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Zombie Law: Conjugality, Annulment, and the (Married) Living Dead

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Abstract

This article deploys and extends Ulrich Beck’s critique of ‘zombie categories’ (Beck in J Consum Cult 1 (2):261–277, 2001) to consider how conjugal relationships are brought into being before the law. The argument presented here is that sexual performatives relating to marriage—and especially, in this instance, consummation—continue to produce a kind of social-legal magic, even as the social flesh of their enactment is rotting. Rules concerning annulment relating to wedding ceremonies, consent, disclosure, and consummation demonstrate that certain frameworks of conjugality involve a kind of corporeal magic animating the privileged place of heterosexual marriage. Thus, rules and regulations pertaining to weddings continue to produce and protect heterogendered, sexually dimorphous bodies, even though this privileging is—or at least, is becoming—socially obsolete.

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Notes

  1. Beck’s zombie categories are somewhat different from the living dead populating Henry A. Giroux’s marvellous (2010) essay. While I can see a place for Giroux’s ‘carnival of snarling creatures engorging elements of human anatomy’ (2010, 1) here, its relevance pertains mostly to marriage promotion programs in the United States, and their specious equation of marriage with social/moral benefits (see also Smart 2007, 13). These considerations are deferred for treatment in a future paper.

  2. Purported marriages may be “valid, void, non-existent or presumed” (Probert 2002, 399). Distinctions are also made between ‘void’ and ‘voidable’ marriages, the complexities of which are not especially germane to the present discussion—suffice to note that a void marriage is deemed to have never constituted a marriage at all, while a voidable marriage is one that can be understood to have existed up until its nullification (Cretney and Masson 1997, 39–40; Goda 1967; Hall 1971; Passingham and Harmer 1985, 46).

  3. At the time of writing, bona fide marriage has just been extended to gay and lesbian couples in England and Wales, and is already available in a number of the United States. In Australia, the idea that marriage might be appropriate for same-sex couples was explicitly rejected by the Howard government, but remains an issue of public and political debate (Marsh 2011).

  4. Buckland v. Buckland (orse Cammilleri) (1965) p. 296.

  5. Lee v. Lee (1928) 3 S.W. 2d 672.

  6. On the significance of this move in more general terms, see Hindess (2007).

  7. In the United States, ‘fraud’ has sometimes been interpreted more broadly, and offers grounds for annulling a marriage wherever a person marries in ignorance of anything which, had they known it, would have caused them to break off their engagement (Gordon 1986; Tucker 1991).

  8. Re the Marriage of C. and D. (falsely called C.) (1979) 35 FLR 340.

  9. Such terminology is now usually considered offensive. See Chau and Herring (2002) for a comprehensive explanation of the range of intersex conditions, and Preves (2000) and Turner (1999) for discussion of the sociology of sex/gender and intersexuality.

  10. It also speaks to the association of human reproduction and marriage, in that these provisions may be said to clear the ground for the procreation of healthy progeny. This reproductive aspect cannot be completely detached from the construction of marriage as ‘wholesome’, but neither does it stand as a simple synecdoche. If the desire for a healthy heir were sufficient explanation for these provisions, we might expect tests for fertility and requirements to disclose infertility to feature more prominently, (and perhaps we might expect to see requirements to disclose any inheritable disease, as well). As it is, inability to consummate has been available as a ground for annulment, but inability to conceive or impregnate has not.

  11. Re Kevin (validity of marriage of transsexual) (2001) Fam CA 1074.

  12. Similarly, under amendments set out in Section 12 and Schedule 5 of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act, before an (already) married trans person can be issued a full gender recognition certificate, they must secure their spouse’s consent for the marriage to continue.

  13. All of these identity categories have nonetheless featured in various ways in the regulatory history of conjugality (see Cott 2000; Brook 2007).

  14. Marriage can be limited to different-sex couples without requiring consummation (as in Australia, see the Marriage Act 1961).

  15. For more on the ‘unspeakable’ nature of same-sex performatives, see Brook (2000).

  16. S.Y. v. S.Y. (orse W.) (1963) P. 37 (C.A.).

  17. Corbett v. Corbett (1970) 2 All ER 33.

  18. S.Y. v. S.Y. (orse W.) (1963) P. 48 (C.A.).

  19. Baxter v. Baxter (1948). Times LR 8–11.

  20. L. v. L. (1949) 1 All ER 141.

  21. Relata are definable elements usually assumed to pre-exist their relation to other elements (Barad 2008). The relata of marriage include, for example, spouses, divorce, adultery, and so on.

  22. Consummation is not the only instance where sexual performatives operate in marriage law. Historically, sexual performatives have worked not just to help establish a marriage (through consummation) but also to maintain marriage (through the work of ‘conjugal rights’), to break up marriage (through adultery and the operation of other matrimonial offences), and in repairing marriage (evident in the way that sex could ‘condone’ or forgive a matrimonial offence). For more on all of this, see my earlier work (Brook 2007).

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Acknowledgments

For discussing earlier versions of this article and sharing their many insights, I thank Tova Rosengarten, Claire Lace, and members of the Australian Women’s & Gender Studies Association.

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  1. School of Social and Policy Studies, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA, 5001, Australia

    Heather Brook

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Brook, H. Zombie Law: Conjugality, Annulment, and the (Married) Living Dead. Fem Leg Stud 22, 49–66 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-013-9246-9

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