Feminism and the Critique of Political

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Feminism and the Critique of PoliticalTheory^

CHRISTINE SYPNOWICH*

Must political theorists, in their deliberations about justice, engage in philo-sophical speculation about the natu re of the self or the foundations of knowledge?Controversy rages on this matter. C om munitarians, for exam ple, fault liberalismfor its atomistic premises about personhood, arguing that without an adequateunderstanding of the ways in which the person is socially constitu ted, our effortsat conceptualizing the good society will fail. John Rawls, in contrast, maintainstha t as political theorists and as citizens, we must set aside metaphysical questionsin order to forge an overlapping consensus on basic governmental structures;hence his slogan tha t our theories of justice should be 'political not metaphysical'.The rise of views influenced by postmodernism complicates this picture ininteresting ways. On the one hand, postmodernism has generated a plethora ofwritings that address questions of subjecthood and knowledge in an intenselytheoretical idiom. On the other, these enquiries seek to deconstruct philosophyitself precisely because philosophy is deemed incurably metaphysical. The ideaof the individual subject, the project of finding foundations for reason, theaspiration to neutrality: all have been 'unmasked' as features of the En-lightenment's totalizing, but ultimately self-defeating, project. Indeed, there is asense in which the postmoderns share Rawls's concern to displace metaphysicalenquiry with overtly political concerns. After all, this anti-philosophical critiquehas been carried out in the name of an oppressed 'other', the voices silenced or'normalized' by traditional ways of philosophizing.It is thus not surprising that postm odern views have found support from withinfeminism. For if women remain disadvantaged after the granting of liberal rightsand liberties, there may be some force in the argument that rights and libertiesare the paraphernalia of a masculinist o rder which should be rejected wholesale.Yet some feminists are wary of the allure of postmodernism, fearing that itsdeconstruction of modernity and its philosophies is so thorough-going that it

t A review of Elizabeth Frazer and Nicola L acey, Tht PoHo a of Comm unity: A Ftmima Critupu of At tebcrah-Commuwaiai Dtiau (HarvMUr W lum hM f , H m a i Hempted 1993) . Departm ent of Philosophy, Queen 'i U niven ity, K ingston, Canada. Bill Readings suggested I write this essayafter engaging me in a lively conversation on some of the issues it raises. He was tragically killed before the essaywas completed. Bill was fond of words, but words cannot ciyicll the loss of a talented thinker and fine friend. Iam grateful to David Bakhurst and Adam Swift for their herpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

Oxford University Press 1996 Oxford Journal of Legal Stud ies Vol 16, N o 1


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176 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies VOL.16puts into question the status of all theorizing. It is not merely certain politicaldoctrines, but the very methods of argumentation, criticism and justification,which seem deprived of any footing in the pos tmodern universe. Such a suspicionof modernity is in sharp contrast with the posture of early feminists such asWollstonecraft, Mill and Harriet Taylor who looked to rational argument andthe ideal of justice to realize their aims. It was with reference to a modernity asyet unfulfilled tha t they sought to disclose a reality dem and ing moral con-demnation: one where women were treated as inferior to men when in realitythey were their equals. But if equality is a universalist discourse and therebyonly die discredited parlance of the dominators, and if our access to the worldis only by means of one discourse or another, then feminists' participation inthe attack on the m ale-biased order of modernity has as its justification only thelimited, and provisional, entitlement that comes from representing the voice ofa dispossessed group. Power fills the vacuum left by reason, as one group seeksto displace another. In the face of these co nundrum s, feminists might be tem ptedto take Rawls's cue , and avoid arcane debates in favour of the obvious work stillto be done in practical areas of social justice.

