Feminism and the Critique of Political

Theory^
CHRISTINE SYPNOWICH*

Must political theorists, in their deliberations about justice, engage in philo-

sophical speculation about the nature of the self or the foundations of knowledge?
Controversy rages on this matter. Communitarians, for example, fault liberalism
for its atomistic premises about personhood, arguing that without an adequate
understanding of the ways in which the person is socially constituted, our efforts
at conceptualizing the good society will fail. John Rawls, in contrast, maintains
that as political theorists and as citizens, we must set aside metaphysical questions
in order to forge an overlapping consensus on basic governmental structures;
hence his slogan that our theories of justice should be 'political not metaphysical'.
The rise of views influenced by postmodernism complicates this picture in
interesting ways. On the one hand, postmodernism has generated a plethora of
writings that address questions of subjecthood and knowledge in an intensely
theoretical idiom. On the other, these enquiries seek to deconstruct philosophy
itself precisely because philosophy is deemed incurably metaphysical. The idea
of the individual subject, the project of finding foundations for reason, the
aspiration to neutrality: all have been 'unmasked' as features of the En-
lightenment's totalizing, but ultimately self-defeating, project. Indeed, there is a
sense in which the postmoderns share Rawls's concern to displace metaphysical
enquiry with overtly political concerns. After all, this anti-philosophical critique
has been carried out in the name of an oppressed 'other', the voices silenced or
'normalized' by traditional ways of philosophizing.
It is thus not surprising that postmodern views have found support from within
feminism. For if women remain disadvantaged after the granting of liberal rights
and liberties, there may be some force in the argument that rights and liberties
are the paraphernalia of a masculinist order which should be rejected wholesale.
Yet some feminists are wary of the allure of postmodernism, fearing that its
deconstruction of modernity and its philosophies is so thorough-going that it

t A review of Elizabeth Frazer and Nicola Lacey, Tht PoHoa of Community: A Ftmima Critupu of At tebcrah-
Commuwaiai Dtiau (HarvMUr WlumhMf, H m a i Hempt«e»d 1993).
• Department of Philosophy, Queen'i Univenity, Kingston, Canada. Bill Readings suggested I write this essay
after engaging me in a lively conversation on some of the issues it raises. He was tragically killed before the essay
was completed. Bill was fond of words, but words cannot ciyicll the loss of a talented thinker and fine friend. I
am grateful to David Bakhurst and Adam Swift for their herpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay.
° Oxford University Press 1996 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies Vol 16, No 1
176 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies VOL.16
puts into question the status of all theorizing. It is not merely certain political
doctrines, but the very methods of argumentation, criticism and justification,
which seem deprived of any footing in the postmodern universe. Such a suspicion
of modernity is in sharp contrast with the posture of early feminists such as
Wollstonecraft, Mill and Harriet Taylor who looked to rational argument and
the ideal of justice to realize their aims. It was with reference to a modernity as
yet unfulfilled that they sought to disclose a reality demanding moral con-
demnation: one where women were treated as inferior to men when in reality
they were their equals. But if equality is a universalist discourse and thereby
only die discredited parlance of the dominators, and if our access to the world
is only by means of one discourse or another, then feminists' participation in
the attack on the male-biased order of modernity has as its justification only the
limited, and provisional, entitlement that comes from representing the voice of
a dispossessed group. Power fills the vacuum left by reason, as one group seeks
to displace another. In the face of these conundrums, feminists might be tempted
to take Rawls's cue, and avoid arcane debates in favour of the obvious work still
to be done in practical areas of social justice.
All this forms die context of Tlie Politics of Community: A Feminist Critique of
the Liberal-Communitarian Debate by Elizabeth Frazer and Nicola Lacey.1 The
book is an admirably clear and ambitious study which canvasses and critically
assesses a wide range of political theories, loosely grouped into a debate between
liberals and communitarians. As the title suggests, what unites its enquiry is a
feminist perspective which finds fault with positions on bodi sides of the
controversy. Frazer and Lacey take on the mande of deconstruction and urge a
new, 'posdiberaP and 'poststructuralist' approach to further the feminist cause.
Such an approach, they contend, would enable an understanding of the 'social
construction of social reality' and the ways in which power operates in die
minutiae of social relations which lie outside of the state.
Frazer and Lacey have a good case for saying diat the liberal-communitarian
debate has been carried out on a terrain removed from feminist concerns. Neither
Rawls's appeal for distribution of resources to ensure diat the worst off benefit,
nor SandePs call for a community of intersubjective beings, to take two examples,
are explicidy conceived by dieir audiors as measures for furthering die equality
of men and women. But does diis mean die positions are incapable of doing so?
Bodi Rawls's egalitarian commitments and Michael Sandel's belief in human
beings' interdependence certainly look applicable to feminist concerns. And
where these tiheories fall short, diere may be scope for feminist revisions. Thus
Susan Moller Okin has suggested we consider how Rawls's idea of the veil of
ignorance might be recast to take into account the inequities of gender, and

