Contemporary Feminist Theory Research Articles

Boundaries, Birthright, and Belonging: Aristotle on the Distribution of Citizenship

Far from being dismissed as irrelevant or anachronistic, Aristotle looms large in contemporary discussions of citizenship.1 Natural law theorists, communitarians, neo-republicans and even many liberals have appealed to Aristotle as a way of thickening up the moral content of contemporary public life and underwriting a more participatory “civic republican” variant of citizenship.2 Yet these and other contemporary appropriations tend to focus on only one strand of Aristotle’s discussion of citizenship in the Politics. Assuming that someone is already a citizen in the modern, juridical sense, what additional moral duties and participatory contributions ought we to expect from them?3 But this is to ignore the closely related taxonomical question of who is, or ideally ought to be, entitled to citizenship in the first place. Put differently, the question of what citizens are expected to do may be inseparable from the issue of who these citizens are or, in many cases, are not. Despite this connection, strikingly little has been said about the implications of Aristotelian citizenship for those who find themselves located outside of the political community. Does the Aristotelian view suggest that the boundaries of the political community ought to be more or less permeable than the modern liberal or contractual understanding? And how might Aristotle’s seemingly restrictive and illiberal view of citizenship draw attention to the moral lacuna of contemporary liberal theories, which have Boundaries, Birthright, and Belonging: Aristotle on the Distribution of Citizenship

Ur led är feminismens tid

The intention of this article is to follow Elizabeth Grosz’ invitation to explore some of the ways that time constructions and time metaphors attain significance in contemporary feminist theory. Each history includes and produces different temporal structures. How these temporal structures work, the value ascribed to them, and their implications for feminist historiography, is discussed by looking at various examples of writing contemporary feminist history. How is the recent history between the 1970’s and the present of Swedish feminist theory portrayed? Using Claire Hemmings’ historiography of Anglo-American contemporary feminist theory, the article traces similar patterns in the way the development of Swedish feminism is described. The article shows that the common way to write the history of feminist theory in terms of breaks and turning points are deeply problematic. Basically these metaphors rest on a conception of time as serial and hierarchical. That the time is “out of joint” is a prerequisite for feminist work. Feminist theorization must be untimely in Nietzsche’s sense. The later part of the article shows how concepts like untimeliness, anachronism and Derrida’s concept of “hauntology”, along with contemporary queer theoretical research on the literary Gothic, offer alternative constructions of time, which might make it possible to see feminist pioneers, not as specters either to be revenged or silenced, but as ghosts, as un-deads in a positive sense.

Hasana Sharp. Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization

Spinoza studies revolved almost exclusively around metaphysical issues for centuries. In these last few decades, this situation changed – mainly prompted by French neo-Marxist studies in the 60’s – since there has been recognition of an original political philosophy deeply rooted in Spinoza’s ontology. The TheologicalPolitical Treatise and the later Political Treatise finally began getting the attention they deserved, three hundred years after their original publication. A scholar committed to studying Spinoza’s political philosophy fifty years ago could hardly find supporting literature beyond the usual discussions of the Ethics’ Parts One and Two, whereas today there is a vast available literature, and still growing. In more recent years, however, there seems to have appeared a new literature that neither engages exclusively in metaphysical discussions of the Ethics nor proposes simply to analyse Spinoza’s political tracts. Instead, this growing literature seems mostly concerned with contemporary problems related to radically democratic political theory, but approaches them from the viewpoint of Spinoza’s conceptual groundwork. This can be witnessed in recent work by Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, Warren Montag, or Moira Gatens. Hasana Sharp’s latest book can be considered a new contribution to this novel trend. Sharp intends to make Spinoza’s naturalism meet its full consequences with regard to human nature, thus opening up a path toward a sort of political ontology of human relations that might be relevant to contemporary feminist theory, antiracist struggles, ecology, and animal studies. She is especially concerned with reconciling two distinct aspects of Spinoza’s naturalism: his rejection of human exceptionalism in nature, which implies that human agency is entirely natural and subject to the exact same natural laws governing all other parts of nature; and his rejection of primitivism, which means that being natural for humans equals what she calls ‘philanthropy’. Her overall argument is expressed in three different points. The first

Feminizm a fenomenologia – w kontekście poszukiwania albo konstruowania kobiecej tożsamości

