abstract
This essay examines the work of Nancy Fraser and Seyla Benhabib, two philosophers who have demonstrated that feminist theorists can usefully draw upon both postmodernism and the critical theory tradition, with which Fraser and Benhabib are more clearly associated. I argue that each theorist claims the universal ideals and normative judgements of modernism, and the contextualism, particularity, and skepticism of postmodernism. I do this by revisiting each of their positions in the now well-known Feminist Contentions exchange, by examining the diverse ways in which they reconcile universalism and difference, and by exploring each theorist's critique of the Habermasian public sphere.
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Notes
There is, of course, considerable disagreement about how the categories of modernism and postmodernism should even be defined. Judith Butler, one of the so-called ‘postmodernists,’ has disagreed that the category has any meaning at all. Butler has a point – she and Lacan, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, and Kristeva can hardly be said to be joined in a single theoretical project (Benhabib et al., 1995). While Steven Bronner acknowledges this, he argues of postmodernism that ‘there are certain similarities with respect to themes and the logic of argumentation among certain authors’. Postmodern theorists ‘have sought to contest the continuing reliance on fixed structures or signs for interpreting theory and undertaking practice’. Postmodernism ‘describes an epoch robbed of certainties, all embracing narratives, and transformative agents’. It has opened up the cannon to the ‘standpoint of women, people of color, gays, and other excluded groups’. Finally, ‘its logic is characterized by a form of perspectivism,’ stemming from Nietzsche's claim that ‘the subject is a fiction’ (Bronner, 1999: 188–189). Bronner's view of postmodernism is complemented by that of Jane Flax (described more in section 1 of this paper), for whom postmodernism is characterized by the death of history, the death of the subject, and the death of metaphysics. Modernism is also a broad term. For the purposes of this paper, I associate modernism with the universalism of Habermasian communicative ethics, which asserts that community members can engage in dialogue about the norms that comprise universally valid moral laws. These norms, legitimated as true by means of a conversation among those who are subject to them, provide the basis for a more emancipatory social and political life. For a concise summary of Habermasian communicative ethics, see Johanna Meehan's edited collection, Feminists Read Habermas (Meehan, 1995).
The critical theory tradition to which I refer is distinct from ‘critical legal studies’, which applies postmodern insights to the study of law. Critical theory stresses that the theorist's goal is not only to understand or interpret social life, but to radically transform it. For an excellent discussion of the critical theory tradition, see Craig Calhoun's Critical Social Theory (Calhoun, 1995).
That Benhabib has not actually embraced theoretical rigidity may suggest that many other feminist theorists have also adopted a synthetic approach, regardless of how that debate has been characterized by its chroniclers. This is, however, for the purposes and scope of my paper, only speculation. I take up only Fraser and Benhabib, and I am not claiming that they represent academic feminism writ large.
By the same token, Fraser has also argued against Lyotard's view that social criticism must be ‘local, ad hoc, and untheoretical.’ Fraser asserts the legitimacy of genres of social criticism such as ‘large-scale historical narratives and social–theoretical analyses of pervasive relations of dominance and subordination’ (Nicholson, 1990: 25).
For Habermas, only questions of justice are universalizable, ‘not claims that bring about a desired way of life’ (Meehan, 1995: 5).
Fraser makes a similar argument in earlier work on the politics of ‘needs-interpretation’, when she argues that a zone of universal rights is discursively buffered from particular needs. Needs-talk involves a discursive struggle to deliver particular needs into the political realm of universal rights. As such, Fraser does not reject the concept of rights, but argues instead that universal rights should incorporate particular needs. Thus, there is great continuity between Fraser's earlier work on needs, her later work on redistribution and recognition, and Benhabib's revisions of moral theory. See ‘Struggle over Needs: Outline of a Socialist-Feminist Critical Theory of Late Capitalist Political Culture’ (Fraser, 1989: 161–187).
One of Fraser's strengths as a political theorist is that she often applies theoretical models to real-life empirical cases. For an empirical example about the formulation of counter-discourses in subaltern counterpublics, see Fraser's study of the way in which needs are interpreted in the welfare state, ‘Women, Welfare, and the Politics of Need Interpretation,’ and ‘Struggle over Needs’ (Fraser, 1989). See her analysis of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill Hearings in Justice Interruptus for a contemporary example of the operation of the public sphere.
Fraser suggests that Habermas's segregation of the private sphere is deeply rooted in his division of lifeworld and system, which falsely separates the official economy from the family, and refuses to recognize that power relations and domination structure both arenas. For a broad and extremely powerful critique of Habermas's theory of system and lifeworld, see ‘What's Critical about Critical Theory: The Case of Habermas and Gender’ (Fraser, 1989: 113–143).
Indeed, Amanda Anderson's essay suggests that postmodernists rely heavily on modernist commitments. She writes: ‘Butler advocates ethical practices that are animated by the same evaluative principles as communicative ethics – rigorous scrutiny of all oppositional discourse for its own newly generated exclusions and the reconfiguration of debilitating identity terms…as sites of “permanent openness”…. Both of these central practices rely on democratic principles of inclusion and open contestation. Communicative ethics clarifies where among our social practices we might locate the preconditions for such activities of critique and transformation’ (Anderson, 1998: 14).
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge Jennifer Pierce, Sally Kenney, Mary Dietz, Greta Krippner, and Sandy Levitsky, who all read and commented on various drafts of this article.
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Canaday, M. Promising alliances: the critical feminist theory of Nancy Fraser and Seyla Benhabib. Fem Rev 74, 50–69 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400044
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400044