For a New Semantics of Differences: Cultural Exception and the Law

The article examines the concept of ``cultural exception'' through the lenses of the two constitutive parts of the law-and-literature movement. In particular, it highlights the inadequacy of traditional legal categories for governing contemporary multicultural societies. By focusing on the meaning of the term ``cultural exception,'' it stresses of the necessity of new keys for interpreting legal phenomena. In contemporary pluralistic multicultural society, constitutional law requires new concepts whilst managing differences, or regulating the relations between authority and society that underpin different constitutional approaches. The law of differences, however, shows many important links with literature: both the understanding of equality and the literary production are deeply influenced by society evolution; both law and literature are expressed through language; and legal language is an instrument of de-codification of social reality.