addresses the ways that equality laws might better respond to the
experiences of stigmatised groups in society, particularly given emerging neu-
roscientific and genetic knowledge about the body and disability. She is the
recipient of a UTS Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2010–2015)
and an Australia Research Council Discovery Grant (2015–2019).
Ruth Pearce is a Research Fellow in the School of Sociology and Social Policy
at the University of Leeds, UK. Her research explores issues of inequality,
 Notes on Contributors xv

marginalisation, power and political struggle from a trans feminist perspec-

tive. Ruth is the author of Understanding Trans Health (2018) and editor of
The Emergence of Trans (2020), with Igi Moon, Kat Gupta, and Deborah Lynn
Steinberg. She blogs about her work on http://ruthpearce.net.
Elizabeth Chloe Romanis is an Assistant Professor in Biolaw at Durham
University and holds an LLB (Hons) in Law and LLM in Healthcare Ethics
and Law from the University of Manchester. She is a PhD Candidate at the
University of Manchester co-supervised by Alexandra Mullock and Rebecca
Bennett. Her PhD is supported by a Wellcome Trust Studentship in Society
and Ethics. Her research focuses on the ethical and legal questions arising
from the potential use of artificial womb technology as an experimental alter-
native to neonatal intensive care. Her thesis is entitled: ‘Regulating the “Brave
New World”: Ethico-Legal Implications of the Quest for Ectogenesis.’ Her
broader research interests include pregnancy and the law, assisted reproduc-
tion, innovative reproductive technologies and the legal meaning of birth
and life.
Michael Thomson is Professor of Health Law at the University of Technology
Sydney and the University of Leeds. His research spans health law, children’s
rights, and legal theory. He has written extensively on non-therapeutic inter-
ventions on children and the regulation of reproduction. He is the author of
two books, Reproducing Narrative: Gender, Reproduction & Law (1998) and
Endowed: Regulating the Male Sexed Body (2008), and two previous edited col-
lections, Feminist Perspectives on Healthcare Law (with Sally Sheldon, 1998)
and Exploring Masculinities: Feminist Legal Theory Reflections (with Martha
Fineman, 2013). His current work explores the place of the body in contem-
porary theories of social justice and the increasing attention paid to the social
environment across the life sciences.
Mitchell Travis is an Associate Professor in law at the Centre for Law and
Social Justice at the University of Leeds. His work considers the relationships
between embodiment, institutions and culture with a primary focus on work-
ing with the intersex community. He has worked with the UK Government
Equalities Office, the National Health Service and the Norwegian Directorate
for Children, Youth and Family Affairs. His continuing work with Fae Garland
has been cited by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights, the Law Society and various intersex organisations.
Sarah Turner is a cognitive linguist with a particular interest in the analysis
of metaphor and figurative language. She holds her PhD from the University
of Birmingham in 2014, then held a teaching position at the University of
xvi Notes on Contributors

Tokyo before taking up a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of

Birmingham on the Death Before Birth project team, 2016–2018. She is
Lecturer in English in the School of Humanities at Coventry University. Her
research focuses on the analysis of figurative language production to provide
insights into physical, psychological and social experiences, with a current
focus on the experience of bereavement and grief.
Nayeli Urquiza-Haas is a Wellcome Trust Research Associate at the
University of Kent, working on the project ‘Law, Knowledges and the Making
of “Modern” Healthcare’ (Wellcome Investigator Award (2017–2022). She
holds a PhD from the University of Kent (2015). Her research focuses on
vulnerability in feminist legal studies and the regulation of traditional and
non-conventional medicines.
Joshua Warburton is a researcher and teaching fellow at the School of Law
at the University of Leeds. His research interests include health law, consumer
law, EU Law, and tort law. He obtained his PhD in Law at the University of
Manchester. His projects include studies on medical practice, legal educa-
tional reform, and theoretical contract forms.
 1
Nobody, Anybody, Somebody, Everybody:
A Jurisprudence of the Body
Chris Dietz, Mitchell Travis, and Michael Thomson

1 Introduction
Health and embodiment are inextricably linked. How we feel about our bod-
ies has a significant impact upon our health. When we feel healthy, we tend to
experience our bodies positively, and vice versa. Similarly, it is difficult to
think of an occasion when we experience poor health and yet feel good about
our bodies. An unexpected diagnosis can dramatically alter our experience of
our bodies, even if we felt fine immediately before we received it. Meanwhile,
getting the all-clear from a medical professional following a health test can
have unparalleled positive effects upon our general well-being. For this reason,
few dispute the centrality of the body within health studies. Yet as we turn our
attention to the law, and health law specifically,1 we note that bodies have not

1
The sub-discipline of ‘health law’ covers similar ground to ‘health care law’ or ‘medical law’ (though
boundaries are contested). Herein, the former is understood as more inclusive than the latter, as it accepts
that a subject’s ‘health’ exceeds matters which are dealt with in a medical context (Montgomery
2002: 1–3).

C. Dietz (*) • M. Travis

School of Law, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
e-mail: c.p.dietz@leeds.ac.uk; M.Travis@leeds.ac.uk
M. Thomson
Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
School of Law, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
e-mail: michael.thomson@uts.edu.au

© The Author(s) 2020 1

C. Dietz et al. (eds.), A Jurisprudence of the Body, Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42200-4_1
2 C. Dietz et al.

always been considered as seriously as they might have been. Rather than
being front and centre in the minds of health law scholars and practitioners,
the body has tended to be obscured in various ways. Even when the body has
not been masked within health law—for example, in the case of the bodies
which have been considered disordered, diseased or disabled, and which have
animated many discussions about health—they have tended to be under-­
theorised. Such bodies have been framed in a manner which fails to address
the complexity of embodiment, and the messy instability of bodies.
This collection seeks to uncover and challenge some of the fundamental
assumptions that underpin medico-legal knowledge about bodies. In doing
so, it raises important questions about how various types of bodies are, and
ought to be, regulated. The question of what the body is and how it directs
our thinking about law and health is hereby positioned alongside a wider
question about how institutions such as law and the healthcare system shape
our understanding of bodies. A Jurisprudence of the Body brings together a
range of theoretical perspectives to consider fundamental questions about
health law and the place of the body within it. The collection reflects the shift
in feminist thinking ‘from an emphasis on the discursive toward the material’
(Garland-Thomson 2011: 594), positioning its theoretical focus on the con-
nections between the law and flesh. Some contributors discuss bodies which
have been located at the heart of health law debates since the inception of the
field. Others consider bodies which remain on the margins. But each contri-
bution addresses the discursive and institutional boundaries of health, and in
some cases, seek to dismantle them. This collection is hereby positioned at the
intersection of theory, health and law but also at the limits of these spheres—
pushing them to breaking point in order to facilitate the possibility of new
directions in health care and health justice.
In this introduction, we seek to frame the discussion that will follow. After
briefly charting law’s (lack of ) engagement with the body in the first section
(entitled ‘Nobody’), we then address the ways in which a de-contextualised
conception of bodies has been used to regulate embodiment in the second
(‘Anybody’). As we explain, such framings inevitably underplay the inherent
diversity of human bodies, which will have significant impact upon law and
policy, particularly within a health law context. In the third section
(‘Somebody’), we identify how attempts have been made to re-contextualise
bodies in relation to the specific institutions and regulations to which they are
subjected in order to better account for this embodied diversity. This improved,
but fragmented, understanding of bodies will then be contrasted with the
recent return to universality in the fourth section (‘Everybody’). In an attempt
to move law and policy beyond interrogation of identities, universal
 1 Nobody, Anybody, Somebody, Everybody: A Jurisprudence… 3

approaches—including those developed within vulnerability theory and other

embodied theories of justice—have become increasingly pronounced in con-
temporary legal studies. Intersectional, identarian and post-identarian under-
standings of bodies are well represented in this collection, as emphasised in
the fifth and final section of this introduction.

2 Nobody
Traditional jurisprudential approaches have been reluctant to engage with the
idea of the body. Positivists have neglected to outline either the impact of law
on bodies or the effect of bodies on their relationships with law. Such formu-
lations have failed to consider the body as a determining factor in the attribu-
tion of personhood; instead espousing, for example, the view that the person
is a legalistic shorthand (Dewey 1926: 655). This view is elaborated by
Derham, who writes:

Just as the concept “one” in arithmetic is essential to the logical system devel-
oped and yet is not one something (e.g. apple or orange, etc.), so a legal system
(or any system perhaps) must be provided with a basic unit before legal relation-
ships can be devised. The legal person is the unit or entity adopted. For the logic
of the system it is just as much a pure “concept” as “one” in arithmetic. It is just
as independent from a human being as one is from an “apple”. (Derham 1958: 5)

Under this understanding of personhood, the legal person is a unit devised

and utilised by law, a container capable of being filled by any entity (such as
the doctor or patient of health law). Yet while it may be correct to say that
anyone (or anything) can be a legal person, this does not ascribe a basis for
determining personhood. Nor can it account for the diverse bodies to which
personhood has been applied, the injustices it conceals or the bodies that it
has privileged and underprivileged. This separation of law and bodies fails to
account for the ways in which bodies are shaped, constituted and constructed
by the institutions that they are imbricated within. As a result, this disembod-
ied conception of law has been critically described by Grear as ‘a socially
decontextualized, hyper-rational, wilful individual systematically stripped of
embodied particularities in order to appear neutral and, of course, theoreti-
cally genderless’ (2011: 44).
4 C. Dietz et al.

3 Anybody
The lack of emphasis on bodies has given rise to the liberal conception that
bodies are largely interchangeable in their interactions with societal institu-
tions, including law and the healthcare system. Liberal framings, such as
human rights discourse, have become the dominant language for thinking
about law and the body. These tend to be premised upon the supposed uni-
versality of the human body. Yet the meaning of humanity, or even biology, is
subject to both social and cultural concerns. As Fuss (1996: 1) has claimed:
‘the human is a linguistic, cultural, and sociopolitical construct of compara-
tively recent date’. For Fuss, the concept of the human is more than a simple
genetic relation. Instead, it relies upon political and cultural ideology to
include and exclude entities from its boundaries at different times. As a con-
sequence, it is unsurprising to find that broader liberal legal considerations
have, for the most part, categorised the body ‘as an object of analysis rather
than as a category of analysis’ (Fletcher et al. 2008: 321). This point of focus
has failed to account for the value that society places on the living physical
body, particularly in terms of our interactions with others and its facilitation
of our experience of being in the world (Fletcher et al. 2008: 321). Hyde
(1997) notes that the law uses a variety of unsuccessful conceptualisations
when dealing with the body, including property, privacy right and machine.
Each of these metaphors fails to encapsulate the importance of the body. As
Naffine writes, there has been a shift in legal theory from a bodiless concep-
tion of law to a particular type of (assumedly interchangeable) body:

the rational and therefore responsible human legal agent or subject: the classic
contractor, the individual who is held personally accountable for his civil and
criminal actions. This is the individual who possesses the plenitude of legal
rights and responsibilities, the ideal legal actor … he who asserts his will, who
grasps and asserts his legal rights. Now there is a discrete possessor of rights.
(Naffine 2003: 362)

Principles of liberty, equality and freedom operate to allow individuals the

same opportunities for flourishing within Western states. Liberal understand-
ings of meritocracy suggest that anyone can achieve anything—even good
health—provided they work hard enough for it. In turn, anti-discrimination
law has become prominent in order to prevent people from being unfairly
discriminated against on the basis of the particularities of their bodies. In this
theoretical tradition, bodies are understood as interchangeable. The ‘he’ so
often used in legislation can be applied to women, while race and disability
 1 Nobody, Anybody, Somebody, Everybody: A Jurisprudence… 5

are not important aspects for the purposes of general (non-specific) legisla-
tion. Despite this, indicators such as race, class and disability all have an
important effect on outcomes in terms of wealth distribution, educational
attainment, criminalisation and health. The interchangeable ‘anybody’
assumed by liberalism has been shown to privilege a particular type of body.
Whiteness, maleness, being able bodied and inheriting wealth are all advan-
taged by institutions that assume a lack of dependency on the state (Fineman
2004; Brown 2015). Again, as Naffine notes:

the rational subject must be a fully individuated and integrated physical being
before he can begin to assert his will against all other subjects. An explicit bio-
logical assumption is therefore that this individual is a rational adult human; a
tacit assumption is that this rights-asserting competent legal actor is individu-
ated and therefore sexed (at least in the sense of never pregnant, because this
compromises individuation). Individuation and self-containment are essential if
the rational subject is to be free to act in ways which affect only his self: if he is
to be fully capable of confining and containing the effects of his actions to him-
self and to no other. (Naffine 2003: 364)

Some individuals are able to ‘fit’ into society precisely because of their ability
to navigate the everyday topography of existence (Garland-Thomson 2011).
This liberal legal subject is afforded material anonymity that is available only
to individuals who share characteristics of masculinity, whiteness and able-­
bodiedness. ‘Others’ are rendered culturally exposed (Travis 2014: 536). This
abstraction has led to a focus on rationality and a denial of the importance of
the masculine body (Thomson 2008). As a result, ‘many feminists have criti-
cised how women, but not men, are defined in corporeal terms’ (Fletcher
et al. 2008: 331).
We can understand the exclusionary effects of this definition through
engaging with Garland-Thomson’s (2011) work on the ‘misfit’. Garland-­
Thomson (2011) attempts to explain disability in terms of fitting or mis-­
fitting within a given societal context; ‘A good enough fit’, she explains,
‘produces material anonymity’ (596). Further, she argues that for white, het-
erosexual and able bodies, ‘fitting is a comfortable and unremarkable majority
experience of material anonymity’ (Garland-Thomson 2011: 597). This
‘material anonymity’—or ‘invisibility’ (Whitehead 2001)—allows for the
white, heterosexual, able-bodied male experience to become standardised and
normative. At the same time this normativity allows for this particular group
of bodies to remain relatively anonymous. Gatens elaborates on this point,
6 C. Dietz et al.

noting that the origins of our political system prevent full engagement from
those whose bodies are excluded:

Since the political body admitted only very specific types of persons to active
membership, to abstract from their specific qualities certain minimal common
features is to abstract from an abstraction. In other words, the abstract individ-
ual, under these lights, appears as a very specific kind of person…. The laws and
ethical systems that are likely to develop in this sociopolitical context are going
to amount to the encoding of the values and judgments of very specific kinds of
person with very specific kinds of interest. There is nothing neutral or disem-
bodied about the abstract liberal individual when viewed from this perspective.
(Gatens 1996: 99)

Part of the appeal of accounts of the body which are grounded in theories of
embodiment are that they are both able and willing to consider diversity.
Grosz (1994) writes about ‘alterity’, which concerns the articulation of differ-
ence in the multiplicity of bodies (209). These differences include race, sex,
sexuality, disability and class, as well as cultural specificities. An examination
of bodies reveals the diversity of experience, function and identity. Any theo-
risation of the body which fails to take this into account, therefore, borders on
the reductionist. This has had notable consequences in the health law context,
as, for example, patient advice and research protocols are often based upon
particular normative bodies (Ries and Thomson 2019). Various critiques of
this type of reductionism are offered by our contributors to this collection.

