Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T15:04:59.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sharing without Knowing: Collective Identity in Feminist and Democratic Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Michaele L. Ferguson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Many feminist and democratic theorists share the presumption that politics requires a pregiven subject (“women” or “the people”) whose identity is grounded in commonality. Drawing on Linda Zerilli's interventions in feminist debates, Ferguson develops an alternative account of collective identity that emerges instead from multiple, overlapping, and discontinuous social practices. This reconceptualization of identity demands a corresponding reconceptualization of democracy, characterized by the ongoing contestation of the very subject (“the people”) whose existence it presupposes.

Type
Radical Interventions
Information
Hypatia , Volume 22 , Issue 4: Special Issue: Democratic Theory , Fall 2007 , pp. 30 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, Benedict. 1983/1991. Imagined communities. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith, and Scott, Joan. 1992. Introduction. In Feminists theorize the political, ed. Butler, Judith and Scott, Joan. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 2005. Rogues: Two essays on reason. Trans. Brault, Pascale‐Anne and Naas, Michael. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Fausto‐Sterling, Ann. 1993. The five sexes. The Sciences (March/April): 20–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flax, Jane. 1992. The end of innocence. In Feminists theorize the political, ed. Butler, and Scott, .Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1994. Struggles for recognition in the democratic constitutional state. In Multiculturalism, ed. Gutmann, A. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural citizenship. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Lugones, María, and Spelman, Elizabeth. 1983. Have we got a theory for you! Women's Studies International Forum 6(6): 573–81.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1861/1991. Considerations on representative government. In On liberty and other essays, ed. Gray, J. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri. 1987. In other worlds. New York: Methuen.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1985. Theories of meaning. In Human agency and language: Philosophical papers, Volume 1. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1994. Shared and divergent values. In Reconciling the solitudes. Montreal: McGill‐Queen's University Press.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1992. What it means to be an American. New York: Marsilio.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. Philosophical investigations. 2nd Ed. Trans Anscombe, G. E. M. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Zerilli, Linda. 1998. Doing without knowing. Political Theory 26(4): 435–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zerilli, Linda. 2005. Feminism and the abyss of freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar