Fortunes of Feminism (31 page)

4
In what follows I shall leave aside a problem with Butler's rendition of the argument of
Justice Interruptus
. She presents me as arguing categorically that heterosexism is a pure injustice of misrecognition, unalloyed by maldistribution. In fact, I discussed the issue hypothetically in the mode of a thought experiment. Aiming to disclose the distinctive logics of redistribution claims and recognition claims respectively, I invited readers to imagine a conceptual spectrum of oppressed collectivities, ranging from ideal-typical victims of pure maldistribution at one end, to ideal-typical victims of pure misrecognition at the other end, with hybrid or “bivalent” cases in the middle. In this hypothetical spirit, I sketched a conception of a “despised sexuality” as a concrete approximation of the ideal type at the misrecognition end of the spectrum, while explicitly noting that this conception of sexuality was controversial, and leaving open the question of whether and how closely it corresponded to the actually existing homosexual collectivities struggling for justice in the real world. Thus, my “misrecognition” analysis of heterosexism in
Justice Interruptus
is far more qualified than Butler lets on. Recently, moreover, I have argued that for practical purposes, virtually all real-world oppressed collectivities are “bivalent.” Virtually all, that is, have both an economic and a status component; virtually all, therefore, suffer both maldistribution and misrecognition
in forms where neither of those injustices is a mere indirect effect of the other but where each has some independent weight
. Nevertheless, not all are bivalent in the same way, nor to the same degree. Some axes of oppression tilt more heavily toward the distribution end of the spectrum, others incline more to the recognition end, while still others cluster closer to the center. On this account, heterosexism, while consisting in part in maldistribution, consists primarily in injustices of misrecognition and is rooted predominantly in a status order that constructs homosexuality as devalued and that institutes it as a despised sexuality. For the original argument, see my “From Redistribution to Recognition?” For the subsequent refinement, see my chapters in Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth,
Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange
, London: Verso Books, 2003, especially Chapter 1, “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation,” 7–109.

5
In general, one should distinguish several questions here: 1) the nature of the injustices in question; 2) their ultimate causes; 3) the contemporary causal mechanisms that reproduce them; and 4) their remedies. I am grateful to Erik Olin Wright for this point (private communication, 1997).

6
Eli Zaretsky,
Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life
, New York: Harper & Row, 1976.

7
Thus, the definitional argument simply pushes the need for distinctions to another level. Of course, one
might
say that a political claim can be economic in either of two ways: first, by contesting the production and distribution of economic value, including surplus value; and second, by contesting the production and reproduction of norms, significations, and constructions of personhood, including those concerning sexuality. But I fail to see how this improves on my simpler strategy of restricting the term “economic” to its capitalist meaning and distinguishing claims for recognition from claims for redistribution.

8
In this brief essay I cannot take up the important but difficult question of how the economic/cultural distinction is best applied to the critical theory of contemporary capitalist society. I discuss this matter at length, however, in “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics.” Rejecting the view of economy and culture as separate spheres, I propose a critical approach that reveals the hidden connections between them. The point, in other words, is to use the distinction against the grain, making visible, and subject to critique, both the cultural subtexts of apparently economic processes and the economic subtexts of apparently cultural processes. Such a
perspectival dualism
, as I call it, is only possible, of course, once we have the economic/cultural distinction.

9
At another level, however, I mean to endorse deconstruction. It represents an approach to the politics of recognition that is often superior, in my view, to standard identity politics. A deconstructive politics of recognition is transformative, not affirmative, of existing group identities and differentiations. In this respect, it has affinities with socialism, which I understand as a transformative, as opposed to affirmative, approach to the politics of redistribution. (For this argument, see my “From Redistribution to Recognition?'') Nevertheless, I do not find deconstruction useful at the level Butler invokes it here, namely, the level of social theory.

PART III

Feminism Resurgent?

Confronting Capitalist Crisis in the Neoliberal Era

8

Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World
^*

Globalization is changing the way we argue about justice. Not so long ago, in the heyday of social democracy, disputes about justice presumed what I shall call a “Keynesian-Westphalian frame.” Typically played out within modern territorial states, arguments about justice were assumed to concern relations among fellow citizens, to be subject to debate within national publics, and to contemplate redress by national states. This was true for each of two major families of justice claims—claims for socioeconomic redistribution and claims for legal or cultural recognition. At a time when the Bretton Woods system facilitated Keynesian economic steering at the national level, claims for redistribution usually focused on economic inequities within territorial states. Appealing to national public opinion for a fair share of the national pie, claimants sought intervention by national states in national economies. Likewise, in an era still gripped by a Westphalian political imaginary, which sharply distinguished “domestic” from “international” space, claims for recognition generally concerned internal status hierarchies. Appealing to the national conscience for an end to nationally institutionalized disrespect, claimants pressed national governments to outlaw discrimination and accommodate differences among citizens. In both cases, the Keynesian-Westphalian frame was taken for granted. Whether the matter concerned redistribution or recognition, class differentials or status hierarchies, it went without saying that the unit within which justice applied was the modern territorial state.
¹