4 Somebody
All contributions to this collection highlight various ways in which bodies
play a vital role in how we understand law and health. Crucially, law and
health discourses and practices also fundamentally shape our understandings
and experiences of the body. In keeping with developments in feminist legal
theory, disability studies and critical race theory, this collection seeks to high-
light the importance of the particularities of the body. Thus sex, gender, dis-
ability, genetic and chromosomal variations, and illnesses have profound
contextual and material aspects that undermine the notion that bodies are
interchangeable, equal or equivalent. Health, and more recently health law,
has long been animated by discussions of particular bodies; whether they are
disordered, diseased or disabled. Each of these are classificatory regimes claim-
ing some knowledge about the body. This collection aims to uncover and
 1 Nobody, Anybody, Somebody, Everybody: A Jurisprudence… 7

challenge the fundamental assumptions that underpin medico-legal knowl-

edge about such bodies.
This interrogation is achieved through a mix of perspectives. A number of
contributors look towards embodiment as a perspective that identifies bodies
as always shaped by their discursive and institutional contexts (Dietz 2018;
Travis 2019; Garland and Travis 2018; Fox and Thomson 2017; Fox and
Murphy 2013; Fletcher et al. 2008). Work on embodiment has highlighted
the impossibility of separating the material body from its institutional and
cultural contexts. Here embodiment is understood as ‘a dynamic encounter
between flesh and world’ (Garland-Thomson 2011: 592). Grosz explains the
concept as ‘the condition and context through which I am able to have rela-
tion to objects’ (Grosz 1994: 86). Much of the collection thus draws upon an
understanding of embodiment and its subsequent relation to law.
Embodiment theory encourages us to explore the body as a bio-social
entanglement (Grabham 2012). It directs us to an examination of the mate-
rial body and its relationship to its environments and experiences. In the legal
sphere, Fletcher, Fox and McCandless (2008) note that ‘feminism has shifted
from exploring women’s rights over their bodies, to analysing how social regu-
lation has gendered the body and embodied experiences’ (335). The body
becomes central, therefore, in understanding how and where legal phenom-
ena are exacted and the impact that this has on both the individual and groups.
This approach presents an alternative analytical focus to traditional feminisms,
moving from sexual difference to embodied difference. Such an approach
‘helps avoid assumptions that sexual difference will be the primary signifier of
embodiment, and allows an intersectional approach to bodily differences’
(Fletcher et al. 2008: 334). The term ‘embodiment’ thus refers to this institu-
tionally constituted, culturally located and material body. Whilst the materi-
ality of the body remains vitally important to such research, for the purposes
of this collection, it is located in relation to its discursive and jurisdictional
context. This work alerts us to the idea that medical practitioners not only
respond to healthcare issues but also create them through their own under-
standings of ‘normality’ and ‘fixing’. Bodies, as a result, cannot be understood
outside of, or as separate to, their medical and legal contexts. Nor can these
medical and legal contexts be easily disaggregated when assessing the accessi-
bility of rights or support for such bodies. Instead, the contributors to this
collection address the interrelation of these contexts, exploring various power
dynamics in the hope of opening them up to challenge.
8 C. Dietz et al.

5 Everybody
As well as highlighting various contexts which help us situate bodies, and thus
move away from generalisations about ‘the’ body, a number of contributors to
this collection also draw upon, or advocate, theories which re-emphasise the
importance of universalism in the regulation of the body. Notably among
these is the vulnerability approach pioneered within legal scholarship by
Fineman (2008, 2017, this volume). In Fineman’s (2017: 143) work, vulner-
ability is understood to be a universal trait experienced by all humans at all
stages in the life course, in both an ‘embodied’ and socially ‘embedded’ man-
ner. The vulnerability of the body gives Fineman’s theory its normative under-
pinning and radical potential. Instead of ignoring embodied and embedded
vulnerability and leaving individuals to take responsibility for their own health
and well-being, we—both as health law scholars and as a society more gener-
ally—must do more to build political structures and institutions centred
upon providing care for ourselves and other humans.
The starting point of Fineman’s approach is shared by Garland-Thomson,
who uses the temporality of vulnerability to note that individual bodies are
subject to changes in resilience over the course of a lifetime. The human
embodied experience is variable and dependent on context. Vulnerability is
implicit, therefore, to understanding embodiment, not only between bodies
but also over time (Garland-Thomson 2011: 596). Vulnerability thus becomes
a perfect starting point for ethical debate; it is through our bodies ‘that our
finitude and uniqueness are signified to others […]. Embodiment and ethics
are inseparable insofar as we understand human existence in terms of dwelling
or spatio-temporal being-in-the-world’ (Diprose 2005: 237–238). It is
through our embodied individuality that ethics can come to be conceived,
and that ethical structures and institutions can then be built and maintained.
The significance of vulnerability theory lies in its examination of embedded
vulnerability played out through our relationships with institutions such as
health care and law. These institutional relationships are capable of heighten-
ing or attenuating our resilience. Vulnerability theory highlights the institu-
tional and generational ways in which resilience is created rightly dismissing
political and policy-led notions of ‘vulnerable groups’ that fail to situate indi-
vidual bodies in their social contexts. As a consequence, the theory pushes for
a more responsive state that is capable of monitoring the ways in which insti-
tutions respond to vulnerability and effect resilience (Fineman 2008: 19).
While not all contributors consider vulnerability explicitly, many adopt
relational and embodied perspectives of the body to criticise past or present
 1 Nobody, Anybody, Somebody, Everybody: A Jurisprudence… 9

health law, or to propose alternative regulatory frameworks. Some approaches

are more universal, while others prefer to maintain focus upon the value of
intersectional or identarian approaches that we have previously highlighted.
Yet all approaches attempt to go beyond a simplistic understanding of identity
and the body in order to demonstrate how the state and its institutions con-
struct the concepts and categories of bodies as well as the social and cultural
contexts those bodies are situated within.

6 A Jurisprudence of the Body

Asking our contributors to consider the relationship between law and the
body in a health context has provoked a range of responses. A number have
been animated by the institutional nature of health care as an apparatus for
determining bodily outcomes. The first section—‘The Body of Health Law’—
asks questions about the nature and scope of health care, and how this has
changed in recent years. It also addresses several important developments
affecting how the body is understood within health law in particular.
Martha Fineman begins by addressing the vulnerable body. In her contri-
bution, ‘Reasoning from the Body: Universal Vulnerability and Social Justice’,
she eschews fragmented conceptions of bodies in favour of a universal under-
standing of, and response to, human vulnerability. In a similar vein, John
Coggon asserts the public nature of health law in ‘Studying Public Health
Law: Principles, Politics, and Populations as Patients’. Like Fineman, he shifts
attention from individualised encounters—such as between the doctor and
the patient—and onto the body politic. He shares with Fineman concern
regarding institutional arrangements of privilege and responsibility over the
familiar academic focus on autonomy and consent. Working at the level of
populations allows Coggan to demonstrate the importance of including pub-
lic health within health law.
In ‘Bioinequalities: Rethinking Legal Responses to the Biological and
Intergenerational Harm Caused by Inequality’, Karen O’Connell and Isabel
Karpin draw upon neuroscience and epigenetics to introduce their concep-
tion of ‘bioinequalities’. Understanding the biological and intergenerational
impact of the stress and trauma which arise as a consequence of unequal treat-
ment allows them to reconsider how law should address the embodied effects
of various forms of discrimination. The first section ends with ‘Healthcare,
Wellbeing, and the Regulation of Diversity in Healing’, by Emilie Cloatre and
Nayeli Urquiza-Haas, which considers how the medical profession
10 C. Dietz et al.

differentiates itself, and is differentiated, from other forms of health/care.

Drawing upon literatures concerning both vulnerability and care, Cloatre and
Urquiza-­Haas present an intriguing insight into the regulation of bodies and
various forms of more or less alternative therapies in a UK and French con-
text. This analysis raises challenges for the idea of health care as a market and
lends further support to the need for the responsive state advocated by
Fineman.
Moving away from considerations of the broad scope of health law, other
contributors are concerned with the types of bodies that struggle at the mar-
gins of the healthcare system. The second section—‘Bodies of Health’—teases
apart the distinctions and overlaps emerging at the boundaries of health law.
It considers how health law shapes and is shaped by the experiences of various
types of bodies. These typologies form an important part of the classificatory
principles that underpin medicine as science yet may offer alternative and
competing conceptions to legal principles. This section also considers the
bodies of medical professionals and actors within the system, ensuring that
their embodiment is not assumed or taken for granted, but placed at the fore-
front of theorising about bodies in health law.
The second section begins with ‘Temporal Bodies: Emergencies, Emergence,
and Intersex Embodiment’, in which Fae Garland and Mitchell Travis empha-
sise the position of bodies in time, and how these are framed by regulation
including health laws. By considering the position of intersex people within
healthcare systems, Garland and Travis advocate moving away from under-
standing such forms of embodiment as episodic or constitutive of an emer-
gency. Instead they suggest reframing such bodies by adopting a life-course
approach to intersex embodiment. In ‘Death Before Birth: Liminal Bodies &
Legal Frameworks’, Danielle Fuller, Karolina Kuberska, Jeannette Littlemore,
Sheelagh McGuinness and Sarah Turner consider the relative framings of the
prospective mother’s body as well as that of the foetus in the case of pregnancy
loss. By engaging with metaphors and the concept of liminality, the authors
demonstrate the utility of metaphor analysis to uncover the complex emo-
tional responses to a lost pregnancy. This enables them to identify how the
prospective mother and the foetus occupy a liminal space between different
types of being in health law as in wider society.
In ‘Depathologising Gender: Vulnerability in Trans Health Law’, Chris
Dietz and Ruth Pearce analyse how trans bodies have been, and could be,
framed in attempts to depathologise trans phenomena. While nodding to the
apparent successes of human rights activists in states such as Argentina and
 1 Nobody, Anybody, Somebody, Everybody: A Jurisprudence… 11

Uruguay, they still harbour doubts about the utility of human rights discourse
in this context. Instead, they draw upon Fineman’s work to suggest that vul-
nerability theory has much to offer to the trans depathologisation movement.
The second section ends with ‘Feminist Activism in the Context of Clinical
Trials and Drug Roll Out’, by Aziza Ahmed, which describes the management
of the rollout of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil in the
United States and India. The differential response to this vaccine in these
states offers insights not only into the regulation of pharmaceuticals in both
health law systems but also of the different forms of feminist activism in the
two countries as well as the way that value is accorded to female bodies along
axes of class and race in the global pharmaceutical market.
The remaining contributors are—in part—more speculative, reflecting
upon how theory has altered these debates or may contribute to reframing
them in the future. This final section—‘Reframing Health Law Through
Bodies’—offers suggestions for how health law could be reframed to reveal
new and important questions about fundamental and taken for granted
assumptions of health. Placing the body at the centre of such theorising allows
for new directions to be revealed. In ‘Establishing Boundaries for Speculation
About Artificial Wombs, Ectogenesis, Gender and the Gestating Body’, Claire
Horn and Elizabeth Chloe Romanis discuss the increasingly widespread
assumption that the possibility of gestating an embryo from conception to
full term in an artificial womb (full ectogenesis) will be imminently upon us.
By insisting that such assumptions must be grounded in existing realities
around reproduction and care, Horn and Romanis posit a shift in critical
focus away from the pregnant body and onto the institutions which sustain it.
In ‘A Relational Responsibilities Framework for Children’s Healthcare Law’,
Jo Bridgeman utilises a hypothetical case to illustrate the importance of rela-
tional responsibilities in a children’s health law context. In contrast to her
previous work, Bridgeman focuses less upon the ethical underpinnings of
health law in favour of the social and institutional responsibilities demanded
by her relational perspective. Finally, in ‘Embodied Integrity, Shaping
Surgeries, and the Profoundly Disabled Child’, Marie Fox, Michael Thomson
and Joshua Warburton offer an innovative model of embodied integrity which
could protect profoundly disabled children from irreversible non-therapeutic
surgical interventions. Again this would require greater consideration of insti-
tutional relations—including familial power dynamics—and could radically
reshape the legal regulation of disability and health care in the process.
12 C. Dietz et al.

