Occupying the Universal, Embodying the Subject

Abstract

This article introduces a theory of jurisprudential critique that has developed in African American letters. The author describes this form of critique as “sympathetic occupation”—a means of using the idea of the universal subject alongside racial subjectivity in order to transform the reader’s interpretation of the law with respect to African Americans. Her argument is fashioned using nineteenth- and twentieth-century works of literature, yet she locates “sympathetic occupation” within contemporary debates about critical race theory scholarship, and suggests that her theory may be used as a critical lens for interpreting critical race theory scholarship itself.