Jednym z istotnych współcześnie obszarów oddziaływania fenomenologii jest myśl feministyczna. Związki między feminizmem a fenomenologią obecne są przede wszystkim w refleksji na temat cielesności, tożsamości, a także spotkania z Innym. Interpretacja fenomenologii przez pryzmat współczesnych koncepcji feministycznych umożliwia inspirującą recepcję oraz identyfikowanie problemów fenomenologii z odmiennej perspektywy. Natomiast ponieważ fenomenologia jest sposobem myślenia poprzez poszukiwanie i opis źródłowych doświadczeń, feminizm odnajduje w fenomenologii metodę pozwalającą docierać do istoty kobiecości. Warto więc zapytać, na ile użyteczny jest fenomenologiczny punkt wyjścia dla feministycznego opisu płci kulturowej?

A la sombra de Rousseau: Mujeres, naturaleza y política

El presente texto propone abordar el modo en el que la obra de Rousseau, a la vez que representa una postura radicalmente democrática frente a los discursos liberales del contrato, ofrece una de las teorías más conservadoras en lo que atañe a las mujeres. A partir de la relectura de los principales textos de Rousseau a la luz de la teoría feminista contemporánea, se desarrolla un análisis crítico del lugar asignado a las mujeres en su teoría, con especial atención a las descripciones en torno al estado de naturaleza, el momento del contrato, la educación, la distinción público-privado, y las consecuencias políticas que de allí se derivan.

‘Europe of the Regions’ and the problem of boundaries in liberal democratic theory

The article explores the concept of culture as a criterion for political boundaries, and finds both prominent positions on the cultural criterion in contemporary liberal democratic theory—liberal nationalism and its cosmopolitan opposition—inadequate. To this end, the article compares two opposing visions of culture-based regionalism in Europe, developed by Green parties and by parties of the new far-right, respectively. The comparison indicates that the exclusionary meanings of culture as a criterion for political boundaries, typical for the new far-right, dominate the notion of culture in this context in general—despite the ecologists' efforts to appropriate the cultural criterion and reinvent it. The ensuing difficulty for the theoretical positions is: (1) an inclusive and pluralist notion of culture as a criterion for political boundaries is currently unavailable, and (2) particularities are conceptually indispensible in a theory of political borders—replacing cultural particularism by no particularism is implausible.

