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Abstract
In this paper, I juxtapose the work of two contemporary feminist philosophers: Christine Battersby and Adriana Cavarero – both working within the Continental tradition – to show how they go well beyond feminist critique to produce different images of self-identity and conceptions of the political. Both reject traditional positions on selfhood but also (in different ways) stress the materiality of bodies and provide alternatives to the work of post-structuralists, such as Judith Butler. My aim is to draw out some of the politico-legal implications of their differing images of selfhood. In the final section I then apply both their (different) approaches to the concept of self to ask how their respective arguments can inform contemporary political questions regarding privacy and dissensus.
Notes
1. Battersby, Gender and Genius 4.
2. Arendt, Men in Dark Times 235.
3. Battersby, The Sublime 196–206.
4. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism 296.
5. Battersby, “Stages on Kant's Way”; idem, The Phenomenal Woman; idem, “Terror, Terrorism and the Sublime”; idem, The Sublime.
6. Richardson, “The Law and the Sublime.”
7. Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 66.
8. Kant, Opus postumum 248 cited in Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 68.
9. Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 67.
10. Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment section 263.
11. Ibid.
12. Battersby, “Unblocking the Oedipal” 135–36.
13. Kant, Raising the Tone of Philosophy 64–66 cited in Battersby, “Unblocking the Oedipal” 136.
14. Battersby, “Unblocking the Oedipal” 136.
15. Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View.
16. This is despite the fact that Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, in which he discusses a Jekyll and Hyde type Day Man and Night Man in the same body, produces an image of a self which is compatible with otherness within the body. Richardson, “Feminism, Property in the Person and Concepts of Self”; see also Nedelsky.
17. Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation; idem, The Sexual Contract.
18. Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113 [1973] and Griswold v. Connecticut 381 US 479 [1965] (women's rights); Bowers v. Hardwick 478 US 186 [1986], Lawrence v. Texas 539 US 558 [2003] (gay rights). More recently privacy issues in the United States have manifested themselves in government rights to background checks in the name of national security (National Aeronautics and Space Administration et al. Petitioners v. Robert M. Nelson et al . [2009] No. 09-530. My thanks to the anonymous reviewer for this. For an analysis of comparative law see Kenyon and Richardson.
19. Peck v. UK [2003] EMLR 15.
20. Althusser 42.
21. See, for example, Gatens, Imaginary Bodies; Gatens and Lloyd.
22. Cavarero, Relating Narratives 91.
23. Whilst there is insufficient room to explore this further, the political implications of secrecy are also discussed by Derrida who also indicates a debt to Kierkegaard and argues that “if a right to a secret is not maintained, we are in totalitarian space” (Derrida and Ferraris 59).
24. Gatens, “Privacy and the Body.”
25. In these instances, the shame (wrongly) arises as a result of social oppression. It may be that if one is passing for pragmatic reasons – for example, disguising oneself as a member of a subordinate group – then such shame is not experienced.
26. Jane Doe v. Australian Broadcasting Corporation [2007].
27. Jane Doe v. Australian Broadcasting Corporation & Ors [2007] VCC 281.
28. Cavarero, Relating Narratives 91.
29. See, for example, Butler, Bodies that Matter; idem, Gender Trouble.
30. Cavarero, In Spite of Plato.
31. Idem, Horrorism.
32. For Battersby's detailed analysis of Butler, whom she describes as a “Maoist of the symbolic order” see Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman 118–24.
33. Cavarero, Relating Narratives 127.
34. Ibid. 35–36.
35. Butler, Laclau, and [Zbreve]i[zbreve]ek 31.
36. Butler, Laclau, and [Zbreve]i[zbreve]ek.
37. Butler, “Universality in Culture.”
38. Cavarero, Relating Narratives 35.
39. Ibid. xxviii fn. 39.
40. Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment.
41. Ferrara.
42. Cavarero, Relating Narratives 88.
43. Ibid. ix.
44. Richardson and Cavarero 22.
45. Cavarero, “Politicizing Theory” 526.
46. Battersby, The Sublime 200–06.
47. Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment section 274 discussed in Battersby, The Sublime 68–74.
48. Battersby, The Sublime 42.
49. See, for example, Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy; idem, “Crisis in Culture.”
50. Lyotard, “Sensus Communis” 23.
51. Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy 75.
52. Beiner 96.
53. Lyotard, Differend.
54. Schaap.