An interesting article by Nancy Fraser, arguing that mainstream feminism has effectively gone down the path of tying itself to demands that allow it to be used as justification for neoliberalism. A couple of things to say here: (1) While Fraser is critical of past state-managed capitalism, there is more than a twinge of nostalgia for it in this article because she clearly posits neoliberal/market capitalism as worse. Yet there is not much sign that the state has removed itself from the micro-management of society; rather, it has changed the way it does things. When Fraser raised past feminist criticism of the nanny state I thought immediately of (apparently) very neoliberal Australia where the state seems to me to be *less* permissive about peoples behaviours than ever before, with more and more sanctions on their lives. It seems that Fraser is arguing for a *better* state here, whereas perhaps the issue is to think about how the state itself is part of the problem and needs to be eliminated. (2) Frasers critique of womens oppression suggests an exterior relationship between oppression of identity groups (what she elsewhere has called recognition) and exploitation leading to economic equality (redistribution) — that is, as two systems operating in parallel and together. She sees this tension within feminism itself — where struggles against oppression and exploitation may or may not be linked, depending on the dominant tendencies within feminist thought/organising. This ends up being an argument for feminism to find a new balance — or in her words an integration of different struggles. But what if there is a single system (a totality) producing both oppression and exploitation and the point is not to integrate two types of struggle but to find a *unitary* approach that deals with all the negative expressions of that single system? Frasers past problems in using her theoretical framework to explain the Global Justice Movement of the early 2000s (a movement that clearly combined struggles for recognition and redistribution) seem to me to be repeated here.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 10:53:56 +0000
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