Henceforth all reference! to page numbers of this text win be placed in parentheses in the body of the article.
SPRING 1996 Feminism and the Critique of Political Theory 177
Annette Baier, amongst many others, has urged the ideal of community as a
specifically feminist one.2
Frazer and Lacey are suspicious of such efforts, since they contend that
liberalism and communitarianism are deficient in ways far too fundamental to
enable mere re-appropriation. The book's critique rests on a suspicion not so
much about the substantive politics of the diverse theories; after all, as the
authors admit, one would be hard-pressed to find explicitly mysogynist views in
the writings of contemporary political philosophers. (37) Liberalism is the book's
main target, and it is faulted for two features deemed intrinsic to its approach:
a fact/value distinction and individualism. These need unpacking. Though Frazer
and Lacey do not explicitly define the fact/value distinction, they contend that
it is associated with the empiricist idea that 'empirical and normative analyses'
or 'description and prescription' are easily or clearly separated. (18) Empiricism
is taken also to refer to the view that political theory must be kept separate from
social theory, and by social theory Frazer and Lacey intend ontological enquiries
about the nature of existence, (4) as well as enquiries into the social structures
underpinning individual behaviour. (172,181) Liberals' reliance on 'empiricist
methods' dictates a narrow conception of the political, wherein observable facts
and expressed preferences alone are 'the data for moral consideration'. According
to Frazer and Lacey, empiricism lies behind the pretence to objectivity implicit
in such devices as Rawls's original position. (54-5)
Are these accusations fair? Frazer and Lacey are certainly right that there is a
'historical link between empiricist science and liberal culture'. (18) But the
relation is more complex than they perceive; for the hand of empiricism is evident
both in attempts to establish an objective criterion of social policy (utilitarianism)
and, as the communitarian Alasdair Maclntyre has argued, in the doctrine of
emotivism which reduced the realm of politics to nothing but the arbitrary play
of values. In any event, however, today's liberals are much more sophisticated
on this point. Few would adhere to a rigid fact/value distinction since it was
precisely this distinction that made it so difficult to do political theory in the
heyday of logical positivism. Indeed, as Frazer and Lacey admit, liberals such
as Raz go so far as to incorporate realist views of ethics into their conception of
justice. Others, such as Dworkin and Rawls, are careful to ensure their case for
pluralism does not entail a commitment to a deleterious moral subjectivism.
In the course of their critique of empiricism, Frazer and Lacey decry the role
of impartiality in liberal thought. Like many other feminists, they find the idea
of impartiality is responsible for a covert masculinism which occludes the reality
of gender differences. This suggests that impartiality is not only undesirable, but
incoherent: we are always embodied beings and thus unable to take the 'view
from nowhere' that liberal theories supposedly imply. Rawls himself is accused
2
Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender and the Family (1989) and Annette Baier, T h e Need for More than
Justice', in M. Hanen and K. Nielsen, Science, Morality and Feminist Theory, supplementary vol 13, Canadian
Journal of PhUosopfty (1987); see aljo my 'Justice, Community and the Antinomies of Feminist Theory* (1993)
21:3 Political Theory.
178 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies VOL. 16