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 Part I
The Body of Health Law
 2
Reasoning from the Body: Universal
Vulnerability and Social Justice
Martha Albertson Fineman

1 Introduction
What do we mean when we refer to “the body” and speculate about the legal
and political significance of “embodiment”? The bodies we typically encoun-
ter in critical theory are not uniform or universal, but individualised, modi-
fied and defined by certain characteristics that give particularised bodies
particular political and legal significance. Bodies are sexed, gendered, aged,
raced, abled (or not), displaced, disadvantaged, and so on. The particularity of
such bodies (as well as the political and moral implications it is asserted they
then acquire) serves as the basis for legal claims against the state, as well as
those perceived to be in positions of power and privilege. The perceived social
harm done to these particularised bodies (which is typically identified as inap-
propriate discrimination or exclusion from social benefits enjoyed by others)
is the primary focus of most critical thought. Identification of exclusionary
harm propels demands for recognition, equality, and inclusion, with an
abstract ideal of equality employed to create a space of legal empowerment
that allows some individuals and groups to make demands on an otherwise
ideally neutral state.
The inevitability of particularity or difference among bodies is implicit in
the call for papers that led to this collection. The editors asked if bodies can be
understood as outside of, or separate from, medical and legal contexts

M. A. Fineman (*)
Emory University School of Law, Atlanta, GA, USA
e-mail: MLFINEM@emory.edu

© The Author(s) 2020 17

C. Dietz et al. (eds.), A Jurisprudence of the Body, Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42200-4_2
18 M. A. Fineman

(implicitly assuming difference and particularity). For example, they directed

attention and enquiry into the types of bodies that struggle on the margins of
the healthcare system (implicitly referencing discrimination and relative dis-
advantage). They asked contributors to consider the meaning of a “jurispru-
dence” of the body, as well as how our understanding of the body affects
(presumably, individual) outcomes within health law. I am concerned with
the theoretical limitations of considering “the body” as a jurisprudential sub-
ject if it has already been conceptually placed within existing or imagined
social, legal, or political contexts. If contexts are inevitably tied up with
notions of particularity, comparison, and difference, what does that mean for
the generation of abstract, general, and universal principles? While some may
argue that the idea of universality, even in jurisprudence, is to descend into
dreaded “essentialism” and impending subordination, the legal subject is a
universal concept. It is the universality or sameness of legal subjects that man-
dates and justifies their equal treatment in and by law.
Vulnerability theory asserts that the body as a universal concept is where
theory should begin. The body is not created, nor should it be confined, by
contrived contexts (including ideological and theoretical categories). Critical
theory must begin with the body as an ontological entity and consider con-
texts as conditional, impermanent, indeterminate, and contrived. In this con-
text, I am using “ontological” not to assert the existence of God but to present
the material basis for arguing for an ethic of governance built on the recogni-
tion of the inevitability and the constancy of human physical dependency and
the correspondingly essential, inescapable, and unavoidable role of our depen-
dency on social institutions and relationships.
In both jurisprudence and bioethical discussions, the body should be
understood as prior to the social or political, as independent of existing or
imagined ethical, or moral social arrangements (although it may be the basis
for a critique of them). Social institutions and contexts are necessitated by the
ontological body and its needs. The desirability, justness, or appropriateness
of existing or proposed social arrangements must be measured against the
fundamental reality of this body.
As discussed later in this chapter, beginning with the body exposes the
inevitability of dependency. Dependency arises from the body and is mani-
fested by the continuous reliance on social arrangements (or contexts)
throughout the life course of each and every individual. This reality is what
should guide the ordering of human relationships and institutions, as well as
informing the social and political norms we establish and implement in creat-
ing regulatory systems, including law, bioethics, and healthcare.
 2 Reasoning from the Body: Universal Vulnerability and Social Justice 19

2 Theory and Practicality: Step One

Law and bioethics are disciplines concerned with governing human beings
and the societies in which they live. As such, they should be grounded in an
understanding of what it means to be human. This is an empirical enquiry
necessary in defining the subject that is to be of theoretical concern, thus
anchoring theory in quantifiable actuality. To a vulnerability theorist, to be
human is to be vulnerable. This is a very different place to begin to think
about human subjectivity and justice than is typically adopted in legal or
political discussions. The individual of theoretical concern in liberal legal and
political theory is the venerated holder of “rights,” ideally autonomous, inde-
pendent, and self-sufficient, cherishing individual liberty.
In vulnerability theory, this construct of an autonomous individual is con-
sidered to be an ideological construct, which is empirically indefensible, as it
bears little relationship to the totality or complexity of the human condition.
Law and policy built on this deficient conceptual entity cannot be fully or
justly responsive to the totality of human needs. However, while the fiction of
an autonomous, independent, and self-sufficient legal subject does not reso-
nate in reality, it is the necessary conceptual foundation for a politics of lim-
ited governmental responsibility and state action. This is a politics that serves
the interests of the few and powerful who have the resources necessary to
evade some implications of vulnerability.

3 The Role of Law: Step Two

In discussing how we define the legal subject (the imagined, ordinary being
around whom law and policy are formed), it is important to note the role that
law and policy play in society in defining the circumstances and conditions of
individual lives. Law and policy are not abstractions, but have practical impli-
cations. There are two major areas of law that organise individual experience
and expectations. Often labelled “private,” some laws determine the relation-
ships and consequences between and among individuals interacting within
society (these are laws governing things such as contract, tort, crime, family,
and employment). These laws recognise that individuals inevitably interact
with one another and that such interactions may cause harm, establish expec-
tations or reliance, or warrant the imposition of responsibility or obligation.
The law defines both the obligations and duties incorporated into these rela-
tionships, as well as establishes the appropriate remedies should they be
breached.
20 M. A. Fineman

Although labelled private, these laws are actually significant manifestations

of state or public interest, the products of state action and initiative. Rules and
norms of conduct are necessary for a well-ordered and functioning society.
This is profoundly evident in the context of social institutions, such as the
family, which although deemed private have widely been recognised as having
significant public roles. How the legal subject is perceived is certainly relevant
to the laws governing the relationship among individuals. We can speculate as
to how contract, family, and employment law might change if there were not
an autonomous liberal legal subject at their core (Fineman and Fineman 2018).
The second category of laws define the relationship and responsibilities
allocated between the institutions of the “state,” as well as those who govern
the mechanisms of formal authority and power, and the individual as a legal
subject (these are laws defining such things as social health and welfare, taxa-
tion, governance, and citizenship). These areas of “public” law more directly
recognise the state’s ongoing relationship with and responsibility to the indi-
vidual and include constitutional law, administrative law, tax law and criminal
law, as well as all procedural law (Marvel 2014; Dinner 2018; Travis 2019).
These areas entail the state’s obligation to ensure equality before the law, main-
tain civil and political rights, and facilitate inclusion in society.
This category of law has generated a great deal of critical and political atten-
tion. Constitutional law in particular has facilitated vigorous political and
legal campaigns over the past several decades leading to far-reaching reforms
for elimination of discriminatory or exclusionary treatment of designated
“protected” classes based on identity markers such as race, gender, age, ability,
and so on. The claim is for the state to actively refrain from and prohibit oth-
ers from engaging in discriminatory treatment based on these differences
among individuals within society. Ideas like human rights and concepts such
as equality, liberty, autonomy, and so on come into play in this regard. The
objective of state action through law and policy is to eliminate, rectify, or
compensate harms resulting from exclusion and discrimination or marginali-
sation and subordination of protected groups.
Applications of public law concepts have been vigorously developed since
the mid-twentieth century under the mantle of equality. The distinction
between an ideal of equality and the actuality of discrimination became a
paramount lens through which contemporary legal culture assessed the nature
and effect of existing public areas of law and determined the desired direction
for reform in many private areas as well. An equality/discrimination paradigm
still provides the governing logic for both criticism and justification of the
status quo. It is appealingly rooted in an understanding of the moral signifi-
cance of the human being and a belief in our fundamental parity under law
 2 Reasoning from the Body: Universal Vulnerability and Social Justice 21

(Fineman 2013a, b). Ultimately, and less sanguinely, the logic of equality also
resists rules or practices that might infringe on the liberty of equal individuals
or compromise their autonomy, resulting in doctrines that are sceptical of
state intervention into the so-called private sphere of life. Also significant is
the tendency to view structural problems as fundamentally problems of dis-
crimination, exclusion, and equality of access. We fail to engage in a more
comprehensive institutional critique, considering the ways in which institu-
tional structures fail or are flawed indiscriminately.

4 Reasoning from the Body: Step Three

A “restrained state” ideology valorising abstracted ideals of equality and lib-
erty currently serves as a basis for policy in both the private and public areas
of law. While both areas seemingly address relationships to “the other”
(whether individual or state), the individual is ultimately situated as isolated
and autonomous (Fineman 2004). The possibility or necessity of individual
reliance on the collective (in either its social or governmental form) is thus
minimised and formalised. In traditional liberal thought, state or collective
action is posited as theoretically antagonistic and inherently problematic for
venerated individual liberty. This conception of individual freedom and
autonomy, as well as the ideal of restrained state responsibility are only pos-
sible when we ignore the realities of the body.

4.1 Vulnerability Theory: Embodied Reality

Human beings are embodied beings and therefore neither independent nor
self-sufficient. We are vulnerable. Our vulnerability arises from the material
and ephemeral nature of the body itself and is constant throughout life.
Vulnerability is also universal—it is the human condition.1 Vulnerability,
therefore, is not a characteristic of only some individuals or groups, nor does
it differ in quality or degree from one individual or group to another. We are
all always vulnerable—there is no position of invulnerability.

1
When I refer to the human condition, I am indicating an empirical reality that shapes human circum-
stances and experiences and exists across time and space, within cultures and throughout history—the
universal. By contrast, to refer to “human nature” has normative implications: it is a term often applied
to propensities or proclivities of human beings to act in certain ways that can and do vary over time and
within societies. Both the tendency toward and socially acceptable nature of responses to the human
condition vary and are shaped by things like culture, history, and the interpretations of individual and
group experiences. Human nature is a societal conclusion about what is natural or to be anticipated—
society’s consensus on the inevitability of specific responses to the human condition.
22 M. A. Fineman

To state the universality of vulnerability is not to ignore that differences

exist. However, when and how those differences matter on a theoretical level
requires exploration beyond mere assertion of their existence. Typically, critical
theorists have been concerned with those differences that distinguish us from
one another—demographic differences that are often the basis for injustices.
Vulnerability theory, while recognising the importance of and need to address
those injustices associated with demographic differences, is also concerned
with the deeper structural failure of legal theory to effectively engage with the
implications of a second type of difference: developmental difference.

4.2 Differences Among Bodies: Demographic Differences

Clearly there are differences among bodies when we look at our societies and
assess those characteristics that have salience at any particular time. These are
the demographic differences that form the basis for population reports and
assessments of policy. They capture a horizontal perspective of society, a snap-
shot of what are considered relevant or significant differences. The relevant
categories currently emphasised in law, policy, and political theory include
age, sex, race, sexuality, and ability, as well as measures such as income, geo-
graphic area, and education. These demographic differences have formed the
basis for successful political critiques of the status quo. Calls to progressive
action and laws have been fashioned to address discrimination based on cer-
tain demographic differences.
Demographic categories mark individuals who share certain characteristics
as different from those who do not share those characteristics, with distinct
interests or concerns in need of legal attention. Attention to demographic dif-
ferences tends to obscure the universal nature of vulnerability and its implica-
tions. In fact, critical theory often begins by identifying “vulnerable groups,”
or asserting some are more or less vulnerable, ignoring vulnerability as inher-
ent in the human condition. In these contexts, the concept of vulnerability is
incorrectly used as a synonym for disadvantage, discrimination, or injured.
Such misunderstandings of the theoretical range of the concept results in
limiting critical attention to certain variations in embodiment, undermining
the possibility of constructing a unitary legal subject and locating the struc-
tural possibilities for subordination and exclusion to designated demographic
differences. If we looked beyond the fact of exclusion and considered what
would be actually gained by inclusion within existing social arrangements, we
might perceive justice problems transcending discrimination. In other words,
 2 Reasoning from the Body: Universal Vulnerability and Social Justice 23

it is important to ask what is actually achieved if the institution to which we

gain access is fundamentally flawed and structurally unjust, as are many cur-
rent employment, political, and financial systems.
Critical theory must be concerned with the fundamental structures of insti-
tutions and the need for their transformation, as well as ensuring they are
inclusive. A significant question for those concerned with social justice in the
twenty-first century has to be whether the equality/antidiscrimination logic
that underlies a focus on demographic differences is a sufficient critical tool
with which to assess contemporary law and policy. Is there another organising
“reality” that should supplement or even replace the discrimination/equal-
ity model?
To raise questions about the current effectiveness of the dominant para-
digm is not to argue that equality and antidiscrimination are not important or
necessary concepts. Identifying and addressing inequality and discrimination
were unarguably essential steps in the evolution of a just society. As we know,
prior to the mid-twentieth century, formal rules, as well as functioning norms,
were built on assertions of fundamental differences among groups defined by
gender, race, and other characteristics. These distinctive group categories also
established a world of hierarchical legalised identities in which some were
susceptible to different, often demeaning treatment. However, formal legal
distinctions have now been removed and equal access, at least in theory, has
become the norm. While it is undeniably true that more work remains to
make equality of access and opportunity a reality, we also should ask whether
that goal in and of itself is enough to ensure justice.
Of course, an equality model or nondiscrimination mandate certainly
remains the appropriate response in some instances: one person, one vote, and
equal pay for equal work are areas where equality seems clearly suitable. It is
also warranted when there is residual discrimination in spite of the formal
equality rules—discrimination in practice. However, equality is less helpful,
and may even be an unjust measure, when applied in situations of inevitable
inequality. There are situations where different levels of benefits or burdens are
appropriate, even desirable in social arrangements, which are discussed in a
subsequent section of this chapter.
The dismantling of de jure discrimination has made it apparent that the
problems in society often transcend discrimination and exclusion from social
institutions. Indeed, there may be substantial problems with existing institu-
tions and their organisation that are obscured by the jurisprudential logic that
flows from an equality/antidiscrimination paradigm. Discrimination analysis
may fail to adjust for changes in underlying reality. In fact, such analysis may
24 M. A. Fineman

tend to assume change has not happened and the problems are the same as
they were 50 years ago.2
Most significant, however, is the fact that a continued focus on an equality/
discrimination paradigm based on select characteristics has serious limitations
in defining just what constitutes harm, as well as the breadth of those who are
harmed by current policy and law. A focus on discrimination certainly has
failed to develop a strategy for addressing differences in a positive, construc-
tive manner (we tend to get stuck on equality, comparison, and competition).
Adherence to equality may even place obstacles on the ability to remedy (or
even address) existing inequalities. Further, our conception of equality, tied as
it is to the comparative treatment of individuals and groups, may make it dif-
ficult to articulate a concept of “social justice” that moves beyond an indi-
vidual rights framework (Fineman 2019b).

