Cato Andriessen

In The Sexual Contract (1988), Carole Pateman argues that classical stories of the social contract presuppose an implicit, sexual contract. The sexual contractestablishes modern patriarchy by relying on a simultaneous inclusion and exclusion of women in civil society. This paper seeks to extend Pateman’s accountof the sexual contract to the topic of language. Such an account is lacking in Pateman’s book, despite the fact that the social contract theorists she discusses didreflect systematically on the topic of language and its relation to contract. The structure of this paper is as follows. First, the paradoxical logic of the sexual contract isdiscussed. Then, the connection between contract and language is made through a case study of Thomas Hobbes’ writings on language. Finally, a tension within Hobbes’account is revealed which – it is argued – is symptomatic for Pateman’s logic of the sexual contract. On this reading, the social contract is about language in thesense that entry into it requires the capacity for language. More importantly, however, the social contract is about language in the sense that it determines whichlanguage is politically legitimate.