Dietz and Butler

“to call for social transformations in the name of women, we must also be part of a critical democratic project.” Briefly describe the kind of politics that each of the authors (Dietz, writing in 1987, and Butler, writing in 2004) calls for.  In what ways, if at all, are they advocating for a “feminist politics” — or calling for a new kind of feminist politics?

Hande Lara Sever

In her article Undoing Gender Butler draws attention to how the notion of human is constructed. According to Butler, to encounter oppression requires one’s understanding of how lives are supported and maintained differentially. Certain lives are highly protected and they have sufficient power to “justify” their claims and to mobilize the forces of war. This can be exemplified by Colin Powell’s infamous speech at the UN headquarters where he stated that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that ironically Iraq did not have and the war only resulted in millions of civilians’ death, displacement and rape. Butler states that “The notion of human is presupposed; the human is defined in advance, in terms that are distinctively Western, very often American, and, therefore, partial and parochial.” As a result of this notion certain lives are not considered as lives at all because they do not fit in the dominant frame of human. As a result, she states that international human rights must  question and re-define what is meant by human. As stated by Butler women have not been fully incorporated as human. Thus Butler defends that for international women’s rights we must not impose what is right for everyone but rather we should find a way to enter into communities and “discover what is right in the midsts of cultural translation.” So that feminists should accurately discuss and open up what is to be human which would provide a good basis for international women’s rights.

Dietz’s article agrees with Butler’s remarks stated through her article Undoing Gender. Dietz critiques liberalism in her article Context is All. According to Dietz, currently, in America, “democracy is tied to representative government and the right to vote rather than the idea of the collective, participatory activity of citizens in the public realm”, as a result it fails to ensure the freedom of all its members. Dietz quotes Mary Shanley to elaborate on the closure that feminists face by Liberalism “While liberal ideals have been efficacious in overturning restrictions on women as individuals, liberal theory does not provide the language or concept to help us understand the various kinds of human interdependence… nor to articulate a feminist vision of ‘good life’.” Dietz thinks the talk of equal access, locus of Liberal Feminism, is not enough since we are tied into a network of liberal concepts: rights, interests, contracts, individualism, representative government and negative liberty. As a result, when feminism is concentrated solely on equal access it faces a certain closure. She thinks that a collective system is needed for progress, not a majority system. She defines collective system as a place where concerns are undertaken by active engagement of citizens in public world. She argues that feminists do not concentrate enough on this issue because their agenda is predominantly occupied with equal access. “As long as feminists focus only on questions of social and economic concern- questions about children, family, schools, work, wages, pornography, abortion, abuse- they will not articulate a truly political vision, nor will they address the problem of citizenship.” So Dietz argues that feminists must transform their democratic practices into a more comprehensive theory of citizenship and show commitment to the activity of citizenship. She also thinks if feminists shift their focus to a more comprehensive theory of citizenship, then international feminism would be possible across democratic societies.