4.3  ifferences Within the Body:

D
Developmental Difference

Vulnerability theory asks us to look beyond current demographic classifica-

tions of difference among individuals existing within society at a particular
time. Instead, we consider the theoretical implications of the ontological body
and its inevitable susceptibility to change that is at the core of vulnerability
theory: “vulnerability reflects our susceptibility to change, both positive and
negative, in our physical and social wellbeing over the life course” (Fineman
2019a: 57; Dinner 2018). This understanding of vulnerability as inevitable
change over time encompasses, but is not confined to, the possibility of harm
or injury. Developmental changes occur as the body matures and are often
positive, ushering in new experiences and opening up new possibilities.
Developmental changes can indicate increased, as well as decreased, capabili-
ties and capacity over time.
Developmental differences are intrinsic to the body and define the shared
human condition. The body progresses through a variety of developmental
stages, with implications for capacity, ability, and capability. That reality
should be reflected in the construction of a unitary legal subject, as well as
being recognised as fundamental to our conception of what it means to be
human. Unfortunately, developmental differences and their significance for

2
We must recognise and incorporate into our critical positions the fact that aspirations have changed,
even if there are problems remaining with achievement of those ends. The recognition that discrimina-
tion on the basis of characteristics such as race or gender was a major conceptual or theoretical advance-
ment and should give us hope that further advances are possible.
 2 Reasoning from the Body: Universal Vulnerability and Social Justice 25

understanding both the human condition and the necessity of constructing a

complementary concept of state responsibility are typically obscured, mini-
mised, or ignored in legal theory, whether it be of a critical or liberal bent.3
Of course, developmental differences sometimes are recognised in law, par-
ticularly when characteristics of specific stages deviate too far from those
assigned to the idealised liberal legal subject and cannot be ignored. The ten-
dency in those cases is to create a “special” category of legal or political subjec-
tivity to accommodate the particular nonconforming stage, leaving untouched
the paradigmatic “full” legal subject created by the given theoretical perspec-
tive. For example, in liberal theory historically children as legal subjects were
placed within the confines of the private family. Within the family, the respon-
sibility of the state for and to the child as a distinct legal subject was sub-
merged, a deferral of public responsibility that was facilitated by the creation
of the doctrines of parental rights and family privacy.
Within this arrangement, the developmental experiences inherent to child-
hood, as well as enquiries into what those experiences should mean in defin-
ing the nature and extent of state responsibility to the (unitary) legal subject,
are obfuscated. Even the legal recognition of the appropriateness of state pro-
tection in cases of child abuse and neglect was difficult to achieve and is still
problematic in practice. Of course, the child has gained legal status in some
quarters. The idea that children have rights exemplified by the United Nation’s
Convention on the Rights of the Child symbolises the emergence of the child
as a distinct legal subject (notably, the United States is the only country that
has not ratified the Convention). However, while bringing the child out from
under the total coverture of the family found in the common law is viewed as
progress, the actual protections or benefits gained from the representation of
the child as a separate, individual rights-holder are less clear. The experiences
of childhood are not brought into focus, but obscured under the mantle of
individual rights.
The assertion that children have rights assumes they can practically, as well
as theoretically, occupy a position as a rights-holder vis-à-vis the state and its
juridical institutors comparable to adults. However, the problem of rights for
children is not just one of lesser capacity or capability. There is also a general
problem with the individualistic nature of rights as a concept. The idea of
individual rights (whether for children or adults) resonates with conceptual

3
Vulnerability theory asserts that it is human vulnerability that necessitates the creation of social institu-
tions, be they the family, the community, the nation state, or the international community, as well as
providing the bases for the construction of economic, financial, educational, and social welfare systems.
These social arrangements arise in response to vulnerability, and their success of failure should be mea-
sured by the effectiveness of their responses to the realities of the human (vulnerable) condition.
26 M. A. Fineman

flaws characteristic of the traditional, limited notions of the legal subject, with
its commitment to individual autonomy, liberty, independence, and agency.
A rights-based model assumes the individual as a legal subject can be con-
ceived outside of social institutions and relationships (exemplified by Rawl’s
“veil of ignorance” (Rawls 1971). This leads to ultimately positioning the
individual so conceived as perpetually in danger from an abusive and antago-
nistic state, a view that has affected how those on both left and right of the
political spectrum view the potential for state action.
In fact, a rights focus on the individual minimises and obscures the con-
tinuous and basic role the state plays in society as a whole, as well as the ways
in which it defines the lives of all individuals within it. The whole idea of
individual rights tends to assume an ideally restrained or fundamentally dis-
tant or disinterested state that may provide some basic services, but is funda-
mentally detached from and uninvolved in the mundane aspects of individual
lives. The idea of individual rights serves as a check on the development of an
overly active state (although it is argued rights can also be the basis for positive
claims of an economic or social nature—these claims are often in practice,
however, unenforceable).
This tension between the view of the individual as independent and the
reality of necessary and nurturing or supportive social contexts is starkly visi-
ble when it comes to children’s rights. No matter how many individual rights
are conferred, the developmental stages of childhood mean that the child will
be perceived as deficient in terms of the capacity presumed by liberal legal
subjectivity. The family is designed as a compensatory institution, allocated
primary responsibility for care and control of the child (See also Fox, Thomson
and Warburton this volume, Garland and Travis, this volume). This process of
designating children as not only rights-holders but also inherently dependent
on some mediating social institution has implications for legal theory and the
structuring of society. It is not only a “special” (inferior and dependent) legal
subjectivity for children (and some of those who are considered disabled or
some elderly individuals not deemed to have the ability to be fully indepen-
dent or self-sufficient) that is created. Also constructed are the expectations,
limitations, authority, and nature of the family as an institution, as well as the
roles of both parent and child within that family. Significantly, through this
process of legal structuring, the state also defines and confines itself.
This deferral (or allocation) by the state of responsibility for individual and
social well-being to social institutions created by the state employing law and
policy choices is also evident in a less obvious way for those deemed full legal
subjects. Markets are supposed to provide economic opportunity, employ-
ment provides for health and retirement needs, education is the way to gain
 2 Reasoning from the Body: Universal Vulnerability and Social Justice 27

opportunity, and so on. These mediating institutions are created and main-
tained by the state and the reality is that the ways in which they are con-
structed are dependent on how the legal subject is understood, an insight
typically overlooked in legal theory. The pernicious assumption in liberal the-
ory is that an individual can consistently and successfully rely on social insti-
tutions, furthering the illusion of independence and autonomy and ignoring
the reality of our fundamental dependency on social arrangements. If an indi-
vidual does not succeed, it can be viewed as an individual, not an institu-
tional, failure.
The fallacy of individual autonomy and independence is not only a prob-
lem in legal theory. In political theory, philosophy, economics, and ethics,
human beings are consistently presented as ideally independent, fully-­
functioning adults. An “autonomous-liberal-subject”—a “rational actor,” who
is liberty-seeking and capable of negotiation, bargaining, and giving informed
consent—also informs economics, bioethics, and political theory (Naffine
2009). This subject is not concerned with (in fact does not recognise) his own
dependency or the need to consider the general wellbeing of society, let alone
the needs of the next generation. This abstracted human subject is taken out
of social relationships and freed from social responsibility. This makes it dif-
ficult to argue for redistribution of economic resources, affirmative action, or
other remedial devices to address existing inequalities. Inequality is under-
stood as an individual, not a social problem.
Vulnerability theory argues that we need a new logic—one that generates
and validates different values and norms, responsive to the social and indi-
vidual implications of ontological vulnerability and inescapable dependency.
We need to create a unitary legal subject—one that incorporates all stages of
human development and recognises the implications of dependency for the
construction of state responsibility. This insistence on recognition of develop-
mental differences and the dependency they reveal underscores the need for
law to respond to the totality of the human condition, transforming the legal
subject from its current static and unrealistic form into a dynamic, inclusive,
and comprehensive model. Such a transformation will mandate serious theo-
retical engagement on the question of state and individual responsibility.

5 Dependency: Step Four

As is apparent from the proceeding section, the concept of dependency is
central to vulnerability theory. Dependency is neither contingent, nor devi-
ant. It is also not merely a variation of or euphemism for vulnerability.
28 M. A. Fineman

Dependency is the individual manifestation of our vulnerability, which also

has social dimensions. Our bodies render us inescapably dependent on social
relationships and arrangements such as those found in the family, education,
finance, employment, and health systems. It is within these social institutions
that we must generate the resources or social assets that cumulatively provide
“resilience.” Significantly, no one is born resilient. Resilience in the form of
capabilities, skills, resources, support, a sense of belonging, emotional strength,
and so on is gained over the life course, within these social institutions and
relationships. Resilience gives us the ability to not only survive, but thrive in
the face of our vulnerability.
Like vulnerability, dependency is not a harm or injury, nor is it deviant or
exceptional. Dependency, like vulnerability, is intrinsic to the human condi-
tion. However, it is important to distinguish between dependency and vulner-
ability, which are different in important ways. Vulnerability arises from the
characteristics and essence of the body (we are embodied beings), while
dependency is the term used to describe relationships we have with particular
social or institutional arrangements. As embodied beings, we are inevitably
embedded in and dependent upon social institutions and relationships.
Dependency, while it is also constant, is best understood as changing and
variable. The manifestations of our dependency change over time and we may
at various times during the life course be dependent on different institutional
and social arrangements. For example, because we begin life as physically
unable to care for ourselves, we are inevitably dependent on care from others.
Social institutions and relationships are essential to provide that care. This
form of dependency, which is located in the body and developmental in
nature, I label “inevitable dependency.”
Inevitable dependency is most evident in infancy, where the family is the
mediating social institution primarily assigned responsibility for caretaking.
However, the family does not and cannot bear this burden alone. Healthcare
and social welfare systems are designed and justified as necessary to also pro-
vide essential resources for caring for the inevitable dependent. These other
institutions typically become more prominent than the family in the life of
the adult individual when the need for care arises because we are injured, ill,
or disabled. Importantly, our dependence on institutions of care persists over
the life course, even if the specific social arrangements for that care shift or are
episodic, alterable, and individual.
Significantly, there is a second distinct, but related form of dependency that
is (or should be) theoretically relevant—a social dependency, which I label
“derivative.” Derivative dependency in the caretaking context describes the
social or institutional consequences that attend assumption of the position or
 2 Reasoning from the Body: Universal Vulnerability and Social Justice 29

relationship of caretaker. Those who care for the inevitably dependent infant
(or otherwise in need of care individual) are themselves structurally depen-
dent on resources, accommodation, and support in order to successfully
accomplish that care. These resources can come from within the institution of
the family (the spouse’s pay cheque or grandmother’s childcare). However,
supplemental resources also must be provided by social welfare institutions,
such as the healthcare system, and governmental systems, such as tax subsidy
or public education.
Considering the implications of derivative dependency and the reliance on
institutions that it signifies, it is important to realise that social systems, such
as the family, the healthcare, and the employment/market systems, operate
simultaneously and sequentially. A weakness in one system can be compen-
sated for in another. A strong family can help minimise the impact of a less
than sterling educational system. However, successful acquisition of resources
in one stage, such as education in childhood, profoundly affects the possibility
of success in subsequent social stages, such as in the university or employment.
On a social level, institutions must be designed to work together in inter-
related, contiguous, and sequential ways. Institutional arrangements should
be thought of as symbiotic. For example, the healthcare system relies on fund-
ing from governmental sources but also reflects and adapts to the organisation
of educational and professional associations and adjusts to financial systems
(including insurance) and regulatory agencies. It must also ultimately be
responsive in its design and practice to law and policy. This interdependency
profoundly affects the ability of each of these systems to respond and shapes
the options and resources available to institutions, as well as for those who
perform necessary social roles with them. Focusing on the inherent and inevi-
table interrelatedness of institutions and the complexity of social arrange-
ments responding to vulnerability and dependency reveals the complexity of
the processes and procedures that shaped institutions and the need to be
attentive to the way they are constructed, operate, and interact. It also reveals
that derivative dependency is not confined to the situation of caretaking.
Rather, we are all dependent on social institutions and relationships in order
to inhabit and function within the social systems we inevitably occupy.

