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Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory by Nancy Fraser Review by: Patricia S. Mann Hypatia, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Summer, 1991), pp. 225-228 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Hypatia, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810111 . Accessed: 15/02/2012 03:53
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by questionshe set out to address arguingthat the real and apparentdesiresof women can be distinguishedthroughreferenceto a "trueself."The "trueself" she offers,however, is only a slightly reworkedversion of the Enlightenment subject.What feminist theory needs is a conception of self that displacesthe Enlightenmentdichotomies,a self that can accountforresistanceand creativity without recourseto a transcendentconstitutingsubject. Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in ContemporarySocial Theory. By NANCY FRASER.Minneapolis:University of MinnesotaPress, 1989. Patricia Mann S. Nancy Fraseris a socialist feminist and a philosopher.While the essaysin were written separatelyover the past decade, Frasersuggests UnrulyPractices and that we read them as "the recordof one socialist-feminist's formerNew Leftactivist'sstruggleto bea politicallycommitted,criticalintellectualwithin the academy"(2). Fraser's with that of other membersof odysseycorresponds a studentgenerationwhose intellectualandpersonaldevelopmentwasineradicably affectedby their participationin the civil rights,antiwar,and feminist activismof the sixties and seventies, and who then went on in the eighties to pursue careers within mainstreamsocial institutions such as the academy. UnrulyPractices providesa fascinatingview of the complex intellectual negotiations a politically savvy womanchooses to make in orderto be heardin an academiccontext. Fraserwas "trained"(the technical terminologyis indicative of the selfunderstandingof American philosopherstoday) as an analytic philosopher, but like manyothersof her political generationin variousdisciplines,she finds her intellectual mooringin currentEuropean social theory.Out of eight essays in Unruly Practices, three are on the French philosopher of history Michel Foucault, one is on recent Parisianintellectual debates about the political implicationsof JacquesDerrida's theory of deconstruction,and another is on the treatmentof genderwithin the workofJiirgenHabermas, Germansocial a theoristwho continues the Frankfurt School tradition.These aretheoretically mostreadilyby that interdisciplinary demandingessaysandwill be appreciated and group of academic feminists, poststructuralists, post-Marxistswho frequently identify their workas "cultural politics." Recent continental social theory provides an important foundation for anyone attemptingto articulatea genderedtheoreticalposition, and yet it is also a highly problematicsource of supportfor a socialist-feministpolitics. Fraser's essaysreflect this tension, both directlyin termsof her criticalanalysis of these thinkers,and also indirectlyin termsof her not-fully-satisfyingeffort

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to formulateher own socialist-feministcritical theory in the concluding two The problemlies in the negative theoretical essaysof UnrulyPractices. primary legacy of the Marxiantraditionwith respectto issuesof political agency and social progress.Fraserconfrontsthis issue repeatedlyyet cannot finally articulate what distinguishesthe politics of women as feminists from that of other social groups. Political activism of the sixties and seventies gained its sense of political agency from the immediate conflicts at hand. The strugglesagainst racism, war sexism, and a "racist-imperialist" in Vietnam took their politics from an eclectic theoreticalbrew,drawing upon the pacifismof Gandhi at one moment and HerbertMarcuse's theory of participatory democracyin the next. Yet for subsequentefforts to theorize sexual and racial oppression,Marx'stheory of the economic oppressionof the workingclass providedthe dominant model. One of the foundationstones of this theory of oppressionwas the critiqueof the basicliberalideal of individualeconomic andpolitical agency.Only a very few workerswill ever raisethemselvesout of povertyby their own individual must give up their illusionsof individualsocial efforts,Marxargued.Workers agency and struggletogether as a class againstthe capitalistoppressors. The liberal ideal of individual economic and political agency survived Marx'scritique, of course, and is even seeing a powerfulresurgencetoday in the context of the waning of communismin the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.But the theoretical implicationsof Marx'scritique of the efficacyof individualagency in struggling againstvariousformsof social oppressionwent The relationship beyondhis own applicationof them in termsof classstruggle. between individualagencyand variousformsof social oppressionis one of the primaryconcerns today within continental social theory and is particularly salient within the worksof the late Michel Foucault.Fraser cogently explains why Foucault,with his analysisof the insidiousrelationshipbetween power and knowledgeand his theory of the "capillary" qualityof relationsof power and domination, provides profound support for feminist investigations of belief that subjectivoppression.And yet, with his "antihumanist" patriarchal ity in all its guisesis no more than a means of domination,Foucaultseems to deny the possibilityof the political effortsof womento resistmale domination. uses the argumentative Fraser machineryof analyticphilosophyto neutralize expertly Foucault'santihumanism.Then, with a "feministmacho" nonchawork on "the reassessment of lance, she simply assertsthat ground-breaking humanism"is presentlybeing done by a numberof feminists,some of whom she lists (51-52). JiirgenHabermasis the most significantsocial thinker presentlywilling to of defendhumanistparadigms individualagency,and Fraser's essayexplicating is his social-theoreticalframework extremelyinteresting.While "takingseriously his professedsupportfor the cause of women's liberation"(7), Fraser uncoversa "gendersubtext"within his theorythat makesit impossibleforhim