All this forms die context of Tlie Politics of Community: A Feminist Critique ofthe Liberal-Communitarian Debate by Elizabeth Frazer and Nicola Lacey.1 Thebook is an admirably clear and ambitious study which canvasses and criticallyassesses a wide range of political theories , loosely grouped into a deba te betweenliberals and communitarians. As the title suggests, what unites its enquiry is afeminist perspective which finds fault with positions on bodi sides of thecontroversy. Frazer and Lacey take on the ma nde of deconstruction and urge anew, 'posdiberaP and 'poststructuralist' approach to further the feminist cause.Such an approach, they contend, would enable an understanding of the 'socialconstruction of social reality' and the ways in which power operates in dieminutiae of social relations which lie outside of the state.

Frazer and Lacey have a good case for saying diat the liberal-communitariandebate has been carried out on a terrain removed from feminist concerns. NeitherRawls's appeal for distribution of resources to ensure diat the worst off benefit,no r SandePs call for a comm unity of intersubjective beings, to take two exam ples,are explicidy conceived by dieir audiors as measures for furthering die equalityof men and women. But does diis mean die positions are incapable of doing so?Bodi Rawls's egalitarian commitments and Michael Sandel's belief in humanbeings' interdependence certainly look applicable to feminist concerns. Andwhere these tiheories fall short, diere may be scope for feminist revisions. ThusSusan Moller Okin has suggested we consider how Rawls's idea of the veil ofignorance might be recast to take into account the inequities of gender, and

Henceforth all reference! to page numbers of this text win be placed in parentheses in the body of the article.


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178 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies VOL. 16of advancing a theory of justice which is chosen from 'a very specific socialposition, that of a white, middle-class liberal American male'. (55) There is moreto this criticism than an ad hominem attack; at heart, it invokes the challenge tophilosophy posed by postmodernism, and the power of this challenge is suchthat the idea that we might philosophize on the basis of firm foundations ininfallible reason or pure objectivity now looks like an untenable position. Butdo we face only the stark, and indeed traditional, choice between foundationalismand scepticism in the wake of the postmodern attack on reason and objectivity?

Here we may be wise to proceed on more modest grounds, conceding thesceptical point about epistemological foundations, whilst retaining the idea ofimpartiality as a political ideal. Philosophical argument, political debate andindeed judicial practice, however radical or deconstructive, all presuppose thepossibility of persuasion. Moreover, one can persuade or be persuaded only ifone is prepared to take some steps towards impartiality in the minimal sense oftrying to take a more reflective stance towards one's own views. Impartiality isthus not a foundation for theory, but an ideal which orients our politicaljudgments, and indeed as such presupposes our judgments are not beyondquestion, but tentative and revisable. Thus impartiality itself can never be fullyrealized; as historically contingent beings we will always be partial to a set ofinterests and concerns (not necessarily our own). But this is precisely whyimpartiality should figure as a measure of the justice of our actions, an ideal towhich we should aspire, rather than die infallible basis for political reasoning.3This is not that far from Rawls's position, I think unfairly pegged by Frazer andLacey as foundationalist and objectivist. Rawls urges that we put metaphysicsto one side, and his devices of the original position and archimedean point areintended to assist us in a reasoning process he describes as the striving for'reflective equilibrium'. The idea of critical re-evaluation might be thought of asan achievement of our (modem) tradition, and thus grounded in a vision of thegood, a position Frazer and Lacey find attractive (185), and one Rawls concedesin his more recent work.4 But we should admit diat this is a commitment toimpartiality, and as such must be justified in its own terms; diat is, we valueimpartiality because of what we see as the good in impartiality, how it influencesour social practices for the better. In so doing, we make reference to principlesof fairness and just dealings, even if we can also tell a story about our commitmentsin terms of how their origins lie in the ways we happen to live. We dius defendimpartiality not because it inheres in our practices, but because of what ourpractices stand for. Indeed, our practices are not identical with diemselves; theyencompass the idea of self-reflection, of holding our practices at a distance inorder to scrutinize diem for consistency and fairness.

' Similarly, to advocate the rule of law is not to hold that legality u infallibly objective, but to recognize thatprocedural regularity is necessary to restrain the contingent actions of political and legal actors; this is my argumentin Tht Concept of Socmhst Lam (1990) at ch 3.4 Rflwll refers, for example, to the 'political good* of just democratic institutions in Political Liberalism (1993)at 204.


