Abstract
“Emancipation” is one of the most opaque words in political language and political theory. It refers to the hope of overcoming all forms of domination, yet is articulated with the highly ambivalent notions of reason, progress, equality and liberty, and with the unfulfilled utopias that accompany them. In light of the different and contested uses that have been made of the concept of emancipation within and beyond contemporary feminist theory, I argue that a close examination of the concept and of the unresolved political and theoretical questions it articulates is a timely endeavour. With reference to Reinhard Koselleck’s conceptual history of emancipation, in which he highlights three developments that helped to shape the modern concept of emancipation – first, the turn towards a reflexive understanding of emancipation as self-emancipation; second, the politicisation of the concept; and third, its temporalisation – I examine the ways in which subjectivity, domination and temporality have been articulated in contemporary feminist theory.
Highlights
Abstract “Emancipation” is one of the most opaque words in political language and political theory
It refers to the hope of overcoming all forms of domination, yet is articulated with the highly ambivalent notions of reason, progress, equality and liberty, and with the unfulfilled utopias that accompany them
In light of these different and contested uses that have been made of the concept of emancipation within and beyond contemporary feminist theory, I think that a close examination of the concept and of the unresolved political and theoretical questions it articulates is a timely endeavour that contributes to the re-politicisation of feminist theory
Summary
In his conceptual history of emancipation, Reinhard Koselleck has stressed that the meaning of “emancipation” underwent significant change in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Like Coole, Allen highlights the fact that Foucault and Butler rearticulate central aspects of emancipation and envision social, cultural and political change She argues that Butlerian and Foucauldian understandings of subjectivity, which have inspired feminist theory during the last decades, primarily emphasise the ways in which norms and power relations are assumed, incorporated and reiterated. To engage in the transformation of societal relations for him means “to potentiate oneself and to develop oneself ” (ibid.), while “to modify one’s own personality means to modify the ensemble of these relations” (ibid, 670) Against this backdrop, emancipation can be understood as a politics of subjectivity in which processes of individual and collective self-transformation, including the reworking of affects, desires and needs, constitute societal change and vice-versa. Emancipation can be specified as a politics of the production of new forms of relating to oneself and to others
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