Feminism, Modernity and Critical Theory

Abstract

The relationship between modernity and normativity is central to the project of critical theory, and yet this relationship has come under increasing pressure in recent years, in particular from postcolonial critics. For feminist critical theory specifically, the demand to rethink the relationship between modernity and normativity can be seen as coming simultaneously from two different directions: both from the direction of a feminist theory that strives to be genuinely inclusive of the perspectives and experiences of all women, including those in the global South, by developing an intersectional analysis of the cross-cutting axes of racial, gender, and imperial domination; and from the direction of a critical theory that can only be truly critical if it can take on board a postcolonial perspective. And yet rethinking the relationship between modernity and normativity poses serious problems for certain prominent understandings of feminist critical theory. In particular, insofar as the normative perspective of critical theory is dependent upon a particular understanding of modernity that is tied to a developmental, progressive reading of history, and insofar as this very perspective is called into question in postcolonial scholarship, the taking on board of a postcolonial, anti-racist and anti-imperialist feminist perspective seems to threaten the very normativity of critical theory. In this paper, I explore these issues by: first, sketching the relationship between modernity, normativity, and feminism in the work of the two major contemporary representatives of the Frankfurt School critical theory tradition, Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth; second, exploring how this relationship is recapitulated in the work of feminist critical theorist Seyla Benhabib, despite her attempts to address intersectional and postcolonial feminist concerns; and finally, by way of a conclusion, briefly considering what follows for feminist critical theory once we rethink the relationship between modernity, normativity and feminism.

Keywords:

• feminism
• modernity
• critical theory
• postcolonial theory
• Benhabib

Notes

¹On this point, see Janet Jakobsen (1995).

²See especially the influential work of Chandra Mohanty (2003) and Gayatri Spivak (1987, 1999).

³See Eisenstein (2004) and Cheryl McEwan (2001).

⁴A prominent exception is Iris Marion Young (2000). Nancy Fraser briefly discusses the importance of postcolonial feminist scholarship (while remaining critical of postcolonial feminism for being too focused on identity politics) in response to question posed by the interviewer in the following: Nancy Fraser and Nancy Naples (2004). Seyla Benhabib engages with some work in postcolonial theory in her Claims of Culture (2002), which I discuss in more detail below.

⁵For a sample of the critical response to the book, see Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves and Seyla Benhabib (1997).

⁶For the centrality of this conception of autonomy to Habermas's work, see Maeve Cooke (1992).

⁷On multiple modernities, see Eisenstadt (2000). For Habermas's discussion of this paradigm, see Habermas (2010).

⁸Habermas bases his notion of a multicultural world society on his reading of Arnason (2003).

⁹For critical discussion of this theme in Habermas's recent work, see Amy Allen (forthcoming).

¹⁰Habermas develops his account of progress in his theory of social evolution, see Habermas (1979). For Honneth's defense of the importance of the idea of progress for critical theory, see Honneth (2009).

¹¹On the importance of this idea for critical theory, see Maeve Cooke (2005).

¹²On this point, see Matthias Iser (2008, 15–16).

¹³On this point, see Thomas McCarthy (2009, 150–65).

¹⁴For Honneth's commitment to this account of the relationship between history and normativity, see Honneth (2009, 2011). Habermas's account of the relationship between history and normativity is a bit harder to discern. For example, in Habermas (1984), he explicitly links his attempt to ground the normativity of critical theory to his account of modernization as rationalization; however, his work on discourse ethics (Habermas 1990, 1993) is generally read as offering a more Kantian constructivist account of the source of normativity. Although I do not have time to discuss this in detail here, I agree with Finlayson (2000) that even Habermas's discourse ethics depends for its normative grounding on his account of modernity. And, in any event, Habermas has clearly moved back to a more Hegelian, historically reconstructivist account of normativity in his more recent work; see, for example, Habermas (1998, 3–46).

¹⁵For a summary of some of this literature, see Timothy Mitchell (2000, 1–7).

¹⁶On this point see McCarthy (2009), who nevertheless seeks to recover the normative potential of the ideas of historical progress and development.

¹⁷On this point, see Gurminder Bhambra (2007).

¹⁸Not only that, but Benhabib herself is an important and insightful critic of Habermas's theory of social evolution, which, she claims, retains “overtones of a speculative philosophy of history” (Benhabib 1986, 276). Nevertheless, like Habermas and Honneth, Benhabib defends Habermas's theory of cultural modernity, maintaining that the “demand for the fulfillment of modern reason project[s] the image of a future we would like to make our own” (1986, 277).

¹⁹On this point, see James Bohman (2004). For a related critique, see Linda Zerilli (2009).

²⁰In this respect, Benhabib's position is much closer to Honneth's than it is to Habermas's, despite the fact that she presents her view as a defense of Habermasian communicative ethics, and rarely engages directly with the concept of recognition that is so central to Honneth's work.

²¹For important criticisms of this assumption, see Leila Ahmed (1993) and Joan Wallach Scott (2007).

²²To be sure, both Honneth and Benhabib defend a much more contextualist understanding of normativity—and hence of historical progress—than does Habermas; however, their failure to sufficiently problematize the normative self-understanding of modernity in light of its entanglements with colonial domination stems, I think, from the fact that they do not push this contextualist insight far enough.

²³For a related argument, framed in terms of the conditions of political judgment, see Zerilli (2009).

²⁴Compare Benhabib's (1986, 272–79) similar comments. For critical discussion of Benhabib on this point, see Jakobsen (1995).

²⁵For a related criticism of this idea in Habermas, drawing on Donald Davidson's alternative account of the relationship between meaning and validity, see Schnädelbach (1991).

²⁶On this point, see Uma Narayan (1997).

²⁷For insightful discussion of the importance of this conception of critique also in connection with postcolonial theory, see James Tully (2008).