To be sure, there were always exceptions. Occasionally, famines and genocides galvanized public opinion across borders. And some cosmopolitans and anti-imperialists sought to promulgate globalist views.
²
But these were exceptions that proved the rule. Relegated to the sphere of “the international,” they were subsumed within a problematic that was focused primarily on matters of security, as opposed to justice. The effect was to reinforce, rather than to challenge, the Keynesian-Westphalian frame. That framing of disputes about justice generally prevailed by default from the end of World War II through the 1970s.

Although it went unnoticed at the time, the Keynesian-Westphalian frame gave a distinctive shape to arguments about social justice. Taking for granted the modern territorial state as the appropriate unit, and its citizens as the pertinent subjects, such arguments turned on
what
precisely those citizens owed one another. In the eyes of some, it sufficed that citizens be formally equal before the law; for others, equality of opportunity was also required; for still others, justice demanded that all citizens gain access to the resources and respect they needed in order to be able to participate on a par with others, as full members of the political community. The argument focused, in other words, on
what
should count as a just ordering of social relations within a society. Engrossed in disputing the “what” of justice, the contestants apparently felt no need to dispute the “who.” With the Keynesian-Westphalian frame securely in place, it went without saying that the “who” was the national citizenry.

Today, however, the Keynesian-Westphalian frame is losing its aura of self-evidence. Thanks to heightened awareness of globalization, many observe that the social processes shaping their lives routinely overflow territorial borders. They note, for example, that decisions taken in one territorial state often impact the lives of those outside it, as do the actions of transnational corporations, international currency speculators, and large institutional investors. Many also note the growing salience of supranational and international organizations, both governmental and nongovernmental, and of transnational public opinion, which flows with supreme disregard for borders through global mass media and cybertechnology. The result is a new sense of vulnerability to transnational forces. Faced with global warming, the spread of AIDS, international terrorism, and superpower unilateralism, many believe that their chances for living good lives depend at least as much on processes that trespass the borders of territorial states as on those contained within them.

Under these conditions, the Keynesian-Westphalian frame no longer goes without saying. For many, it has ceased to be axiomatic that the modern territorial state is the appropriate unit for thinking about issues of justice. Nor can it pass by default that the citizens of such states are the pertinent subjects. The effect is to destabilize the previous structure of political claims-making—and therefore to change the way we argue about social justice.

This is true for both major families of justice claims. In today's world, claims for redistribution increasingly eschew the assumption of national economies. Faced with transnationalized production, the outsourcing of jobs, and the associated pressures of the “race to the bottom,” once nationally focused labor unions look increasingly for allies abroad. Inspired by the Zapatistas, meanwhile, impoverished peasants and indigenous peoples link their struggles against despotic local and national authorities to critiques of transnational corporate predation and global neoliberalism. Finally, WTO protestors, Occupy movements, and
indignados
directly target the new governance structures of the global economy, which have vastly strengthened the ability of large corporations and investors to escape the regulatory and taxation powers of territorial states.

In the same way, movements struggling for recognition increasingly look beyond the territorial state. Under the slogan “women's rights are human rights,” for example, feminists throughout the world are linking struggles against local patriarchal practices to campaigns to reform international law. Meanwhile, religious and ethnic minorities, who face discrimination within territorial states, are reconstituting themselves as diasporas and building transnational publics from which to mobilize international opinion. Finally, transnational coalitions of human-rights activists have worked to build new cosmopolitan institutions, such as the International Criminal Court, which can punish state violations of human dignity.

In such cases, disputes about justice are exploding the Keynesian-Westphalian frame. No longer addressed exclusively to national states or debated exclusively by national publics, claimants no longer focus solely on relations among fellow citizens. Thus, the grammar of argument has altered. Whether the issue is distribution or recognition, disputes that used to focus exclusively on the question of
what
is owed as a matter of justice to community members now turn quickly into disputes about
who
should count as a member and
which
is the relevant community. Not just the “what” but also the “who” is up for grabs.