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to appreciatethe emancipatorypotential of many social changes associated with the recent women'smovement.She berateshim for making"no mention in his schema of any childrearer role" (125). She also criticizeshis view that for to it is "pathological" childrearing become incorporated into the systemof economic labor,forcefullyarguingthat Habermas's paid position amountsto "adefense of an institutionalarrangement that is widelyheld to be one, if not the, linchpin of modem women'ssubordination" (121-22). Though Fraserintends to drawfrom her critique of Habermasa sense of "whatthe categorialframework a socialist-feminist of criticaltheoryof welfare state capitalismshould look like" (138), her critical insights do not translate so readilyinto positive wisdom.In the last two essaysof UnrulyPractices, Fraser to articulatea socialist-feminist of the currentwelfarestate by attempts theory She argues focusing on what she terms "the politics of need interpretation." that there mustbe a genderedreinterpretation the needs that a welfarestate of shouldsatisfy.In one essay,Fraser focuseson the differentialtreatmentof men and women when they become dependent upon the state, contrasting the social stigmatizationwhich attaches to "feminine""means-tested" programs like AFDC with the greaterdignityaccordedrecipientsof "masculine" "social insurance"programs.Only the latter treat those who receive benefits as In the "rights-bearers." a secondessay,Fraser analyzes processes which needs by associatedwith women and the family,such as needs forchildcare traditionally services enter the public sphere and become politicized and depoliticized. In contrastwith feministswho oppose "rights-talk," Fraserbelieves that insofar as individualsin this society areempowered having the state'sresponsibility by towardthem articulatedas a matterof legal rights,the most significantneeds of women too should be translatedinto "socialrights." While I disagreewith very little of what Fraser saysin these essays,I think she fails to meet the goal she has set herself of providing "the sort of big diagnostic picture necessary to orient [the current] political practice" of socialistfeminism(11). Perhapsthe goal is simplytoo ambitiousfor any single individualto satisfy.Yet I wish Fraser made more of an effortto call upon had the resourcesof analytic philosophy.It is true that analyticphilosopherslook all the way back to ImmanuelKant and JeremyBenthamfor their paradigms of social relations.This disciplinaryfustinessexplains the great resistanceto theories of gender within philosophy;yet this two-hundred-year vacuum in social philosophy also explains the one advantagethat philosophyholds out to a feminist. Unfazedbecauseuntouchedby Marxianor Freudiannotions of the social constitution of individuals,or by the irrationalitiesof individual thought, philosophy offers an outmoded yet still seaworthyvessel for any thinker seeking to ride out the storms of postmodem disillusionmentwith notions of agency and progress. Had Fraser utilizedthe worksof analyticpolitical thinkerswhen she finally came to formulateher socialist-feminist theoryof the welfarestate, she could

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have exploited the admittedly very "thin" theories of political agency and individualrights available within political philosophy today.Alan Gewirth, forexample,has argued that a "rightto well-being"is asfundamental a "right as to freedom"insofaras both freedomand well-being are necessaryconditions of voluntaryaction by individuals.Although Gewirth'stheory is Kantianand socialist-feminist abstract,it offerspotential, if unwitting,supportfor Fraser's of needs. I think feministtheoryis most transgressive when it implicates theory the theories of such well-meaning liberals in its designs. Moreover, in addressingmainstreamthinkers, we insert ourselves into the tradition and become its cutting edge (Gewirth 1978).1 In Unruly Practices,Fraserbrings an analytic philosopher'sconcern for conceptual clarity to the daunting task of evaluating the work of an elusive vanguardof social theorists.For those who have experiencedconfusion and frustrationin attempting to squarean apparently"naive"feminist commitment to political agency and social progress with myriadformsof modem and social pessimism,Fraser's with social hope,"will postmoder essays,"seasoned Generousin her appreciation these male "master of thinkers," provegratifying. Fraser makesit clear that her theoreticalbottom line is socialist feminism.

NOTES

1. See Okin(1989)fora recent feminist to into gender the widely attempt insert of liberal of discussed, theory justice JohnRawls.

REFERENCES

Alan.1978.Reason morality. and of Press. Gewirth, Chicago: University Chicago

and New York: BasicBooks. Okin, SusanMoller.1989.Justice, gender, thefamily.

Feminism/Postmoderism. Editedby LINDA NICHOLSON. New Yorkand London:Routledge, 1990. AndreaNye The paperscollected in Feminism/Postmodemism, edited by Linda Nicholson, are a responseto the challenge presentedby two recent developments. First, after an initial period of apparentunity in the contemporaryfeminist movement, angryvoices began to be heardquestioninga feminist humanism that threatenedto be as exclusionaryof those who arenot white, middleclass, and heterosexual as is the much indicted-masculineversion of humanism.