Guest post by Julie Hardwick, 9 September 2022.
In July, 1725, Justine Gantier walked along the streets in Lyon, France’s second city, to the greffe (the building that served as the depository of legal documents and evidence) for the royal court of first instance (a sénéchausée). There she handed a court official a bundle of seven letters she had received from her intimate partner, Louis Delagard.Perhaps in consultation with her lawyer, or perhaps on her own initiative because seemingly women did not usually provide such evidence, she deposited them as evidence in support of her paternity suit against him. Gantier was six months pregnant and Delagard had reneged on his repeated promises to marry her. Her actions transformed those letters, the material culture of intimacy that originally embodied the connection and commitment between them, into legal evidence of betrayal.
Dossier of…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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