of advancing a theory of justice which is chosen from 'a very specific social
position, that of a white, middle-class liberal American male'. (55) There is more
to this criticism than an ad hominem attack; at heart, it invokes the challenge to
philosophy posed by postmodernism, and the power of this challenge is such
that the idea that we might philosophize on the basis of firm foundations in
infallible reason or pure objectivity now looks like an untenable position. But
do we face only the stark, and indeed traditional, choice between foundationalism
and scepticism in the wake of the postmodern attack on reason and objectivity?
Here we may be wise to proceed on more modest grounds, conceding the
sceptical point about epistemological foundations, whilst retaining the idea of
impartiality as a political ideal. Philosophical argument, political debate and
indeed judicial practice, however radical or deconstructive, all presuppose the
possibility of persuasion. Moreover, one can persuade or be persuaded only if
one is prepared to take some steps towards impartiality in the minimal sense of
trying to take a more reflective stance towards one's own views. Impartiality is
thus not a foundation for theory, but an ideal which orients our political
judgments, and indeed as such presupposes our judgments are not beyond
question, but tentative and revisable. Thus impartiality itself can never be fully
realized; as historically contingent beings we will always be partial to a set of
interests and concerns (not necessarily our own). But this is precisely why
impartiality should figure as a measure of the justice of our actions, an ideal to
which we should aspire, rather than die infallible basis for political reasoning.3
This is not that far from Rawls's position, I think unfairly pegged by Frazer and
Lacey as foundationalist and objectivist. Rawls urges that we put metaphysics
to one side, and his devices of the original position and archimedean point are
intended to assist us in a reasoning process he describes as the striving for
'reflective equilibrium'. The idea of critical re-evaluation might be thought of as
an achievement of our (modem) tradition, and thus grounded in a vision of the
good, a position Frazer and Lacey find attractive (185), and one Rawls concedes
in his more recent work.4 But we should admit diat this is a commitment to
impartiality, and as such must be justified in its own terms; diat is, we value
impartiality because of what we see as the good in impartiality, how it influences
our social practices for the better. In so doing, we make reference to principles
of fairness and just dealings, even if we can also tell a story about our commitments
in terms of how their origins lie in the ways we happen to live. We dius defend
impartiality not because it inheres in our practices, but because of what our
practices stand for. Indeed, our practices are not identical with diemselves; they
encompass the idea of self-reflection, of holding our practices at a distance in
order to scrutinize diem for consistency and fairness.

' Similarly, to advocate the rule of law is not to hold that legality u infallibly objective, but to recognize that
procedural regularity is necessary to restrain the contingent actions of political and legal actors; this is my argument
in Tht Concept of Socmhst Lam (1990) at ch 3.
4
Rflwll refers, for example, to the 'political good* of just democratic institutions in Political Liberalism (1993)
at 204.
SPRING 1996 Feminism and the Critique of Political Theory 179
As for individualism, the other feature of liberal thought identified by Frazer
and Lacey, it refers to the idea that the basic units of a society are individuals,
rather than groups or communities. The authors counter this view with an
approach which, as they put it, understands 'social reality, social facts and social
beings' to be 'socially constructed'. Frazer and Lacey admit that individualism
and social constructionism have ontological and ethical components which can
be separated (56,187); thus one might believe that persons are socially constituted
whilst advocating a political theory based on individual rights, or one might be
a methodological individualist who urges the forging of community.' But die
book tends to put this caveat aside and couch its critique in terms of the laissez-
faire implications of an individualist approach: 'an ontologically atomistic view
of humanity has fed into an influential form of political individualism in the
shape of contemporary American liberalism, with its focus on individual rights,
negative freedom and a lack of focus on public goods and collective life' (187).
The difficulty with this argument is that today's liberal values include equality
and welfare, values which are not individualistic in the traditional sense of
supposing that the individual has a right to non-interference which surpasses all
other considerations. Indeed, oftentimes these more egalitarian concerns are said
to overtake the traditional liberal ideals of liberty, privacy and property; Dworkin,
for example, defines liberalism in terms of the value of equality alone. Of course,