6  ocial Identities and Inevitable

S
Inequality: Step Five
Within social institutions we find social relationships, such as that of parent
and child. These relationships constitute social identities, defined by the obli-
gations, expectations, responsibilities, and benefits they carry within them.
30 M. A. Fineman

Social identities are shaped by and conform to the ways that social institutions
have been defined. For example, parents have responsibility for the welfare of
their children and this social responsibility is complimented by the legal doc-
trines of parental rights and family privacy. This and other social identities are
not natural and inevitable, although they may correspond with natural human
impulses and emotions. As legal or social relationships, they are constructed
by policy choices in which the state, through law, confers not only responsi-
bility but also power and privilege. Social identities apply to all who occupy
the status, regardless of demographic differences. One of the significant theo-
retical realisations about these universally applicable social identities is that
they are typically not equal relationships. Recognition of the inherent inequal-
ities in social relationships further bolsters the need for critical theory to
incorporate vulnerability and dependency in addressing the need for
social change.
The parent/child relationship is a straightforward example where the need
for unequal institutional social identities and conferral of differing levels of
authority can be easily justified (although the extent and nature of residual
state responsibly is a critical issue). However, it is important to note that social
identities reflecting an inherent inequality are the norm, not the exception.
Examples of unequal socio-legal relationships in addition to parent/child,
include employer/employee (Fineman and Fineman 2018), as well as profes-
sional relationships such as doctor/patient and attorney/client, where there is
an underlying inequality in knowledge, resources, and access to institutional
structures that warrant an asymmetric allocation of responsibility. Law and
policy recognises and responds to the related but differing needs of sharehold-
ers and consumers (or the community) when it comes to regulating the cor-
poration. Inequality in position, need, and context is also the reality when it
comes to intergenerational equalities inherent in considering things like envi-
ronmental practice and policies, for example. These are situations of “inevi-
table” or “necessary” inequality from a theoretical perspective, where the social
responsibilities and functions are complementary, but different.
While these inherently unequal social relationships or identities represent
major areas of life, historically they have conceptually been relegated to the
“private” sphere—whether it be designated “family” or “market” and wrong-
fully perceived as presumptively outside of state action and regulation.
Recognising the perpetually active role of the state in the construction and
maintenance of these identities and the institutions in which they are located
demands a robust response from critical theorists focused on institutional
design and the allocation of privilege and benefits. How and why have these
 2 Reasoning from the Body: Universal Vulnerability and Social Justice 31

relationships and institutions been fashioned in the ways in which they have?
What are the justifications for the allocation of unequal privilege and advan-
tage within any given relationship? As an empirical matter, are the justifica-
tions supported by the actual functioning of the institutions and relationships
within society?
Recognition of the nature and extent of relationships of inescapable and
appropriate inequality present major challenges for those structuring, regulat-
ing, or monitoring those relationships—for law and ethics. How do we struc-
ture essential social relationships of inevitable inequality so that they operate
justly and fairly? Asking this question shifts critical enquiry from the charac-
teristics and circumstances of particular individuals or groups to that of uni-
versal institutional design and collective social responsibility. Social identities
are inclusive and apply to all who occupy them. This does not mean that once
established there cannot be discrimination based on demographic differences
within the social category, but it does insist that the construction of the cate-
gory must be considered independent of (and I would assert, prior to) the
question of discrimination in order to generate a comprehensive social
critique.
If the initial focus of critical theory is on inevitable inequality in the con-
texts of the function and nature of existing institutional arrangements, it
compels an enquiry into the reasons offered to justify the particular choices
policymakers have made. This form of critical focus brings to the fore the
contrived positions of power and privilege designed for those who are more
advantaged within the paired social identities, as well as those who are disad-
vantaged. Why are policymakers more attentive to the economic risks and
needs of the employer vis-à-vis employee? (Fineman and Fineman 2018).
How might law and policy more justly balance the corresponding vulnerabili-
ties of these partners in the employment relationship?
Notably, the situation of inevitable inequality found in the employment
relationship is handled by imposing a fabricated equivalence between the
individuals in the relationship. The fictitious contract that is fabricated in the
employment context gives the illusion of equality. This legal fiction not only
is an illusion. It also has significant social welfare implications. The idea of an
employment contract inappropriately individualises an important and essen-
tial social relationship with potentially significant public consequences. It also
obscures the responsibility of the state to ensure that this inherently unequal
relationship, which is defined and bolstered in employment, labour, and other
laws, is nonetheless a just one. An illusory patina of equality is also applied in
the construction of autonomy and reliance on “informed consent” to govern
the doctor/patient relationship. As already discussed the distinction in the
32 M. A. Fineman