Female Masculinity and Phallic Women— Unruly Concepts

Female Masculinity and Phallic Women— UnrulyConcepts JudithKeflanGardiner During the 2008 US election, internet images circulated of vice pres idential candidate Sarah Palin carrying big guns. In a commentary titled "Sarah Palin: Operation 'Castration,'" French Lacanian theorist Jacques-Alain Miller warned: "We are entering an era of postfeminist women, women who ... are ready to kill the political men." They play the "'castration' card" and are thus "invincible."1 Such overheated rhetoric regularly attends discussions about "phallic women" and "female masculinity." This essay seeks to analyze current uses of these overlapping but disparate concepts about women who are presumed to have a relation to a or the "phallus," or to the vague and elastic cat egory of "masculinity." Female masculinity is an elusive, inherently paradoxical concept that slips away from efforts to pin it down. I examine it here in sev eral historical and disciplinary contexts. My first three examples derive from central theorists of the topic over the past four decades. I start with a case history by Robert Stoller, the most authoritative US psychoanalytic writer on gender between World War II and con temporary feminist and queer theory. His 1973 book, Splitting: A Case of Female Masculinity,is a study of one psychotic woman that also claims to advance the understanding of gender (that is, of masculinity and femininity) more generally.2 Despite Stoller's dated approach, subse quent masculinity studies up to the present day continue to rely on FeministStudies38, no. 3 (Fall 2012). © 2012 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 597 598 JudithKegan Gardiner his psychoanalytic concepts. Next I turn to philosopher Judith But ler's essay "The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary" in her 1993 book, Bodies thatMatterJAs one of the most influential pio neers of queer theory, Butler revised Lacanian psychoanalysis; in turn, her work inspired cultural studies scholar Judith (Jack)4 Halber stam, whose 1998 book FemaleMasculinitydepicts types of women who exemplify Butler's abstract ideas, thereby popularizing the concept of "female masculinity" as a possible lifestyle for women and especially butch lesbians.5 Then I briefly discuss several postmillennial soci ological studies that apparently mark a progressive trajectory from pathologizing nonnormative gender to liberatory gender self-defini tion. However, broadening this inquiry troubles narratives of progress and requires new theoretical paradigms. A contrast between Gover nor Palin and "chicks with dicks"—a genre of transnational transsex ual pornography—reveals a cultural polarization between "phallic power" and abjected penis-for-pleasure. Taken as a whole, this narra tive illustrates the instability, even the incoherence, of the concept of female masculinity and its role in propping, rather than undermin ing, masculinity altogether. In all these examples, I'm interested in the theories that address gender variation, particularly the way that female masculinity still rests on binary conceptions of power that connote maleness and also on psychoanalytic assumptions. I note the divergent explanatory frameworks for gender nonconformity applied in these cases and their varied cultural contexts. Such theories are migratory, appear ing across conceptual, political, and geographical borders. For Stoller in the 1970s, Freudian psychoanalysis remains the master discourse at a prosperous time in LTnited States history when polarized gender roles seem in retreat and new social movements arise seeking wom en's liberation, civil rights for minorities, and greater equality for les bians and gay men. Twenty years later, Butler speaks from within the academic disciplines of philosophy and gender studies in an era of rel ative social quiescence characterized by a popular sense of "mission accomplished" with regard to women's liberation. A pioneer of queer theory, she critiques older radical feminisms while retaining nuanced allegiances to psychoanalysis and poststructuralism. Following Butler, Halberstam firmly establishes female masculinity on the agenda of trans and queer studies, and her/his taxonomies become JudithKegan Gardiner 599 widely accepted. However, female masculinity is in an asymmetrical alliance with the field of masculinity studies, which is chiefly devoted to analyzing masculinity in men, often through object relations the ories such as those of Nancy Chodorow.6 One paradox of female masculinity discourses is that instead of being considered derivative, female masculinity may be celebrated as superior to masculinity in men. In today's contexts, rapidly changing popular culture, medical advances, and...

Freedom and Uncertainty: Contemporary Liberal Theory Examined from the Perspective of Moral Uncertainty

This doctoral thesis aims to use general assertions of moral uncertainty as a perspective by which to explore and illuminate contemporary strands of liberal theory. It examines the work of the earlier theorists, including John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Ronald Dworkin and Bruce Ackerman, as well as more recent accounts of liberalism that express ideas of pluralism (Michael Walzer, Joseph Raz, John Gray, William Galston, George Crowder), political liberalism (John Rawls, Charles Larmore), public reason (Amy Gutmann & Dennis Thompson, Gerald Gaus), multiculturalism (Charles Taylor, Will Kymlicka, Brian Barry, James Tully, and Bikhu Parekh), and postmodernism (Richard Rorty). The development from the earlier to more recent liberal theories represents a fundamental shift in justificatory strategy: where earlier liberal conceptions aim at universality, and at overcoming or transcending uncertainty, later approaches make this uncertainty, usually in the form of pluralism or difference, central to the liberal project. In order to achieve this, these latter theories tended to presuppose the circumstances of western society, or western democratic values. Generally speaking, these approaches fail to respond adequately to moral uncertainty, and to meet their own justificatory aims. This manifests, in the earlier theories, as plausible but contestable central conceptions, and, in the more recent theories, as the inability to justify particular liberal conceptions in the face of persistence difference. This is an important result, and suggests the need for further developments in liberal justificatory strategies. I suggest that one viable approach would be for liberal theory to accept moral uncertainty, and work from a model of society and self towards a more successful liberal conception.

Freedom of expression in an age of cartoon wars

This essay examines contemporary liberal theory in light of the 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The objective is both to show the limits of liberal theory, in particular with regard to constituents who do not share liberalism's view of acceptable harm, and to discuss how these limits give us reason to supplement liberal theory with other recourses from critical theory and phenomenology. The essay warns against a bifurcation of law and harm, and instead argues for a pluralization of the possible links between them. To this end, the essay foregrounds what T.M. Scanlon dubs a certain ‘creative instability’, which works to energize liberalism's practice of free speech. The essay tracks this possibility in relation to the plurality and energy intrinsic to the 12 Jyllands-Posten cartoons, and suggests that liberal theory can learn from thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze who focus on the variable impacts and framings of free speech. The upshot is a self-critical theory of free expression, one that links harmful speech to the affirmation of mutual contestation, social equality and respect for difference.

