Abstract
A feminist-pragmatist conception of selfhood posits selves as agents, who are able to realize change, and who are therefore responsible for transforming oppressive systems.1 While extreme victimization of course diminishes one’s capacity to effect change,2 living in oppressive systems does not render one totally consumed by patriarchal norms, that is, one is still endowed with habits relatively unaffected by said norms. When these habits clash with their oppressive counterparts, the possibility for change arises, and the dynamic-yet-stable self may be spurred to explore the protracted doubt of one’s life, thereby resulting in raised consciousness.
Inclusion ought not to mean simply the formal and abstract equality of all members of the polity as citizens. It means explicitly acknowledging social differentiations and divisions and encouraging differently situated groups to give voice to their needs, interests, and perspectives on the society in ways that meet conditions of reasonableness and publicity.
—Young, Inclusion and Democracy
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Notes
Bar On, B.-A. and Ferguson, A., Daring to Be Good: Essays in Feminist Ethico-Politics, Routledge, London, 1998.
I follow Kate Millett, amongst others, in linking power and politics— see Millett, K., Sexual Politics, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1971, p. 23.
Schofield, “Aristotle’s Political Ethics” in The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Kraut, R. (ed.), Blackwell, Oxford, 2006, p. 305.
Tronto, J., Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethics of Care, Routledge, London, 1993, p. 38.
Dewey, J., Individualism, Old and New in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1953, Vol. 5: 1929–1930, Boydston, J. A. (ed.), Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale & Edwardsville, 1984, p. 96.
Bartky, S. L., “Skin Deep: Femininity as a Disciplinary Regime” in Daring to Be Good: Essays in Feminist Ethico-Politics, Bar On, B.-A. and Ferguson, A. (eds.), Routledge, London, 1998, p. 15.
For more on this see Daley, C. and Nolan, M. (eds.), Suffrage and Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives, New York University Press, New York, 1994.
Dewey, J., Liberalism and Social Action in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1953, Vol. 11: 1935–1937, Boydston, J. A. (ed.), Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale & Edwardsville, 1987, p. 44.
An interesting discussion of the charge of social engineering can be found in Kaufman-Osborn, T. V., “Pragmatism, Policy Science and the State” in John Dewey: Critical Assessments, Vol. 2, Tiles, J. E. (ed.), Routledge, London, 1992.
For more on gendered citizenship as it exists across demarcations of public and private, see Pateman, C., The Sexual Contract, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1988;
and Okin, S. M., Justice, Gender and the Family, Basic Books, New York, 1989.
Young, I. M., Inclusion and Democracy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000.
See, amongst others, Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, Reason and the Rationalization of Society, Heinemann, London, 1984;
Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2, Life World and Systems: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, Polity, Cambridge, 1987;
and Habermas, J., Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, Polity, Cambridge, 1990.
See Ratner, S. (ed.), The Philosopher of the Common Man: Essays in Honour of John Dewey to Celebrate His Eightieth Birthday, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1940.
For more on consciousness see Dewey, J., “‘Consciousness’ and Experience” in The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays, Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1910;
For more on Dewey’s pluralism and contextualism, see Rosenthal, S. B., “The Individual, the Community, and the Reconstruction of Values” in Philosophy and the Reconstruction of Culture: Pragmatic Essays after Dewey, Stuhr, J. (ed.), State University of New York, Albany, 1993;
and Bernstein, R. J., “Community in the Pragmatic Tradition” in The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture, Dickstein, M. (ed.), Duke University Press, Durham & London, 1998.
Addams, J., Democracy and Social Ethics, Seigfried, C. H. (ed.), University of Illinois Press, Urbana & Chicago, 2002, Chapter 1.
Addams, J., The Long Road of Woman’s Memory, Seigfried, C. H. (ed.), University of Illinois Press, Urbana & Chicago, 2002.
For more on the influences on Addams’s writing and style, see Joslin, K., “Reading Jane Addams in the Twenty-first Century” in Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams, Hamington, M. (ed.), 2010.
Notably, Seigfried draws attention to Addams’s pragmatic method—see, for example, Seigfried, C. H., “Introduction to the Illinois Edition” in Democracy and Social Ethics, University of Illinois Press, Urbana & Chicago, 2002.
Melton, D. H., “Making Character Disposition Matter in Iris Young’s Deliberative Democracy” in Dancing with Iris: The Philosophy of Iris Marion Young, Ferguson, A. and Nagel, M. (eds.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009, p. 174.
McAfee, N., “Democracy’s Normativity,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 22, No. 4, 2008, p. 264.
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© 2014 Clara Fischer
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Fischer, C. (2014). Democracy and Change as Transaction. In: Gendered Readings of Change. Breaking Feminist Waves. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137342720_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137342720_6
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