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SPRING 1996 Feminism and the Critique of Political Theory 179As for individualism, the other feature of liberal thought identified by Frazerand Lacey, it refers to the idea that the basic units of a society are individuals,rather than groups or communities. The authors counter this view with an

approach which, as they put it, unders tands 'social reality, social facts and socialbeings' to be 'socially constructed'. Frazer and Lacey admit that individualismand social constructionism have ontological and ethical components which canbe separated (56 ,18 7); thus one might believe tha t persons are socially constitutedwhilst advocating a political theory based on individual rights, or one might bea methodological individualist who urges the forging of community.' But diebook tends to put this caveat aside and couch its critique in terms of the laissez-faire implications of an individualist approach: 'an ontologically atomistic viewof humanity has fed into an influential form of political individualism in theshape of contemporary American liberalism, with its focus on individual rights,negative freedom and a lack of focus on public goods and collective life' (187).The difficulty with this argument is that today's liberal values include equalityand welfare, values which are not individualistic in the traditional sense ofsupposing that the individual has a right to non-interference which surpasses allother con siderations. Indeed , oftentimes these more egalitarian concerns are saidto overtake the traditional liberal ideals of liberty, privacy and property; Dworkin,for example, defines liberalism in terms of the value of equality alone. Of course,communitarians have argued that tliis concern cannot be properly addressed solong as liberals retained an atomistic conception of the person. And socialistscertainly have long been suspicious of egalitarian theories which focus on relationsof distribution rather than addressing the structures and relations of productionwhich are inequality's source. Frazer and Lacey take the rather odd tack ofcasting aspersions on a welfarist theory which refers to individuals' interests:'Even for recent welfare liberals, redistributive policies and state provision ofsome goods is a matter of the defence of the interests and autonomy of theindividual' (66). Their objection seems to imply that a mere reference toindividuals impugns a theory's egalitarian aims. But the autonomy or interestsof individuals is bound to be the focus of any egalitarian or progressive politics,be it feminist, socialist or even communitarian; where the controversy arises is,rather, on the question of how this focus is conceived or realized. To suggestotherwise risks invoking precisely the lampoon version of communitarian orsocialist political theory that unsymp athetic inte rpreters such as Popper or Hayekalways sought to give it.The substance of these charges becomes clearer when Frazer and Laceyaddress concrete issues such as discrimination on the basis of sex in die workplace,the exploitation of women's sexuality, and the representation of women inpolitical institutions. They contend that liberals, committed to the free play ofmarket forces, are in a poor position to criticize employers who discriminateagainst women (86). Similarly, because liberals have 'traditionally constructed

' Se t Charles Taylor, 'Cron -purpose s: the Liberal-Communitarian De bate', in N . Roscnbhim (ed) Liberalismand int Moral Lift (1989), and Stephen Muttall and Adam Swift, Liberals and Communitarians (1992) .