communitarians have argued that tliis concern cannot be properly addressed so
long as liberals retained an atomistic conception of the person. And socialists
certainly have long been suspicious of egalitarian theories which focus on relations
of distribution rather than addressing the structures and relations of production
which are inequality's source. Frazer and Lacey take the rather odd tack of
casting aspersions on a welfarist theory which refers to individuals' interests:
'Even for recent welfare liberals, redistributive policies and state provision of
some goods is a matter of the defence of the interests and autonomy of the
individual' (66). Their objection seems to imply that a mere reference to
individuals impugns a theory's egalitarian aims. But the autonomy or interests
of individuals is bound to be the focus of any egalitarian or progressive politics,
be it feminist, socialist or even communitarian; where the controversy arises is,
rather, on the question of how this focus is conceived or realized. To suggest
otherwise risks invoking precisely the lampoon version of communitarian or
socialist political theory that unsympathetic interpreters such as Popper or Hayek
always sought to give it.
The substance of these charges becomes clearer when Frazer and Lacey
address concrete issues such as discrimination on the basis of sex in die workplace,
the exploitation of women's sexuality, and the representation of women in
political institutions. They contend that liberals, committed to the free play of
market forces, are in a poor position to criticize employers who discriminate
against women (86). Similarly, because liberals have 'traditionally constructed
' Set Charles Taylor, 'Cron-purposes: the Liberal-Communitarian Debate', in N. Roscnbhim (ed) Liberalism
and int Moral Lift (1989), and Stephen Muttall and Adam Swift, Liberals and Communitarians (1992).
180 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies VOL. 16
sexuality as within the private sphere' (91), problems like sexual harrassment,
rape and pornography are not susceptible to liberal analysis. And finally, given
that liberals conceive of the subject as a 'degendered individual' they fail to see
the injustice of women constituting a minority of elected representatives.
Thus liberalism is castigated, not just for being insufficiently concerned with
questions of method and theoretical abstraction, but for the converse, not properly
addressing practical, day-to-day issues which affect women's life prospects. By
confining its analysis to the state, and relations between citizen and government,
liberal theory is oblivious both to the philosophical framework within which it
operates and the relations of power which obtain in odier domains. This is an
acute diagnosis. But its force is weakened by the suggestion that liberal theory
has some inevitable reference to the politics of contemporary liberal states. 'A
political theory which represents as genuinely democratic a country in which
women have practically no political voice and suffer serious social disadvantage,
is making, in its own terms, a serious intellectual mistake' (37). We may well
have reason to be suspicious of what seems like a disingenous insistence on the
part of liberals like Kymlicka that liberalism can be conceived as a kind of ideal
type, removed from its embodiment in history.6 But on the other hand, liberal
theory cannot be taken to lie behind the practice of Liberal societies in any
straightforward sense. That liberal individualism makes for sexist rules of evidence
in rape cases (91), or a loyalty to market-driven arguments which preclude
affirmative action policies, needs evidence from particular thinkers. Frazer and
Lacey do concede the counter-evidence of Dworkin's argument for state in-
tervention in the economy in the form of affirmative action policies, but they
hold that such positions cannot be sustained without a vision of the good,
something that liberals explicidy disavow (86-7). Their case for the necessity of
such a vision seems to reside in the implausible view that egalitarian positions
require forgoing the individual as a point of reference.
Why do Frazer and Lacey suggest that liberals cannot make any headway on
these important feminist issues? After all, inequality and discrimination are the
impetus for Dworkin's call for equal concern and respect, Rawls's insistence that
differences benefit the worst off, or the liberal ideal of impartiality. These ideas
have much to offer feminist arguments, even if liberals are rightly criticized for
not bothering to provide any demonstration to that effect. In any case, insofar
as liberals are short on answers when it comes to the challenging task of providing
'an account of how features of culture and social institutions such as gender
systematically structure citizens' political positions' (97), or 'an analysis of the
culture which sexualises power and disempowers women partly through its
construction of sexuality as a paradoxical mixture of the capricious and the
passive' whilst retaining a 'proper concern with fairness to men accused of rape'
(92), they are not much worse off than anyone else.

