Towards a Radical Feminist Resignification of Vulnerability: A Critical Juxtaposition of Judith Butler’s Post-Structuralist Philosophy and Martha Fineman’s Legal Theory

Abstract

This research article aims to theoretically reconstruct a positive feminist conceptualization of vulnerability via a thorough systematization and critical comparison of Martha Fineman’s socio-legal philosophy and Judith Butler’s post-structuralist ethico-political theory. Through the introduction, the reader becomes familiar with numerous interdisciplinary re-articulations of vulnerability within the realms of contemporary feminist theory. The second subsection illustrates Fineman’s vulnerability approach in terms of an alternative ontological paradigm deriving from the recognition of our fundamentally fragile universal condition. It explores Fineman vulnerability theory’s normative implications in relation to the legitimate political organization of democratic societies and the fair function of their central institutions. The third subsection systematizes the dual texture of the Butlerian radicalization of vulnerability as an existential condition of irreducible relationality and a socio-historically contextualized and differentially allocated distribution of precarity among differently gendered, racialized, sexualized and nationalized subjects. Incidentally, the article elucidates the differentiations between the Butlerian conceptions of vulnerability, precariousness, precarity and dispossession and additionally investigates Butler’s revolutionary constellation of vulnerability and resistance. In the third subsection, this article designates the similarities and divergences between the two vulnerability frameworks and critically evaluates their epistemological capacity to reconstitute a politically empowering conceptualization of vulnerability within the heart of contemporary feminist theory. To that end, the author develops a critical assessment of Fineman theory’s epistemological, political and conceptual limitations in regard of its gender-blind universalistic structure. The author conclusively argues that Butler’s two-fold vulnerability perspective entails more nuanced theoretical conceptions and more empowering political devices for contemporary feminist struggles.