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180 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies VOL. 16sexuality as within the private sphere' (91), problems like sexual harrassment,rape and pornography are not susceptible to liberal analysis. And finally, giventhat liberals conceive of the subject as a 'degendered individual' they fail to seethe injustice of women constituting a minority of elected representatives.Thus liberalism is castigated, not just for being insufficiently concerned withquestions of method and theoretical abstraction, bu t for the converse, not properlyaddressing practical, day-to-day issues which affect women's life prospects. Byconfining its analysis to the state, and relations between citizen and governm ent,liberal theory is oblivious both to the philosophical framework within which itoperates and the relations of power which obtain in odier domains. This is anacute diagnosis. But its force is weakened by the suggestion that liberal theoryhas some inevitable reference to the politics of contemporary liberal states. 'Apolitical theory which represents as genuinely democratic a country in whichwomen have practically no political voice and suffer serious social disadvantage,is making, in its own terms, a serious intellectual mistake' (37). We may wellhave reason to be suspicious of what seems like a disingenous insistence on thepart of liberals like Kymlicka that liberalism can be conceived as a kind of idealtype, removed from its embodiment in history.6 But on the other hand, liberaltheory cannot be taken to lie behind the practice of Liberal societies in anystraightforward sense. Th at liberal individualism m akes for sexist rules of evidencein rape cases (91), or a loyalty to market-driven arguments which precludeaffirmative action policies, needs evidence from particular thinkers. Frazer andLacey do concede the counter-evidence of Dworkin's argument for state in-tervention in the economy in the form of affirmative action policies, but theyhold that such positions cannot be sustained without a vision of the good,something that liberals explicidy disavow (86-7). Their case for the necessity ofsuch a vision seems to reside in the implausible view that egalitarian positionsrequire forgoing the individual as a point of reference.Why do Frazer and Lacey suggest that liberals cannot make any headway onthese important feminist issues? After all, inequality and discrimination are theimpetus for Dworkin's call for equal concern and respect, Rawls's insistence th atdifferences benefit the worst off, or the liberal ideal of impartiality. These ideashave much to offer feminist arguments, even if liberals are rightly criticized fornot bothering to provide any demonstration to that effect. In any case, insofaras liberals are short on answers when it comes to the challenging task of providing'an account of how features of culture and social institutions such as gendersystematically structure citizens' political positions' (97), or 'an analysis of theculture which sexualises power and disempowers women partly through itsconstruction of sexuality as a paradoxical mixture of the capricious and thepassive' whilst retaining a 'proper concern with fairness to men accused of rape'(92), they are not much worse off than anyone else.

6 Will Kymlicka, Ubtndism, Comm unity and Culxurt (1989) at 10.


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SPRING 1996 Feminism and the Critique of Political Theory 181What of communitarianism? Frazer and Lacey take communitarianism toinclude a wide variety of thinkers: Rorty, Habermas and Unger as well asM aclntyre, Sandel, Walzer and Taylor. Com mo n to these thinkers, according to

Frazer and Lacey, is some kind of commitment to 'value communitarianism'.This is a view of how values are yielded by the particular community inwhich we find ourselves. Frazer and Lacey note that this view has considerableconservative potential. They thus conclude that communitarianism cannot be afeminist position so long as we want to take a critical distance from current(sexist) social arrangements (142-9).Communitarianism, whatever its ills, is not likely to be faulted for individualism,and the authors approve of the communitarian idea that, as they put it, socialreality is socially constructed. This formulation raises the question of what is atstake in such a constructionism. It may not be very much, since according toFrazer and Lacey, social constructionism (or 'constructivism ' (57)) simply meansthat phenomena such as 'culture, values, institutions and relations' are constitutedby social practices; a view so obviously true as to be almost tautologous. Eventhe most rabid individualist is not likely to dispute that an institution likeparliament, for example, is a cultural artifact, a product of social activity underparticular historical circumstances. The bite of social constructionism lies inmore controversial ideas, such as: all reality, not just social reality, is sociallyconstituted insofar as we only have access to it via our social practices; or, thesocial construction of values denies them any objective status.At times Frazer and Lacey seem tempted by these more radical views; theyinsist, for example, that 'norm ative utterances' can never be '"ob jectiv e"'. Theyare nonetheless understandably wary of a 'thoroughly sceptical view' whicheschews a 'realist position on social structures' (189-90). Their aim is to carveout a deconstructionist position which avoids the relativism implied by the ideaof the cultural contingency of values, or the idealism inherent in some versionsof the postmodern idea of discourse. Lest one think that this position mightdeteriorate into simple vacillation, Frazer and Lacey are adamant: if post-modernism entails the 'abandonment' of the idea of the 'primacy of critique ...then we decisively do not embrace postmodernism' (186).If neither liberalism nor com munitarianism are adequate for a feminist politics,what position remains on offer? Between the insistence on trad ition in M aclntyreand the arbitrariness of value in Rorty there m ight be a critical perspective whichunderstands moral criteria to be dynamic, shaped and revised by our historicalexperience with injustice and evil, and yielding a standpoint from which to assessjustice and injustice, right and wrong. Indeed, the final sections take pains toemphasize the extent to which the communitarian and liberal positions havebecome more complex and thus more fruitful than a two-fold designation canallow. Some com munitarians endorse a 'critically reflective subject' (165), whilstsome liberals share a 'welfarist impulse' (164). At this point Frazer and Laceycriticize 'binary oppositions' and 'dichotomised thinking' which they contend is'an important feature' of the liberal-communitarian debate. But if the reader


