Feminist Theory, Justice, and the Lure of the Human

Abstract

n a series of recent essays, Martha C. Nussbaum (1999) has articulated a distinctive conception of that takes as its foundation a set of human capabilities that, she argues, should be respected and nurtured globally, in all nations and by all cultures. This conception of feminism, clearly the work of a scholar at home in multiple topographies, both disciplinary and geographical, combines, as she says, elements often thought to be in tension: it is internationalist, humanist, liberal, concerned with the social shaping of preferences and desire, and, finally, concerned with sympathetic understanding (Nussbaum 1999, 6). Nussbaum's recent articles thus understand feminism, a commitment to the political and social equality of women, in the context of a more encompassing theory of and commitment to global justice for all persons. In this sense--that is, in linking an analysis of gender inequality to an acknowledgment of other pervasive forms of oppression-racism, homophobia, economic exploitation, physical intimidation or abuse, political repression her liberal philosophical work takes up topics that are the subject of long-standing debates occurring within feminism and at the boundaries between feminism and other oppositional discourses, most notably poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and various forms of Marxism. These debates aim high. Through them, feminist scholars want, first, to acknowledge the complexities of a female subjectivity constituted amid shifting and irreconcilable discourses and practices without as a result denying female agency; second, to interrogate the totalizing work and violent exclusions historically effected by the use of the term woman while still insisting on its inestimable value for feminist critique; and, third, to ground feminist practice in an authentic recognition of the ethical claims