treatment of children compared with adults exemplifies the tactic of position-

ing individuals differently in order to justify different, unequal legal treat-
ment. In such cases, state responsibility for ensuring equitable treatment for
some of these differently positioned individuals (children) is minimised
within the overriding framework of equality.
Vulnerability theory allows us to effectively criticise these existing social
arrangements, looking beyond the paradigms of equality, rights, and discrimi-
nation. Vulnerability theory asks the question: “what is justice?” It incorpo-
rates the recognition that justice is often asymmetrical and demands attention
to contexts and complexity in a way that simple resort to mantras such as
equality may not. It also compels us to grapple with the fact that the state is
not and cannot be passive, noninterventionist or restrained. In the normative
governing processes of creating and monitoring social institutions and rela-
tionships, the state is always active. The question critical theorists should ask
is in whose interests and to what ends is the state acting? We cannot merely
critique the state, nor can we disavow and abandon it. Critical theory must
generate ways to achieve more just ends, actively engaging with the state by
not only challenging the results produced within existing social institutional
arrangements, but suggesting ways those institutions can be designed to func-
tion better.
In addition to clearly defining the roles, purposes, and effects we want insti-
tutions and relationships to have, we should be asking fundamental structural
questions: what are the distinctive responsibilities and obligations imposed
through the creation of social identities for those acting within societal insti-
tutions? What are the responsibilities of those who shape and control the rules
and practices governing relationships of inevitable inequality? What rules, val-
ues, and norms should govern the expectations for the behaviour and prac-
tices within relationships of inherent inequality and dependency? What are
the ethical and moral, as well as legal, implications of developmental differ-
ence and the inevitability of dependency it reveals? What political and legal
rules and arrangements should we establish in recognition of vulnerability
and dependency?
These and other questions arising from the recognition of inherent inequal-
ity present difficult challenges for dominant legal theory, which revolves
around the individual and elevates principles such as equality and individual
liberty to constitutional mandates in which the human condition with its
inevitable dependency and universal vulnerability are ignored or denied.
Another random document with
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 —Ottoboni, reprit-il, est un saint homme, il est très-secourable,
tous les réfugiés l’aiment, car, Excellence, un libéral peut avoir des
vertus! Oh! oh! fit Giardini, voilà un journaliste, dit-il en désignant un
homme qui avait le costume ridicule que l’on donnait autrefois aux
poëtes logés dans les greniers, car son habit était râpé, ses bottes
crevassées, son chapeau gras, et sa redingote dans un état de
vétusté déplorable. Excellence, ce pauvre homme est plein de talent
et... incorruptible! il s’est trompé sur son époque, il dit la vérité à tout
le monde, personne ne peut le souffrir. Il rend compte des théâtres
dans deux journaux obscurs, quoiqu’il soit assez instruit pour écrire
dans les grands journaux. Pauvre homme! Les autres ne valent pas
la peine de vous être indiqués, et Votre Excellence les devinera, dit-il
en s’apercevant qu’à l’aspect de la femme du compositeur le comte
ne l’écoutait plus.
En voyant Andrea, la signora Marianna tressaillit et ses joues se
couvrirent d’une vive rougeur.
—Le voici, dit Giardini à voix basse en serrant le bras du comte
et lui montrant un homme d’une grande taille. Voyez comme il est
pâle et grave le pauvre homme! aujourd’hui le dada n’a sans doute
pas trotté à son idée.
La préoccupation amoureuse d’Andrea fut troublée par un
charme saisissant qui signalait Gambara à l’attention de tout
véritable artiste. Le compositeur avait atteint sa quarantième année;
mais quoique son front large et chauve fut sillonné de quelques plis
parallèles et peu profonds, malgré ses tempes creuses où quelques
veines nuançaient de bleu le tissu transparent d’une peau lisse,
malgré la profondeur des orbites où s’encadraient ses yeux noirs
pourvus de larges paupières aux cils clairs, la partie inférieure de
son visage lui donnait tous les semblants de la jeunesse par la
tranquillité des lignes et par la mollesse des contours. Le premier
coup d’œil disait à l’observateur que chez cet homme la passion
avait été étouffée au profit de l’intelligence qui seule s’était vieillie
dans quelque grande lutte. Andrea jeta rapidement un regard à
Marianna qui l’épiait. A l’aspect de cette belle tête italienne dont les
proportions exactes et la splendide coloration révélaient une de ces
organisations où toutes les forces humaines sont harmoniquement
balancées, il mesura l’abîme qui séparait ces deux êtres unis par le
hasard. Heureux du présage qu’il voyait dans cette dissemblance
entre les deux époux, il ne songeait point à se défendre d’un
sentiment qui devait élever une barrière entre la belle Marianna et
lui. Il ressentait déjà pour cet homme de qui elle était l’unique bien,
une sorte de pitié respectueuse en devinant la digne et sereine
infortune qu’accusait le regard doux et mélancolique de Gambara.
Après s’être attendu à rencontrer dans cet homme un de ces
personnages grotesques si souvent mis en scène par les conteurs
allemands et par les poëtes de libretti, il trouvait un homme simple et
réservé dont les manières et la tenue, exemptes de toute étrangeté,
ne manquaient pas de noblesse. Sans offrir la moindre apparence
de luxe, son costume était plus convenable que ne le comportait sa
profonde misère, et son linge attestait la tendresse qui veillait sur les
moindres détails de sa vie. Andrea leva des yeux humides sur
Marianna, qui ne rougit point et laissa échapper un demi-sourire où
perçait peut-être l’orgueil que lui inspira ce muet hommage. Trop
sérieusement épris pour ne pas épier le moindre indice de
complaisance, le comte se crut aimé en se voyant si bien compris.
Dès lors il s’occupa de la conquête du mari plutôt que de celle de la
femme, en dirigeant toutes ses batteries contre le pauvre Gambara,
qui, ne se doutant de rien, avalait sans les goûter les bocconi du
signor Giardini. Le comte entama la conversation sur un sujet banal;
mais, dès les premiers mots, il tint cette intelligence, prétendue
aveugle peut-être sur un point, pour fort clairvoyante sur tous les
autres, et vit qu’il s’agissait moins de caresser la fantaisie de ce
malicieux bonhomme que de tâcher d’en comprendre les idées. Les
convives, gens affamés dont l’esprit se réveillait à l’aspect d’un
repas bon ou mauvais, laissaient percer les dispositions les plus
hostiles au pauvre Gambara, et n’attendaient que la fin du premier
service pour donner l’essor à leurs plaisanteries. Un réfugié, dont les
œillades fréquentes trahissaient de prétentieux projets sur Marianna
et qui croyait se placer bien avant dans le cœur de l’Italienne en
cherchant à répandre le ridicule sur son mari, commença le feu pour
mettre le nouveau venu au fait des mœurs de la table d’hôte.
—Voici bien du temps que nous n’entendons plus parler de
l’opéra de Mahomet, s’écria-t-il en souriant à Marianna, serait-ce que
tout entier aux soins domestiques, absorbé par les douceurs du pot-
au-feu, Paolo Gambara négligerait un talent surhumain, laisserait
refroidir son génie et attiédir son imagination?
Gambara connaissait tous les convives, il se sentait placé dans
une sphère si supérieure qu’il ne prenait plus la peine de repousser
leurs attaques, il ne répondit point.
—Il n’est pas donné à tout le monde, reprit le journaliste, d’avoir
assez d’intelligence pour comprendre les élucubrations musicales de
monsieur, et là sans doute est la raison qui empêche notre divin
maestro de se produire aux bons Parisiens.
—Cependant, dit le compositeur de romances, qui n’avait ouvert
la bouche que pour y engloutir tout ce qui se présentait, je connais
des gens à talent qui font un certain cas du jugement des Parisiens.
J’ai quelque réputation en musique, ajouta-t-il d’un air modeste, je
ne la dois qu’à mes petits airs de vaudeville et au succès
qu’obtiennent mes contredanses dans les salons; mais je compte
faire bientôt exécuter une messe composée pour l’anniversaire de la
mort de Beethoven, et je crois que je serai mieux compris à Paris
que partout ailleurs. Monsieur me fera-il l’honneur d’y assister? dit-il
en s’adressant à Andrea.
—Merci, répondit le comte, je ne me sens pas doué des organes
nécessaires à l’appréciation des chants français. Mais si vous étiez
mort, monsieur, et que Beethoven eût fait la messe, je ne
manquerais pas d’aller l’entendre.
Cette plaisanterie fit cesser l’escarmouche de ceux qui voulaient
mettre Gambara sur la voie de ses lubies, afin de divertir le nouveau
venu. Andrea sentait déjà quelque répugnance à donner une folie si
noble et si touchante en spectacle à tant de vulgaires sagesses. Il
poursuivit sans arrière-pensée un entretien à bâtons rompus,
pendant lequel le nez du signor Giardini s’interposa souvent à deux
répliques. A chaque fois qu’il échappait à Gambara quelque
plaisanterie de bon ton ou quelque aperçu paradoxal, le cuisinier
avançait la tête, jetait au musicien un regard de pitié, un regard
d’intelligence au comte, et lui disait à l’oreille:—È matto! Un moment
vint où le cuisinier interrompit le cours de ses observations
judicieuses, pour s’occuper du second service auquel il attachait la
plus grande importance. Pendant son absence, qui dura peu,
Gambara se pencha vers l’oreille d’Andrea.
—Ce bon Giardini, lui dit-il à demi-voix, nous a menacés
aujourd’hui d’un plat de son métier que je vous engage à respecter,
quoique sa femme en ait surveillé la préparation. Le brave homme a
la manie des innovations en cuisine. Il s’est ruiné en essais dont le
dernier l’a forcé à partir de Rome sans passe-port, circonstance sur
laquelle il se tait. Après avoir acheté un restaurant en réputation, il
fut chargé d’un gala que donnait un cardinal nouvellement promu et
dont la maison n’était pas encore montée. Giardini crut avoir trouvé
une occasion de se distinguer, il y parvint: le soir même, accusé
d’avoir voulu empoisonner tout le conclave, il fut contraint de quitter
Rome et l’Italie sans faire ses malles. Ce malheur lui a porté le
dernier coup, et maintenant...
Gambara se posa un doigt au milieu de son front, et secoua la
tête.
—D’ailleurs, ajouta-t-il, il est bon homme. Ma femme assure que
nous lui avons beaucoup d’obligations.
Giardini parut portant avec précaution un plat qu’il posa au milieu
de la table, et après il revint modestement se placer auprès
d’Andrea, qui fut servi le premier. Dès qu’il eut goûté ce mets, le
comte trouva un intervalle infranchissable entre la première et la
seconde bouchée. Son embarras fut grand, il tenait fort à ne point
mécontenter le cuisinier qui l’observait attentivement. Si le
restaurateur français se soucie peu de voir dédaigner un mets dont
le paiement est assuré, il ne faut pas croire qu’il en soit de même
d’un restaurateur italien à qui souvent l’éloge ne suffit pas. Pour
gagner du temps, Andrea complimenta chaleureusement Giardini,
mais il se pencha vers l’oreille du cuisinier, lui glissa sous la table
une pièce d’or, et le pria d’aller acheter quelques bouteilles de vin de
Champagne en le laissant libre de s’attribuer tout l’honneur de cette
libéralité.
Quand le cuisinier reparut, toutes les assiettes étaient vides, et la
salle retentissait des louanges du maître d’hôtel. Le vin de
Champagne échauffa bientôt les têtes italiennes, et la conversation,
jusqu’alors contenue par la présence d’un étranger, sauta par-
dessus les bornes d’une réserve soupçonneuse pour se répandre çà
et là dans les champs immenses des théories politiques et
artistiques. Andrea, qui ne connaissait d’autres ivresses que celles
de l’amour et de la poésie, se rendit bientôt maître de l’attention
générale, et conduisit habilement la discussion sur le terrain des
questions musicales.
—Veuillez m’apprendre, monsieur, dit-il au faiseur de
contredanses, comment le Napoléon des petits airs s’abaisse à
détrôner Palestrina, Pergolèse, Mozart, pauvres gens qui vont plier
bagage aux approches de cette foudroyante messe de mort?
—Monsieur, dit le compositeur, un musicien est toujours
embarrassé de répondre quand sa réponse exige le concours de
cent exécutants habiles. Mozart, Haydn et Beethoven, sans
orchestre, sont peu de chose.
—Peu de chose? reprit le comte, mais tout le monde sait que
l’auteur immortel de Don Juan et du Requiem s’appelle Mozart, et
j’ai le malheur d’ignorer celui du fécond inventeur des contredanses
qui ont tant de vogue dans les salons.
—La musique existe indépendamment de l’exécution, dit le chef
d’orchestre qui malgré sa surdité avait saisi quelques mots de la
discussion. En ouvrant la symphonie en ut mineur de Beethoven, un
homme de musique est bientôt transporté dans le monde de la
Fantaisie sur les ailes d’or du thème en sol naturel, répété en mi par
les cors. Il voit toute une nature tour à tour éclairée par
d’éblouissantes gerbes de lumières, assombrie par des nuages de
mélancolie, égayée par des chants divins.
—Beethoven est dépassé par la nouvelle école, dit
dédaigneusement le compositeur de romances.
—Il n’est pas encore compris, dit le comte, comment serait-il
dépassé?
Ici Gambara but un grand verre de vin de Champagne, et
accompagna sa libation d’un demi-sourire approbateur.
 —Beethoven, reprit le comte, a reculé les bornes de la musique
instrumentale, et personne ne l’a suivi.
Gambara réclama par un mouvement de tête.
—Ses ouvrages sont surtout remarquables par la simplicité du
plan, et par la manière dont est suivi ce plan, reprit le comte. Chez la
plupart des compositeurs, les parties d’orchestre folles et
désordonnées ne s’entrelacent que pour produire l’effet du moment,
elles ne concourent pas toujours à l’ensemble du morceau par la
régularité de leur marche. Chez Beethoven, les effets sont pour ainsi
dire distribués d’avance. Semblables aux différents régiments qui
contribuent par des mouvements réguliers au gain de la bataille, les
parties d’orchestre des symphonies de Beethoven suivent les ordres
donnés dans l’intérêt général, et sont subordonnées à des plans
admirablement bien conçus. Il y a parité sous ce rapport chez un
génie d’un autre genre. Dans les magnifiques compositions
historiques de Walter Scott, le personnage le plus en dehors de
l’action vient, à un moment donné, par des fils tissus dans la trame
de l’intrigue, se rattacher au dénoûment.
—È vero! dit Gambara à qui le bon sens semblait revenir en sens
inverse de sa sobriété.
Voulant pousser l’épreuve plus loin, Andrea oublia pour un
moment toutes ses sympathies, il se prit à battre en brèche la
réputation européenne de Rossini, et fit à l’école italienne ce procès
qu’elle gagne chaque soir depuis trente ans sur plus de cent
théâtres en Europe. Il avait fort à faire assurément. Les premiers
mots qu’il prononça élevèrent autour de lui une sourde rumeur
d’improbation; mais ni les interruptions fréquentes, ni les
exclamations, ni les froncements de sourcils, ni les regards de pitié
n’arrêtèrent l’admirateur forcené de Beethoven.
—Comparez, dit-il, les productions sublimes de l’auteur dont je
viens de parler, avec ce qu’on est convenu d’appeler musique
italienne: quelle inertie de pensées! quelle lâcheté de style! Ces
tournures uniformes, cette banalité de cadences, ces éternelles
fioritures jetées au hasard, n’importe la situation, ce monotone
crescendo que Rossini a mis en vogue et qui est aujourd’hui partie
intégrante de toute composition; enfin ces rossignolades forment
une sorte de musique bavarde, caillette, parfumée, qui n’a de mérite
que par le plus ou moins de facilité du chanteur et la légèreté de la
vocalisation. L’école italienne a perdu de vue la haute mission de
l’art. Au lieu d’élever la foule jusqu’à elle, elle est descendue jusqu’à
la foule; elle n’a conquis sa vogue qu’en acceptant des suffrages de
toutes mains, en s’adressant aux intelligences vulgaires qui sont en
majorité. Cette vogue est un escamotage de carrefour. Enfin, les
compositions de Rossini en qui cette musique est personnifiée, ainsi
que celles des maîtres qui procèdent plus ou moins de lui, me
semblent dignes tout au plus d’amasser dans les rues le peuple
autour d’un orgue de Barbarie, et d’accompagner les entrechats de
Polichinelle. J’aime encore mieux la musique française, et c’est tout
dire. Vive la musique allemande!... quand elle sait chanter, ajouta-t-il
à voix basse.
Cette sortie résuma une longue thèse dans laquelle Andrea
s’était soutenu pendant plus d’un quart d’heure dans les plus hautes
régions de la métaphysique, avec l’aisance d’un somnambule qui
marche sur les toits. Vivement intéressé par ces subtilités, Gambara
n’avait pas perdu un mot de toute la discussion; il prit la parole
aussitôt qu’Andrea parut l’avoir abandonnée, et il se fit alors un
mouvement d’attention parmi tous les convives, dont plusieurs se
disposaient à quitter la place.
—Vous attaquez bien vivement l’école italienne, reprit Gambara
fort animé par le vin de Champagne, ce qui d’ailleurs m’est assez
indifférent. Grâce à Dieu, je suis en dehors de ces pauvretés plus ou
moins mélodiques! Mais un homme du monde montre peu de
reconnaissance pour cette terre classique d’où l’Allemagne et la
France tirèrent leurs premières leçons. Pendant que les
compositions de Carissimi, Cavalli, Scarlati, Rossi s’exécutaient
dans toute l’Italie, les violonistes de l’Opéra de Paris avaient le
singulier privilége de jouer du violon avec des gants. Lulli, qui étendit
l’empire de l’harmonie et le premier classa les dissonances, ne
trouva, à son arrivée en France, qu’un cuisinier et un maçon qui
eussent des voix et l’intelligence suffisante pour exécuter sa
musique; il fit un ténor du premier, et métamorphosa le second en
basse-taille. Dans ce temps-là, l’Allemagne, à l’exception de
Sébastien Bach, ignorait la musique. Mais, monsieur, dit Gambara
du ton humble d’un homme qui craint de voir ses paroles accueillies
par le dédain ou par la malveillance, quoique jeune, vous avez
longtemps étudié ces hautes questions de l’art, sans quoi vous ne
les exposeriez pas avec tant de clarté.
Ce mot fit sourire une partie de l’auditoire, qui n’avait rien
compris aux distinctions établies par Andrea; Giardini, persuadé que
le comte n’avait débité que des phrases sans suite, le poussa
légèrement en riant sous cape d’une mystification de laquelle il
aimait à se croire complice.
—Il y a dans tout ce que vous venez de nous dire beaucoup de
choses qui me paraissent fort sensées, dit Gambara en poursuivant,
mais prenez garde! Votre plaidoyer, en flétrissant le sensualisme
italien, me paraît incliner vers l’idéalisme allemand, qui n’est pas une
moins funeste hérésie. Si les hommes d’imagination et de sens, tels
que vous, ne désertent un camp que pour passer à l’autre, s’ils ne
savent pas rester neutres entre les deux excès, nous subirons
éternellement l’ironie de ces sophistes qui nient le progrès, et qui
comparent le génie de l’homme à cette nappe, laquelle, trop courte
pour couvrir entièrement la table du signor Giardini, n’en pare une
des extrémités qu’aux dépens de l’autre.
Giardini bondit sur sa chaise comme si un taon l’eût piqué, mais
une réflexion soudaine le rendit à sa dignité d’amphitryon, il leva les
yeux au ciel, et poussa de nouveau le comte, qui commençait à
croire son hôte plus fou que Gambara. Cette façon grave et
religieuse de parler de l’art intéressait le Milanais au plus haut point.
Placé entre ces deux folies, dont l’une était si noble et l’autre si
vulgaire, et qui se bafouaient mutuellement au grand divertissement
de la foule, il y eut un moment où le comte se vit ballotté entre le
sublime et la parodie, ces deux faces de toute création humaine.
Rompant alors la chaîne des transitions incroyables qui l’avaient
amené dans ce bouge enfumé, il se crut le jouet de quelque
hallucination étrange, et ne regarda plus Gambara et Giardini que
comme deux abstractions.
 Cependant, à un dernier lazzi du chef d’orchestre qui répondit à
Gambara, les convives s’étaient retirés en riant aux éclats. Giardini
s’en alla préparer le café qu’il voulait offrir à l’élite de ses hôtes. Sa
femme enlevait le couvert. Le comte placé près du poêle, entre
Marianna et Gambara, était précisément dans la situation que le fou
trouvait si désirable: il avait à gauche le sensualisme, et l’idéalisme à
droite. Gambara, rencontrant pour la première fois un homme qui ne
lui riait point au nez, ne tarda pas à sortir des généralités pour parler
de lui-même, de sa vie, de ses travaux et de la régénération
musicale de laquelle il se croyait le Messie.
—Écoutez, vous qui ne m’avez point insulté jusqu’ici! je veux
vous raconter ma vie, non pour faire parade d’une constance qui ne
vient point de moi, mais pour la plus grande gloire de celui qui a mis
en moi sa force. Vous semblez bon et pieux; si vous ne croyez point
en moi, du moins vous me plaindrez: la pitié est de l’homme, la foi
vient de Dieu.
Andrea, rougissant, ramena sous sa chaise un pied qui effleurait
celui de la belle Marianna, et concentra son attention sur elle, tout en
écoutant Gambara.
—Je suis né à Crémone d’un facteur d’instruments, assez bon
exécutant, mais plus fort compositeur, reprit le musicien. J’ai donc pu
connaître de bonne heure les lois de la construction musicale, dans
sa double expression matérielle et spirituelle, et faire en enfant
curieux des remarques qui plus tard se sont représentées dans
l’esprit de l’homme fait. Les Français nous chassèrent, mon père et
moi, de notre maison. Nous fûmes ruinés par la guerre. Dès l’âge de
dix ans, j’ai donc commencé la vie errante à laquelle ont été
condamnés presque tous les hommes qui roulèrent dans leur tête
des innovations d’art, de science ou de politique. Le sort ou les
dispositions de leur esprit, qui ne cadrent point avec les
compartiments où se tiennent les bourgeois, les entraînent
providentiellement sur les points où ils doivent recevoir leurs
enseignements. Sollicité par ma passion pour la musique, j’allais de
théâtre en théâtre par toute l’Italie, en vivant de peu, comme on vit
là. Tantôt je faisais la basse dans un orchestre, tantôt je me trouvais
sur le théâtre dans les chœurs, ou sous le théâtre avec les
machinistes. J’étudiais ainsi la musique dans tous ses effets,
interrogeant l’instrument et la voix humaine, me demandant en quoi
ils diffèrent, en quoi ils s’accordent, écoutant les partitions et
appliquant les lois que mon père m’avait apprises. Souvent je
voyageais en raccommodant des instruments. C’était une vie sans
pain, dans un pays où brille toujours le soleil, où l’art est partout,
mais où il n’y a d’argent nulle part pour l’artiste, depuis que Rome
n’est plus que de nom seulement la reine du monde chrétien. Tantôt
bien accueilli, tantôt chassé pour ma misère, je ne perdais point
courage; j’écoutais les voix intérieures qui m’annonçaient la gloire!
La musique me paraissait être dans l’enfance. Cette opinion, je l’ai
conservée. Tout ce qui nous reste du monde musical antérieur au
dix-septième siècle, m’a prouvé que les anciens auteurs n’ont connu
que la mélodie; ils ignoraient l’harmonie et ses immenses
ressources. La musique est tout à la fois une science et un art. Les
racines qu’elle a dans la physique et les mathématiques en font une
science; elle devient un art par l’inspiration qui emploie à son insu
les théorèmes de la science. Elle tient à la physique par l’essence
même de la substance qu’elle emploie: le son est de l’air modifié;
l’air est composé de principes, lesquels trouvent sans doute en nous
des principes analogues qui leur répondent, sympathisent et
s’agrandissent par le pouvoir de la pensée. Ainsi l’air doit contenir
autant de particules d’élasticités différentes, et capables d’autant de
vibrations de durées diverses qu’il y a de tons dans les corps
sonores, et ces particules perçues par notre oreille, mises en œuvre
par le musicien, répondent à des idées suivant nos organisations.
Selon moi, la nature du son est identique à celle de la lumière. Le
son est la lumière sous une autre forme: l’une et l’autre procèdent
par des vibrations qui aboutissent à l’homme et qu’il transforme en
pensées dans ses centres nerveux. La musique, de même que la
peinture, emploie des corps qui ont la faculté de dégager telle ou
telle propriété de la substance-mère, pour en composer des
tableaux. En musique, les instruments font l’office des couleurs
qu’emploie le peintre. Du moment où tout son produit par un corps
sonore est toujours accompagné de sa tierce majeure et de sa
quinte, qu’il affecte des grains de poussière placés sur un parchemin
tendu, de manière à y tracer des figures d’une construction
géométrique toujours les mêmes, suivant les différents volumes du
son, régulières quand on fait un accord, et sans formes exactes
quand on produit des dissonances, je dis que la musique est un art
tissu dans les entrailles même de la Nature. La musique obéit à des
lois physiques et mathématiques. Les lois physiques sont peu
connues, les lois mathématiques le sont davantage; et, depuis qu’on
a commencé à étudier leurs relations, on a créé l’harmonie, à
laquelle nous avons dû Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven et Rossini, beaux
génies qui certes ont produit une musique plus perfectionnée que
celle de leurs devanciers, gens dont le génie d’ailleurs est
incontestable. Les vieux maîtres chantaient au lieu de disposer de
l’art et de la science, noble alliance qui permet de fondre en un tout
les belles mélodies et la puissante harmonie. Or, si la découverte
des lois mathématiques a donné ces quatre grands musiciens, où
n’irions-nous pas si nous trouvions les lois physiques en vertu
desquelles (saisissez bien ceci) nous rassemblons, en plus ou moins
grande quantité, suivant des proportions à rechercher, une certaine
substance éthérée, répandue dans l’air, et qui nous donne la
musique aussi bien que la lumière, les phénomènes de la végétation
aussi bien que ceux de la zoologie! Comprenez-vous? Ces lois
nouvelles armeraient le compositeur de pouvoirs nouveaux en lui
offrant des instruments supérieurs aux instruments actuels, et peut-
être une harmonie grandiose comparée à celle qui régit aujourd’hui
la musique. Si chaque son modifié répond à une puissance, il faut la
connaître pour marier toutes ces forces d’après leurs véritables lois.
Les compositeurs travaillent sur des substances qui leur sont
inconnues. Pourquoi l’instrument de métal et l’instrument de bois, le
basson et le cor, se ressemblent-ils si peu tout en employant les
mêmes substances, c’est-à-dire les gaz constituants de l’air? Leurs
dissemblances procèdent d’une décomposition quelconque de ces
gaz, ou d’une appréhension des principes qui leur sont propres et
qu’ils renvoient modifiés, en vertu de facultés inconnues. Si nous
connaissions ces facultés, la science et l’art y gagneraient. Ce qui
étend la science étend l’art. Eh! bien, ces découvertes, je les ai
flairées et je les ai faites. Oui, dit Gambara en s’animant, jusqu’ici
l’homme a plutôt noté les effets que les causes! S’il pénétrait les
causes, la musique deviendrait le plus grand de tous les arts. N’est-il
pas celui qui pénètre le plus avant dans l’âme? Vous ne voyez que
ce que la peinture vous montre, vous n’entendez que ce que le
poëte vous dit, la musique va bien au delà: ne forme-t-elle pas votre
pensée, ne réveille-t-elle pas les souvenirs engourdis? Voici mille
âmes dans une salle, un motif s’élance du gosier de la Pasta, dont
l’exécution répond bien aux pensées qui brillaient dans l’âme de
Rossini quand il écrivit son air, la phrase de Rossini transmise dans
ces âmes y développe autant de poëmes différents: à celui-ci se
montre une femme longtemps rêvée, à celui-là je ne sais quelle rive
le long de laquelle il a cheminé, et dont les saules traînants, l’onde
claire et les espérances qui dansaient sous les berceaux feuillus lui
apparaissent; cette femme se rappelle les mille sentiments qui la
torturèrent pendant une heure de jalousie; l’une pense aux vœux
non satisfaits de son cœur et se peint avec les riches couleurs du
rêve un être idéal à qui elle se livre en éprouvant les délices de la
femme caressant sa chimère dans la mosaïque romaine; l’autre
songe que le soir même elle réalisera quelque désir, et se plonge
par avance dans le torrent des voluptés, en en recevant les ondes
bondissant sur sa poitrine en feu. La musique seule a la puissance
de nous faire rentrer en nous-mêmes; tandis que les autres arts
nous donnent des plaisirs définis. Mais je m’égare. Telles furent mes
premières idées, bien vagues, car un inventeur ne fait d’abord
qu’entrevoir une sorte d’aurore. Je portais donc ces glorieuses idées
au fond de mon bissac, elles me faisaient manger gaiement la croûte
séchée que je trempais souvent dans l’eau des fontaines. Je
travaillais, je composais des airs, et après les avoir exécutés sur un
instrument quelconque, je reprenais mes courses à travers l’Italie.
Enfin, à l’âge de vingt-deux ans, je vins habiter Venise, où je goûtai
pour la première fois le calme, et me trouvai dans une situation
supportable. J’y fis la connaissance d’un vieux noble vénitien à qui
mes idées plurent, qui m’encouragea dans mes recherches, et me fit
employer au théâtre de la Fenice. La vie était à bon marché, le
logement coûtait peu. J’occupais un appartement dans ce palais
Capello, d’où sortit un soir la fameuse Bianca, et qui devint grande-
duchesse de Toscane. Je me figurais que ma gloire inconnue
partirait de là pour se faire aussi couronner quelque jour. Je passais
les soirées au théâtre, et les journées au travail. J’eus un désastre.
La représentation d’un opéra dans la partition duquel j’avais essayé
ma musique fit fiasco. On ne comprit rien à ma musique des Martyrs.
Donnez du Beethoven aux Italiens, ils n’y sont plus. Personne
n’avait la patience d’attendre un effet préparé par des motifs
différents que donnait chaque instrument, et qui devaient se rallier
dans un grand ensemble. J’avais fondé quelques espérances sur
l’opéra des Martyrs, car nous nous escomptons toujours le succès,
nous autres amants de la bleue déesse, l’Espérance! Quand on se
croit destiné à produire de grandes choses, il est difficile de ne pas
les laisser pressentir; le boisseau a toujours des fentes par où passe
la lumière. Dans cette maison se trouvait la famille de ma femme, et
l’espoir d’avoir la main de Marianna, qui me souriait souvent de sa
fenêtre, avait beaucoup contribué à mes efforts. Je tombai dans une
noire mélancolie en mesurant la profondeur de l’abîme où j’étais
tombé, car j’entrevoyais clairement une vie de misère, une lutte
constante où devait périr l’amour. Marianna fit comme le génie: elle
sauta pieds joints par-dessus toutes les difficultés. Je ne vous dirai
pas le peu de bonheur qui dora le commencement de mes
infortunes. Épouvanté de ma chute, je jugeai que l’Italie, peu
compréhensive et endormie dans les flonflons de la routine, n’était
point disposée à recevoir les innovations que je méditais; je songeai
donc à l’Allemagne. En voyageant dans ce pays, où j’allai par la
Hongrie, j’écoutais les mille voix de la nature, et je m’efforçais de
reproduire ces sublimes harmonies à l’aide d’instruments que je
composais ou modifiais dans ce but. Ces essais comportaient des
frais énormes qui eurent bientôt absorbé notre épargne. Ce fut
cependant notre plus beau temps: je fus apprécié en Allemagne. Je
ne connais rien de plus grand dans ma vie que cette époque. Je ne
saurais rien comparer aux sensations tumultueuses qui
m’assaillaient près de Marianna, dont la beauté revêtit alors un éclat
et une puissance célestes. Faut-il le dire? je fus heureux. Pendant
ces heures de faiblesse, plus d’une fois je fis parler à ma passion le
langage des harmonies terrestres. Il m’arriva de composer quelques-
