Abstract
Based on a multimodal and empirical analysis, the article presents Indian women (identifying) lawyers’ lived experiences of epistemic injustice at the sites of legal work in Delhi. The analysis brings a painting, a short film, and 15 semi-structured interviews in conversation with each other to understand women lawyers’ shared experiences of being perceived as “less credible,” and the strategies they have been adopting to assert credibility. The theoretical contribution can be captured by three key arguments. First, using Arpita Singh’s painting, ‘My Lollipop City: Gemini Rising, 2005,’ I argue that the Indian legal system has a “sense of” Delhi. This means that the rhythms of the city influence the rhythms of the key sites of legal coding located within it. Second, I bring Singh’s painting in conversation with a self-produced film (IN)VISIBLE, to argue that these co-constitutive rhythms position women to be out of place, both physically and epistemically. Their epistemic positioning, in particular, brings into conflict the cultural coordinates of two aspects of their identities—womaning and lawyering. While the marketisation of the legal profession widens the gap between these two identities, relative “eliteness” allows some women to undercut gender-based disadvantages more easily than others. Third, I argue that women adopt “sticky scripts” to close this gap and assert credibility. One form of “sticky scripts,” often adopted by elite women lawyers, is a plain denial of having experienced gender-based epistemic injustice, towards asserting that they were never out of place to begin with. Another form of “sticky script,” often adopted by non-elite women lawyers, is “power-dressing.” While the former allows elites to align closer with lawyering, the latter enables non-elites to align closer with eliteness. Either way, scripts are adopted based on how easily they can “stick” to the nodes of power previously attributed by the cultural coordinates of social hierarchies. Methodologically, the article offers alternate modalities of theorising the legal system. By moving beyond text-based methods, I not only challenge the Eurocentric hierarchies of knowledge production, but also what is produced. The article reveals how the operationally closed boundaries of a legal system are not only constituted by its codes, but also by its cultures. Whose bodies/voices are considered and positioned as more credible then shapes which lives are better understood.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.55496/MHHE3154