6
Will Kymlicka, Ubtndism, Community and Culxurt (1989) at 10.
SPRING 1996 Feminism and the Critique of Political Theory 181
What of communitarianism? Frazer and Lacey take communitarianism to
include a wide variety of thinkers: Rorty, Habermas and Unger as well as
Maclntyre, Sandel, Walzer and Taylor. Common to these thinkers, according to
Frazer and Lacey, is some kind of commitment to 'value communitarianism'.
This is a view of how values are yielded by the particular community in
which we find ourselves. Frazer and Lacey note that this view has considerable
conservative potential. They thus conclude that communitarianism cannot be a
feminist position so long as we want to take a critical distance from current
(sexist) social arrangements (142-9).
Communitarianism, whatever its ills, is not likely to be faulted for individualism,
and the authors approve of the communitarian idea that, as they put it, social
reality is socially constructed. This formulation raises the question of what is at
stake in such a constructionism. It may not be very much, since according to
Frazer and Lacey, social constructionism (or 'constructivism' (57)) simply means
that phenomena such as 'culture, values, institutions and relations' are constituted
by social practices; a view so obviously true as to be almost tautologous. Even
the most rabid individualist is not likely to dispute that an institution like
parliament, for example, is a cultural artifact, a product of social activity under
particular historical circumstances. The bite of social constructionism lies in
more controversial ideas, such as: all reality, not just social reality, is socially
constituted insofar as we only have access to it via our social practices; or, the
social construction of values denies them any objective status.
At times Frazer and Lacey seem tempted by these more radical views; they
insist, for example, that 'normative utterances' can never be '"objective"'. They
are nonetheless understandably wary of a 'thoroughly sceptical view' which
eschews a 'realist position on social structures' (189-90). Their aim is to carve
out a deconstructionist position which avoids the relativism implied by the idea
of the cultural contingency of values, or the idealism inherent in some versions
of the postmodern idea of discourse. Lest one think that this position might
deteriorate into simple vacillation, Frazer and Lacey are adamant: if post-
modernism entails the 'abandonment' of the idea of the 'primacy of critique . . .
then we decisively do not embrace postmodernism' (186).
If neither liberalism nor communitarianism are adequate for a feminist politics,
what position remains on offer? Between the insistence on tradition in Maclntyre
and the arbitrariness of value in Rorty there might be a critical perspective which
understands moral criteria to be dynamic, shaped and revised by our historical
experience with injustice and evil, and yielding a standpoint from which to assess
justice and injustice, right and wrong. Indeed, the final sections take pains to
emphasize the extent to which the communitarian and liberal positions have
become more complex and thus more fruitful than a two-fold designation can
allow. Some communitarians endorse a 'critically reflective subject' (165), whilst
some liberals share a 'welfarist impulse' (164). At this point Frazer and Lacey
criticize 'binary oppositions' and 'dichotomised thinking' which they contend is
'an important feature' of the liberal-communitarian debate. But if the reader
182 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies VOL. 16
perceives such a dichotomy, it is in no small way due to Frazer and Lacey's
construction of the terms of debate. Moreover, if the dichotomy is to be rejected,
this does not necessarily mean, as the authors counsel, that we must 'move
beyond' the debate; we might instead opt for an eclectic mix of the best of the
views on offer, now understood aright.
Indeed, if we are to heed the critique of grand narratives, we should perhaps
be wary of erecting new foundations to replace the old, and instead look for our
political theories in the rubble of deconstruction. Our assemblage of ideas should
then be tested in the provisional terms of consistency and coherence, consensus
and fairness, terms to which we give sense, not by subsuming them in some
substantive philosophical theory about being or knowledge, but by attending to
their use in ordinary modes of discourse. No longer fettered by the idea of an
ultimate justification, there is no need to couch one's critical theory in terms of
a new grand narrative which transcends all that has gone before it. In fact, we
cannot avoid drawing on the modern legacy in our efforts to revise it, and Frazer
and Lacey give evidence of this as they make frequent and thoughtful references
to liberals' and communitarians' views in formulating their alternative approach.
This is not to say that innovation is not possible, and the authors indicate
some important ways forward. First, throughout the book they emphasize the
important role power should play in any adequate political theory, a term
remarkable for its absence in both the liberal and communitarian positions.
Liberals neglect the ways in which the self is constituted by social relations,
whilst communitarians tend to idealize these social relations; neither can take
full account of the myriad of ways in which power relations operate. It makes
sense, Frazer and Lacey insist against critics like Iris Marion Young, to say that
power can be redistributed and equalized; the liberal 'distributivist' paradigm
remains useful, however incomplete (192—4). Of course the difficulty with these
insights is how we are to make use of them in the public domain, since legislation
and regulation are often clumsy and oppressive ways of dealing with the intricacies
of interpersonal relations, however unjust. Democracy here enters the argument,
as Frazer and Lacey note the importance of 'dialogic' practices which allow
hitherto inaudible voices to be heard (203—12). One wonders, however, if, having
rejected the value of impartiality as a measure against which the claims of diverse
groups might be assessed, this emphasis on power and democracy might not
make for an arbitrariness in the political process not unlike that for which the
authors attacked postmodernism.7
The Politics of Community is a very useful volume which critically surveys
current political thought with some interesting poststructuralist resources in a
clear-headed and judicious manner. The book's marriage of different disciplines
and approaches is both fresh and compelling; political theorists be they liberal,
communitarian, feminist or postmodern, have much to learn from this example
of intellectual cosmopolitanism. Frazer and Lacey admit that 'no blueprint for

7
As I suggest in 'Some Disquiet About "Difference"' (1993) 13:2 Praxis ImtnumonaL
SPRING 1996 Feminism and the Critique of Political Theory 183
the ideal society' (207) is on offer, and so long as we are social beings whose
interests are historically conditioned, they are probably right not to promise one.
Still, much needs to be done to give content to the idea of a political theory
which eschews foundaoonalism whilst continuing the modern project of social
justice. Frazer and Laceys suggestion that we appeal to 'framework features of
the human condition', universal needs which any theory must address, is a
promising start (185). In the cacophony of old and new voices of a post-
structuralist, postliberal polity, feminists and egalitarians of all kinds will doubtless
need to develop ideas of social being, drawn from communitarians, and social
justice, drawn from welfarist liberals, if we hope to be both fair and open in our
dealings with each other.