A defence of the category ‘women’

Against influential strands of feminist theory, I argue that there is nothing essentialist or homogenising about the category ‘women’. I show that both intersectional claims that it is impossible to separate out the ‘woman part’ of women, and deconstructionist contentions that the category ‘women’ is a fiction, rest on untenable meta-theoretical assumptions. I posit that a more fruitful way of approaching this disputed category is to treat it as an abstraction. Drawing on the philosophical framework of critical realism I elucidate the nature of the vital and inevitable process of abstraction, as a means of finding a way out of the theoretical and methodological impasse that the ‘ban’ on the category ‘women’ has caused. Contrary to many contemporary feminist theorists, I contend that, although the category ‘women’ does not reflect the whole reality of concrete and particular women, it nevertheless refers to something real, namely the structural position as woman.

"La enfermedad extraña": Inapetencia , Class and Eating Disorders in La esfinge maragata

Sickly women populate the pages of Concha Espina's 1914 novel La esfinge maragata . While on the one hand the inhabitants seem to be strong and enduring, on the other hand, their bodies are represented as broken down, aged, and wasted. What I propose to add to the scholarship on Espina, and specifically to the study of La esfinge , is to align her with other women writers in her exploration of the metaphor of illness. This article explores how contemporary feminist theories on eating disorders can help us understand the dynamics of illness in this novel, in particular how these theories apply to the two main characters Mariflor and Marinela. A study of the body and what the women consume or refuse to consume along with their struggles with gender conformity will lead me to explore the ways Espina's novel illuminates the relationship between social class and women's illness.

Between Private and Public: Recognition, revolution and political renewal

This paper deals with some issues underlying the role of education in the preparation of students for democratic participation. Throughout, I maintain two basic ideas: first, that a political action undertaken to obtain practical ends reflects a set of privately held values whose recognition is therefore essential to any idea of the political; second, that the continued viability of liberal democracy is dependent upon its openness to alteration through its recognition of private values. In order to bring these ideas to light more clearly, I will develop my position in the form of a critique of some contemporary liberal theories of civic education, most notably Amy Gutmann's, as expressed in her influential work Democratic Education. Maintaining Gutmann's requirement of educational relativism, I intend to show how her emphasis on individual deliberation as a goal of education fits within a system of deliberative democracy, and that the two serve to minimize, on the individual level, the ability of individuals to seek recognition within the public sphere, and on the political level, the ability of democratic institutions to be renewed through participation.

‘Material girls’: lingering in the presence of the material sublime

By exploring selected, recent works produced by, amongst others, South African artists Zanele Muholi, Nandipha Mntambo, Tracey Rose and Leora Farber, I aim to trace a possible resurgence of the real through the depiction of the corporeal in their work. The artists have been selected because their works provide a fecundity of ‘corporeal realness’ or corpo(real)ity. The exploration is further layered by inquiring how the resurgence of the real corresponds to the aesthetic category of the material sublime. The material sublime dates from the 19th century, and has been regarded as a sub-theory within the broader classical sublime. It is argued that the material sublime, together with contemporary feminist theorists such as Bonnie Mann, Karen Barad, Elizabeth Wilson and Vicky Kirby, provide a useful lens for rethinking the engagement between matter and discourse. It is in particular through the resilient flesh represented in Muholi's, Mntambo's and Farber's work, that they and their subjects are turned into what can be playfully termed ‘material girls’.

Contemporary Feminist Theory and Activism: Six Global Issues – By W. L. Lee

Journal of Applied PhilosophyVolume 27, Issue 4 p. 427-429 Contemporary Feminist Theory and Activism: Six Global Issues – By W. L. Lee HERJEET MARWAY, HERJEET MARWAY University of BirminghamSearch for more papers by this author HERJEET MARWAY, HERJEET MARWAY University of BirminghamSearch for more papers by this author First published: 20 October 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5930.2010.00505.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume27, Issue4November 2010Pages 427-429 RelatedInformation

Management, Women and Gender Capital

A generation of women have sustained careers in senior management. We use Bourdieu's concepts of field together with contemporary feminist interpretations of embodied cultural capital to analyse a group of such women's narratives of their own managerial experiences. We extend feminist analyses of gender capital and argue it may be an important cultural resource by which women develop and sustain their careers in senior management. Drawing on selected findings of an empirical study of senior managers in Australian organizations and a recent theoretical analysis of women's narratives using Bourdieu and feminist interpretations of Bourdieu, we examine whether women wield gender capital in the management field. We propose that gender capital, as articulated in contemporary feminist theory, provides an unexplored but potentially powerful explanatory mechanism for furthering our understanding of the complex and different ways the presence of women in senior managerial roles may shape contemporary management discourses and practices.

Crisis, What Crisis? Liberal Order Building and World Order Conventions

Liberal internationalism is the default setting for thinking about the development of international institutions since 1919. It provides the template for practitioners whose job it is to juggle contending norms of power and justice, rights and responsibilities. For complex reasons, proponents of liberalism believe that the default needs to be reset — their critics agree. Liberalism is in trouble because of the fragility of the inter-state order coupled to the challenge posed by rising, non-liberal powers. Closer to home, liberalism is in trouble because of a contestation over its specific liberal values. Contemporary liberal international theory understands this challenge in subtly different ways. For US-based internationalists, the crisis is one of authority; for English School internationalists, the problem with international order is that its institutions are ‘deformed’ because of a failure to legitimise power and institutions. Whether the crisis is on the legitimacy or authority side of the register, we argue that both internationalisms fail to adequately theorise world order in part because of their flawed characterisation of hierarchy and their related lack of attention to performances of social conventions.

“Women's Time” in Theory

Taking Julia Kristeva's “Women's Time” as its point of departure, this article considers contemporary feminist theory and its contributions to recent theoretical paradigms of temporality. From Kristeva's understanding of women's subjectivity in relation to “linear time as the time of project and history,” this essay engages the various ways that feminism has thought the temporal, arriving at a notion of the démodé. The démodé, in its multivalent capacity as an aesthetic function of women's time, is explored in the photographs of Moyra Davey, whose work, this article argues, enables us to see the démodé as a mechanism that makes possible the radical dispossession of time.

Secularism Minus Exclusion:

Research Article| January 01 2010 Secularism Minus Exclusion:Developing a Religious-Friendly Idea of Public Reason Simone Chambers Simone Chambers Simone Chambers is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. She is completing a book, Public Reason and Deliberation, which investigates the role of public justification in contemporary liberal theory. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Good Society (2010) 19 (2): 16–21. https://doi.org/10.5325/goodsociety.19.2.0016 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Simone Chambers; Secularism Minus Exclusion:Developing a Religious-Friendly Idea of Public Reason. The Good Society 1 January 2010; 19 (2): 16–21. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/goodsociety.19.2.0016 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressThe Good Society Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2010 The Pennsylvania State University2010The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

What is Objectification?

AbstractObjectification is a notion central to contemporary feminist theory. It has famously been associated with the work of anti-pornography feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, and more recently with the work of Martha Nussbaum. However, objectification is a notion that has not yet been adequately defined. It has been used rather vaguely to refer to a broad range of cases involving, in some way or another, the treatment of a person (usually a woman) as an object. My purpose in this paper is to offer a plausible understanding of objectification. I do that by focusing on the work of four prominent thinkers: Immanuel Kant, and contemporary feminists Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin and Martha Nussbaum. Through drawing on these thinkers' conceptions of objectification, I am finally led to a more complete and coherent understanding of this notion.

Strange Baltic Liberalism: Paul Schiemann's Political Thought Revisited

The Baltic German politician and political thinker Paul Schiemann (1876–1944) is widely recognized as the most prominent defender of liberalism in the Baltic states during the interwar period. However, his liberal ideas have rarely been interpreted in their own right. This article explores the main presuppositions of Schiemann's liberalism: his conceptions of individual freedom, democracy, and cultural development. Although Schiemann's main intentions are liberal, his theory of the anational state includes significant Marxist elements, which call into question the potential of the democratic state. In my conclusions, I will argue that Schiemann's ideas still have theoretical relevance, which must be further explored in the context of contemporary liberal theory.