Thesis Eleven 134 (1):73-88 (2016)
Authors |
|
Abstract |
This paper examines recent forms of post-identity thought within contemporary gender theory, specifically the works of Rosi Braidotti, Elizabeth Grosz and Bobby Noble. Despite the many insights that these theories offer, I argue that they suffer from what Lois McNay has labelled ‘social weightlessness’ insofar as their models of subjectivity and agency are disconnected from the everyday realities of social subjects. I identify two ways in which this social weightlessness is manifested in radical gender theories that endorse a post-identity politics: they overlook the social and political importance to many individuals of establishing stable, coherent identities; they are unable to offer a satisfactory account of agency. I suggest that these issues arise, at least in part, from the anti-recognition stance adopted by such radical gender theorists. I argue that by incorporating a properly nuanced model of recognition back into their theories they can imbue their accounts with a properly grounded model of the subject that is responsive to the inequalities and oppressions that infuse the particular concrete contexts in which we experience and live out our identities.
|
Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
ISBN(s) | |
DOI | 10.1177/0725513616646024 |
Options |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Download options
References found in this work BETA
Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity.Charles Taylor - 1989 - Harvard University Press.
Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity.Charles Taylor - 1989 - Cambridge University Press.
View all 38 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Invariantist, Contextualist, and Relativist Accounts of Gender Terms.Dan Zeman - 2020 - EurAmerica 4 (50):739-781.
Similar books and articles
The Unbearable Lightness of Theory: Political Ontology and Social Weightlessness in Mouffe's Radical Democracy.L. McNay - 2013 - In Sumi Madhok, Anne Phillips & Kalpana Wilson (eds.), Gender, Agency, and Coercion. Palgrave-Macmillan.
Gender Identity and Exclusion: A Reply to Jenkins.Matthew Salett Andler - 2017 - Ethics 127 (4):883-895.
The Misguided Search for the Political: Social Weightlessness in Radical Democratic Theory.Jason Edwards - 2015 - Contemporary Political Theory 14 (4):e5.
The Misguided Search for the Political: Social Weightlessness in Radical Democratic Theory.Jason Edwards - 2015 - Contemporary Political Theory 14 (4):e5-e8.
Judith Butler: Sexual Politics, Social Change and the Power of the Performative.Gill Jagger - 2008 - Routledge.
Identity Theory and Social Identity Theory.Jan E. Stets & Peter J. Burke - 2000 - Social Psychology Quarterly 63 (3):224-237.
Solidarity After Identity Politics: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Feminist Theory.Amy Allen - 1999 - Philosophy and Social Criticism 25 (1):97-118.
Gender and Agency: Reconfiguring the Subject in Feminist and Social Theory.Lois McNay - 2000 - Blackwell.
Out of Gapa: An Application of Hannah Arendt's Political Theory to Gay Identity Politics After Post-Structuralism.Ming-Yeung Clement Lu - 1995 - Dissertation, Stanford University
Restoring Society to Post-Structuralist Politics: Mouffe, Gramsci and Radical Democracy.Will Leggett - 2013 - Philosophy and Social Criticism 39 (3):299-315.
Multiplicity in Identity: Beyond the Metaphysics of Substance.Crista Marie Lebens - 2000 - Dissertation, Michigan State University
Analytics
Added to PP index
2017-11-03
Total views
118 ( #100,517 of 2,519,678 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
59 ( #13,555 of 2,519,678 )
2017-11-03
Total views
118 ( #100,517 of 2,519,678 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
59 ( #13,555 of 2,519,678 )
How can I increase my downloads?
Downloads