unes de ces mélodies qui ressemblent à des figures géométriques,
et que l’on prise beaucoup dans le monde où vous vivez. Aussitôt
que j’eus du succès, je rencontrai d’invincibles obstacles multipliés
par mes confrères, tous pleins de mauvaise foi ou d’ineptie. J’avais
entendu parler de la France comme d’un pays où les innovations
étaient favorablement accueillies, je voulus y aller; ma femme trouva
quelques ressources, et nous arrivâmes à Paris. Jusqu’alors on ne
m’avait point ri au nez; mais dans cette affreuse ville, il me fallut
supporter ce nouveau genre de supplice, auquel la misère vint
bientôt ajouter ses poignantes angoisses. Réduits à nous loger dans
ce quartier infect, nous vivons depuis plusieurs mois du seul travail
de Marianna, qui a mis son aiguille au service des malheureuses
prostituées qui font de cette rue leur galerie. Marianna assure qu’elle
a rencontré chez ces pauvres femmes des égards et de la
générosité, ce que j’attribue à l’ascendant d’une vertu si pure, que le
vice lui-même est contraint de la respecter.
—Espérez, lui dit Andrea. Peut-être êtes-vous arrivé au terme de
vos épreuves. En attendant que mes efforts, unis aux vôtres, aient
mis vos travaux en lumière, permettez à un compatriote, à un artiste
comme vous, de vous offrir quelques avances sur l’infaillible succès
de votre partition.
—Tout ce qui rentre dans les conditions de la vie matérielle est
du ressort de ma femme, lui répondit Gambara; elle décidera de ce
que nous pouvons accepter sans rougir d’un galant homme tel que
vous paraissez l’être. Pour moi, qui depuis longtemps ne me suis
laissé aller à de si longues confidences, je vous demande la
permission de vous quitter. Je vois une mélodie qui m’invite, elle
passe et danse devant moi, nue et frissonnant comme une belle fille
qui demande à son amant les vêtements qu’il tient cachés. Adieu, il
faut que j’aille habiller une maîtresse, je vous laisse ma femme.
Il s’échappa comme un homme qui se reprochait d’avoir perdu un
temps précieux, et Marianna embarrassée voulut le suivre; Andrea
n’osait la retenir, Giardini vint à leur secours à tous deux.
—Vous avez entendu, signorina, dit-il. Votre mari vous a laissé
plus d’une affaire à régler avec le seigneur comte.
Marianna se rassit, mais sans lever les yeux sur Andrea, qui
hésitait à lui parler.
 —La confiance du signor Gambara, dit Andrea d’une voix émue,
ne me vaudra-t-elle pas celle de sa femme? la belle Marianna
refusera-t-elle de me faire connaître l’histoire de sa vie?
—Ma vie, répondit Marianna, ma vie est celle des lierres. Si vous
voulez connaître l’histoire de mon cœur, il faut me croire aussi
exempte d’orgueil que dépourvue de modestie pour m’en demander
le récit après ce que vous venez d’entendre.
—Et à qui le demanderai-je? s’écria le comte chez qui la passion
éteignait déjà tout esprit.
—A vous-même, répliqua Marianna. Ou vous m’avez déjà
comprise, ou vous ne me comprendrez jamais. Essayez de vous
interroger.
—J’y consens, mais vous m’écouterez. Cette main que je vous ai
prise, vous la laisserez dans la mienne aussi longtemps que mon
récit sera fidèle.
—J’écoute, dit Marianna.
—La vie d’une femme commence à sa première passion, dit
Andrea, ma chère Marianna a commencé à vivre seulement du jour
où elle a vu pour la première fois Paolo Gambara, il lui fallait une
passion profonde à savourer, il lui fallait surtout quelque intéressante
faiblesse à protéger, à soutenir. La belle organisation de femme dont
elle est douée appelle peut-être moins encore l’amour que la
maternité. Vous soupirez, Marianna? J’ai touché à l’une des plaies
vives de votre cœur. C’était un beau rôle à prendre pour vous, si
jeune, que celui de protectrice d’une belle intelligence égarée. Vous
vous disiez: Paolo sera mon génie, moi je serai sa raison, à nous
deux nous ferons cet être presque divin qu’on appelle un ange, cette
sublime créature qui jouit et comprend, sans que la sagesse étouffe
l’amour. Puis, dans le premier élan de la jeunesse, vous avez
entendu ces mille voix de la nature que le poëte voulait reproduire.
L’enthousiasme vous saisissait quand Paolo étalait devant vous ces
trésors de poésie en en cherchant la formule dans le langage
sublime mais borné de la musique, et vous l’admiriez pendant
qu’une exaltation délirante l’emportait loin de vous, car vous aimiez à
croire que toute cette énergie déviée serait enfin ramenée à l’amour.
Vous ignoriez l’empire tyrannique et jaloux que la Pensée exerce sur
les cerveaux qui s’éprennent d’amour pour elle. Gambara s’était
donné, avant de vous connaître, à l’orgueilleuse et vindicative
maîtresse à qui vous l’avez disputé en vain jusqu’à ce jour. Un seul
instant vous avez entrevu le bonheur. Retombé des hauteurs où son
esprit planait sans cesse, Paolo s’étonna de trouver la réalité si
douce, vous avez pu croire que sa folie s’endormirait dans les bras
de l’amour. Mais bientôt la musique reprit sa proie. Le mirage
éblouissant qui vous avait tout à coup transportée au milieu des
délices d’une passion partagée rendit plus morne et plus aride la
voie solitaire où vous vous étiez engagée. Dans le récit que votre
mari vient de nous faire, comme dans le contraste frappant de vos
traits et des siens, j’ai entrevu les secrètes angoisses de votre vie,
les douloureux mystères de cette union mal assortie dans laquelle
vous avez pris le lot des souffrances. Si votre conduite fut toujours
héroïque, si votre énergie ne se démentit pas une fois dans
l’exercice de vos devoirs pénibles, peut-être dans le silence de vos
nuits solitaires, ce cœur dont les battements soulèvent en ce
moment votre poitrine murmura-t-il plus d’une fois! Votre plus cruel
supplice fut la grandeur même de votre mari: moins noble, moins
pur, vous eussiez pu l’abandonner; mais ses vertus soutenaient les
vôtres. Entre votre héroïsme et le sien vous vous demandiez qui
céderait le dernier. Vous poursuiviez la réelle grandeur de votre
tâche, comme Paolo poursuivait sa chimère. Si le seul amour du
devoir vous eût soutenue et guidée, peut-être le triomphe vous eût-il
semblé plus facile; il vous eût suffi de tuer votre cœur et de
transporter votre vie dans le monde des abstractions, la religion eût
absorbé le reste, et vous eussiez vécu dans une idée, comme les
saintes femmes qui éteignent au pied de l’autel les instincts de la
nature. Mais le charme répandu sur toute la personne de votre Paul,
l’élévation de son esprit, les rares et touchants témoignages de sa
tendresse, vous rejetaient sans cesse hors de ce monde idéal, où la
vertu voulait vous retenir, ils exaltaient en vous des forces sans
cesse épuisées à lutter contre le fantôme de l’amour. Vous ne
doutiez point encore! les moindres lueurs de l’espérance vous
entraînaient à la poursuite de votre douce chimère. Enfin les
déceptions de tant d’années vous ont fait perdre patience, elle eût
depuis longtemps échappé à un ange. Aujourd’hui cette apparence
si longtemps poursuivie est une ombre et non un corps. Une folie qui
touche au génie de si près doit être incurable en ce monde. Frappée
de cette pensée, vous avez songé à toute votre jeunesse, sinon
perdue, au moins sacrifiée; vous avez alors amèrement reconnu
l’erreur de la nature qui vous avait donné un père quand vous
appeliez un époux. Vous vous êtes demandé si vous n’aviez pas
outrepassé les devoirs de l’épouse en vous gardant tout entière à
cet homme qui se réservait à la science. Marianna, laissez-moi votre
main, tout ce que j’ai dit est vrai. Et vous avez jeté les yeux autour
de vous; mais vous étiez alors à Paris, et non en Italie, où l’on sait si
bien aimer.
—Oh! laissez-moi achever ce récit, s’écria Marianna, j’aime
mieux dire moi-même ces choses. Je serai franche, je sens
maintenant que je parle à mon meilleur ami. Oui, j’étais à Paris,
quand se passait en moi tout ce que vous venez de m’expliquer si
clairement; mais quand je vous vis, j’étais sauvée, car je n’avais
rencontré nulle part l’amour rêvé depuis mon enfance. Mon costume
et ma demeure me soustrayaient aux regards des hommes comme
vous. Quelques jeunes gens à qui leur situation ne permettait pas de
m’insulter me devinrent plus odieux encore par la légèreté avec
laquelle ils me traitaient: les uns bafouaient mon mari comme un
vieillard ridicule, d’autres cherchaient bassement à gagner ses
bonnes grâces pour le trahir; tous parlaient de m’en séparer, aucun
ne comprenait le culte que j’ai voué à cette âme, qui n’est si loin de
nous que parce qu’elle est près du ciel, à cet ami, à ce frère que je
veux toujours servir. Vous seul avez compris le lien qui m’attache à
lui, n’est-ce pas? Dites-moi que vous vous êtes pris pour mon Paul
d’un intérêt sincère et sans arrière-pensée...
—J’accepte ces éloges, interrompit Andrea; mais n’allez pas plus
loin, ne me forcez pas de vous démentir. Je vous aime, Marianna,
comme on aime dans ce beau pays où nous sommes nés l’un et
l’autre; je vous aime de toute mon âme et de toutes mes forces,
mais avant de vous offrir cet amour, je veux me rendre digne du
vôtre. Je tenterai un dernier effort pour vous rendre l’homme que
vous aimez depuis l’enfance, l’homme que vous aimerez toujours.
En attendant le succès ou la défaite, acceptez sans rougir l’aisance
que je veux vous donner à tous deux; demain nous irons ensemble
choisir un logement pour lui. M’estimez-vous assez pour m’associer
aux fonctions de votre tutelle?
Marianna, étonnée de cette générosité, tendit la main au Comte,
qui sortit en s’efforçant d’échapper aux civilités du signor Giardini et
de sa femme.
Le lendemain, le comte fut introduit par Giardini dans
l’appartement des deux époux. Quoique l’esprit élevé de son amant
lui fût déjà connu, car il est certaines âmes qui se pénètrent
promptement, Marianna était trop bonne femme de ménage pour ne
pas laisser percer l’embarras qu’elle éprouvait à recevoir un si grand
seigneur dans une si pauvre chambre. Tout y était fort propre. Elle
avait passé la matinée entière à épousseter son étrange mobilier,
œuvre du signor Giardini, qui l’avait construit à ses moments de
loisir avec les débris des instruments rebutés par Gambara. Andrea
n’avait jamais rien vu de si extravagant. Pour se maintenir dans une
gravité convenable, il cessa de regarder un lit grotesque pratiqué par
le malicieux cuisinier dans la caisse d’un vieux clavecin, et reporta
ses yeux sur le lit de Marianna, étroite couchette dont l’unique
matelas était couvert d’une mousseline blanche, aspect qui lui
inspira des pensées tout à la fois tristes et douces. Il voulut parler de
ses projets et de l’emploi de la matinée, mais l’enthousiaste
Gambara, croyant avoir enfin rencontré un bénévole auditeur,
s’empara du comte et le contraignit d’écouter l’opéra qu’il avait écrit
pour Paris.
—Et d’abord, monsieur, dit Gambara, permettez-moi de vous
apprendre en deux mots le sujet. Ici les gens qui reçoivent les
impressions musicales ne les développent pas en eux-mêmes,
comme la religion nous enseigne à développer par la prière les
textes saints; il est donc bien difficile de leur faire comprendre qu’il
existe dans la nature une musique éternelle, une mélodie suave, une
harmonie parfaite, troublée seulement par les révolutions
indépendantes de la volonté divine, comme les passions le sont de
la volonté des hommes. Je devais donc trouver un cadre immense
où pussent tenir les effets et les causes, car ma musique a pour but
d’offrir une peinture de la vie des nations prise à son point de vue le
plus élevé. Mon opéra, dont le libretto a été composé par moi, car un
poëte n’en eût jamais développé le sujet, embrasse la vie de
Mahomet, personnage en qui les magies de l’antique sabéisme et la
poésie orientale de la religion juive se sont résumées, pour produire
un des plus grands poëmes humains, la domination des Arabes.
Certes, Mahomet a emprunté aux Juifs l’idée du gouvernement
absolu, et aux religions pastorales ou sabéiques le mouvement
progressif qui a créé le brillant empire des califes. Sa destinée était
écrite dans sa naissance même, il eut pour père un païen et pour
mère une juive. Ah! pour être grand musicien, mon cher comte, il
faut être aussi très-savant. Sans instruction, point de couleur locale,
point d’idées dans la musique. Le compositeur qui chante pour
chanter est un artisan et non un artiste. Ce magnifique opéra
continue la grande œuvre que j’avais entreprise. Mon premier opéra
s’appelait les Martyrs, et j’en dois faire un troisième de la
Jérusalem délivrée. Vous saisissez la beauté de cette triple
composition et ses ressources si diverses: les Martyrs, Mahomet, la
Jérusalem! Le Dieu de l’Occident, celui de l’Orient, et la lutte de
leurs religions autour d’un tombeau. Mais ne parlons pas de mes
grandeurs à jamais perdues! Voici le sommaire de mon opéra.
—Le premier acte, dit-il après une pause, offre Mahomet facteur
chez Cadhige, riche veuve chez laquelle l’a placé son oncle; il est
amoureux et ambitieux; chassé de la Mekke, il s’enfuit à Médine, et
date son ère de sa fuite (l’hégire). Le second montre Mahomet
prophète et fondant une religion guerrière. Le troisième présente
Mahomet dégoûté de tout, ayant épuisé la vie, et dérobant le secret
de sa mort pour devenir un Dieu, dernier effort de l’orgueil humain.
Vous allez juger de ma manière d’exprimer par des sons un grand
fait que la poésie ne saurait rendre qu’imparfaitement par des mots.
Gambara se mit à son piano d’un air recueilli, et sa femme lui
apporta les volumineux papiers de sa partition qu’il n’ouvrit point.
—Tout l’opéra, dit-il, repose sur une basse comme sur un riche
terrain. Mahomet devait avoir une majestueuse voix de basse, et sa
première femme avait nécessairement une voix de contralto.
Cadhige était vieille, elle avait vingt ans. Attention, voici l’ouverture!
Elle commence (ut mineur) par un andante (trois temps). Entendez-
vous la mélancolie de l’ambitieux que ne satisfait pas l’amour? A
travers ses plaintes, par une transition au ton relatif (mi bémol,
allégro quatre temps) percent les cris de l’amoureux épileptique, ses
fureurs et quelques motifs guerriers, car le sabre tout-puissant des
califes commence à luire à ses yeux. Les beautés de la femme
unique lui donnent le sentiment de cette pluralité d’amour qui nous
frappe tant dans Don Juan. En entendant ces motifs, n’entrevoyez-
vous pas le paradis de Mahomet? Mais voici (la bémol majeur, six
huit) un cantabile capable d’épanouir l’âme la plus rebelle à la
musique: Cadhige a compris Mahomet! Cadhige annonce au peuple
les entrevues du prophète avec l’ange Gabriel (Maëstoso sostenuto
en fa mineur). Les magistrats, les prêtres, le pouvoir et la religion,
qui se sentent attaqués par le novateur comme Socrate et Jésus-
Christ attaquaient des pouvoirs et des religions expirantes ou usées,
poursuivent Mahomet et le chassent de la Mekke (strette en ut
majeur). Arrive ma belle dominante (sol quatre temps): l’Arabie
écoute son prophète, les cavaliers arrivent (sol majeur, mi bémol, si
bémol, sol mineur! toujours quatre temps). L’avalanche d’hommes
grossit! Le faux prophète a commencé sur une peuplade ce qu’il va
faire sur le monde (sol, sol). Il promet une domination universelle
aux Arabes, on le croit parce qu’il est inspiré. Le crescendo
commence (par cette même dominante). Voici quelques fanfares (en
ut majeur), des cuivres plaqués sur l’harmonie qui se détachent et se
font jour pour exprimer les premiers triomphes. Médine est conquise
au prophète et l’on marche sur la Mekke. (Explosion en ut majeur).
Les puissances de l’orchestre se développent comme un incendie,
tout instrument parle, voici des torrents d’harmonie. Tout à coup le
tutti est interrompu par un gracieux motif (une tierce mineure).
Écoutez le dernier cantilène de l’amour dévoué! La femme qui a
soutenu le grand homme meurt en lui cachant son désespoir, elle
meurt dans le triomphe de celui chez qui l’amour est devenu trop
immense pour s’arrêter à une femme, elle l’adore assez pour se
sacrifier à la grandeur qui la tue! Quel amour de feu! Voici le désert
qui envahit le monde (l’ut majeur reprend). Les forces de l’orchestre
reviennent et se résument dans une terrible quinte partie de la basse