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182 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies VOL. 16perceives such a dichotomy, it is in no small way due to Frazer and Lacey'sconstruction of the terms of debate. Moreover, if the dichotomy is to be rejected,this does not necessarily mean, as the authors counsel, that we must 'movebeyond' the debate; we might instead opt for an eclectic mix of the best of theviews on offer, now understood aright.

Indeed, if we are to heed the critique of grand narratives, we should perhapsbe wary of erecting new foundations to replace the old, and instead look for ourpolitical theories in the rubble of deconstruction. Our assemblage of ideas shouldthen be tested in the provisional terms of consistency and coherence, consensusand fairness, terms to which we give sense, not by subsuming them in somesubstantive philosophical theory about being or knowledge, but by attending totheir use in ordinary modes of discourse. No longer fettered by the idea of anultimate justification, there is no need to couch one's critical theory in terms ofa new grand narrative which transcends all that has gone before it. In fact, wecannot avoid drawing on the modern legacy in our efforts to revise it, and Frazerand Lacey give evidence of this as they make frequent and thoughtful referencesto liberals' and communitarians' views in formulating their alternative approach.

This is not to say that innovation is not possible, and the authors indicatesome important ways forward. First, throughout the book they emphasize theimportant role power should play in any adequate political theory, a termremarkable for its absence in both the liberal and communitarian positions.Liberals neglect the ways in which the self is constituted by social relations,whilst communitarians tend to idealize these social relations; neither can takefull account of the myriad of ways in which power relations operate. It makessense, Frazer and Lacey insist against critics like Iris Marion Young, to say thatpower can be redistributed and equalized; the liberal 'distributivist' paradigmremains useful, however incomplete (1924). Of course the difficulty with theseinsights is how we are to make use of them in the public domain, since legislationand regulation are often clumsy and oppressive ways of dealing with the intricaciesof interpersonal relations, however unjust. Democracy here enters the argument,as Frazer and Lacey note the importance of 'dialogic' practices which allowhitherto inaudible voices to be heard (20312). One wonders, however, if, havingrejected the value of impartiality as a measure against which the claims of diversegroups might be assessed, this emphasis on power and democracy might notmake for an arbitrariness in the political process not unlike that for which theauthors attacked postmodernism.7

The Politics of Community is a very useful volume which critically surveyscurrent political thought with some interesting poststructuralist resources in aclear-headed and judicious manner. The book's marriage of different disciplinesand approaches is both fresh and compelling; political theorists be they liberal,communitarian, feminist or postmodern, have much to learn from this exampleof intellectual cosmopolitanism. Frazer and Lacey admit that 'no blueprint for

7 As I suggest in 'Some Disquiet About "Difference"' (1993) 13:2 Praxis ImtnumonaL


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SPRING 1996 Feminism and the Critique of Political Theory 183the ideal society' (207) is on offer, and so long as we are social beings whoseinterests are historically conditioned , they are probably right not to promise one .Still, much needs to be done to give content to the idea of a political theorywhich eschews foundaoonalism whilst continuing the modern project of socialjustice. Frazer and Laceys suggestion that we appeal to 'framework features ofthe human condition', universal needs which any theory must address, is apromising start (185). In the cacophony of old and new voices of a post-structuralist, postliberal polity, feminists and egalitarians of all kinds will doubtlessneed to develop ideas of social being, drawn from communitarians, and socialjustice, drawn from welfarist liberals, if we hope to be both fair and open in ourdealings with each other.

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Feminism and the Critique of Political