A Phenomenological Account of the Conditions of Transnational Feminism

Abstract

In Sites of Exposure, John Russon draws on the resources of phenomenology to describe how human life, while not having a “given” form specified in advance, nonetheless takes speci􀏔ic shape through practices by which we become committed to certain ways of living. This means that our lives are simultaneously a matter of living with a speci􀏔ic reality—what Russon calls “home”—and having to respond to an outside to which we are “exposed.” I argue here that Russon’s analysis is especially useful for feminist philosophy and its attempt to grapple with the possibility of universal principles of justice across cultural contexts, developing this philosophical framework in conversation with Serene Khader’s efforts to furnish a set of core values for transnational feminist praxis that, while universal in their opposition to sexist oppression, are not imperialist, and with Saba Mahmood’s critique of the parochial character of Western conceptions of freedom.