CELS Lunchtime Seminar: 'EU Anti-Discrimination Law through the Lens of Critical Theory'

Speaker: Dr Raphaële Xenidis, Sciences Po Law School, France

Abstract: EU anti-discrimination law has been a subject of choice for critiques from various disciplines. One influential motif that has durably structured the critical analysis of EU anti-discrimination law is the distinction between formal and substantive equality. Substantive approaches seek to diagnose and remedy the disjunctions between formal equality frameworks and social realities. Yet, such critiques often remain implicit in their engagement with social theory, leaving the very notion and construction of ’social realities’ largely unexamined. This paper thus asks: How does the principle of non-discrimination mediate and produce specific forms of individual subjectivity, interpersonal relationships, institutional arrangements, material and spatial organisation and ultimately social order? How does it authorise the existence of certain subjects and groups while excluding and rendering others invisible? What 'forms of life' does EU anti-discrimination and its jurisprudential construction by the Court enable or preclude?

Please note: this event is a hybrid event - it will take place in person in the Cambridge Law Faculty. For those who are unable to make it in person, please register to attend via Zoom.