Today, in other words, arguments about justice assume a double guise. On the one hand, they concern first-order questions of substance, just as before: How much economic inequality does justice permit, how much redistribution is required, and according to which principle of distributive justice? What constitutes equal respect, which kinds of differences merit public recognition, and by which means? But above and beyond such first-order questions, arguments about justice today also concern second-order, meta-level questions: What is the proper frame within which to consider first-order questions of justice? Who are the relevant subjects entitled to a just distribution or reciprocal recognition in the given case? Thus, it is not only the substance of justice, but also the frame, which is in dispute.
³

The result is a major challenge to our theories of social justice. Preoccupied largely with first-order issues of distribution and/or recognition, these theories have so far failed to develop conceptual resources for reflecting on the meta-issue of the frame. As things stand, therefore, it is by no means clear that they are capable of addressing the double character of problems of justice in a globalizing age.
⁴

In this essay, I shall propose a strategy for thinking about the problem of the frame. I shall argue, first, that in order to deal satisfactorily with this problem, the theory of justice must become three-dimensional, incorporating the political dimension of
representation
, alongside the economic dimension of distribution and the cultural dimension of recognition. I shall also argue, second, that the political dimension of representation should itself be understood as encompassing three levels. The combined effect of these two arguments will be to make visible a third question, beyond those of the “what” and the “who,” which I shall call the question of the “how.” That question, in turn, inaugurates a paradigm shift: what the Keynesian-Westphalian frame casts as the theory of social justice must now become a theory of
post-Westphalian democratic justice
.

1. FOR A THREE-DIMENSIONAL THEORY OF JUSTICE:

ON THE SPECIFICITY OF THE POLITICAL

Let me begin by explaining what I mean by justice in general and by its political dimension in particular. In my view, the most general meaning of justice is parity of participation. According to this radical-democratic interpretation of the principle of equal moral worth, justice requires social arrangements that permit all to participate as peers in social life. Overcoming injustice means dismantling institutionalized obstacles that prevent some people from participating on a par with others, as full partners in social interaction. Previously, I have analyzed two distinct kinds of obstacles to participatory parity, which correspond to two distinct species of injustice.
⁵
On the one hand, people can be impeded from full participation by economic structures that deny them the resources they need in order to interact with others as peers; in that case they suffer from distributive injustice or maldistribution. On the other hand, people can also be prevented from interacting on terms of parity by institutionalized hierarchies of cultural value that deny them the requisite standing; in that case they suffer from status inequality or misrecognition.
⁶
In the first case, the problem is the class structure of society, which corresponds to the economic dimension of justice. In the second case, the problem is the status order, which corresponds to the cultural dimension.
⁷
In modern capitalist societies, the class structure and the status order do not neatly mirror each other, although they interact causally. Rather, each has some autonomy vis-à-vis the other. As a result, misrecognition cannot be reduced to a secondary effect of maldistribution, as some economistic theories of distributive justice appear to suppose. Nor, conversely, can maldistribution be reduced to an epiphenomenal expression of misrecognition, as some culturalist theories of recognition tend to assume. Thus, neither recognition theory alone nor distribution theory alone can provide an adequate understanding of justice for capitalist society. Only a two-dimensional theory, encompassing both distribution and recognition, can supply the necessary levels of social-theoretical complexity and moral-philosophical insight.
⁸

That, at least, is the view of justice I have defended in the past. And this two-dimensional understanding of justice still seems right to me as far as it goes. But I now believe that it does not go far enough. Distribution and recognition could appear to constitute the sole dimensions of justice only insofar as the Keynesian-Westphalian frame was taken for granted. Once the question of the frame becomes subject to contestation, however, the effect is to make visible a third dimension of justice, which was neglected in my previous work—as well as in the work of many other philosophers.
⁹

The third dimension of justice is
the political
. Of course, distribution and recognition are themselves political in the sense of being contested and power-laden; and they have usually been seen as requiring adjudication by the state. But I mean political in a more specific, constitutive sense, which concerns the constitution of the state's jurisdiction and the decision rules by which it structures contestation. The political in this sense furnishes the stage on which struggles over distribution and recognition are played out. Establishing criteria of social belonging, and thus determining who counts as a member, the political dimension of justice specifies the reach of those other dimensions: it tells us who is included in, and who excluded from, the circle of those entitled to a just distribution and reciprocal recognition. Establishing decision rules, the political dimension likewise sets the procedures for staging and resolving contests in both the economic and the cultural dimensions: it tells us not only who can make claims for redistribution and recognition, but also how such claims are to be mooted and adjudicated.

Centered on issues of membership and procedure, the political dimension of justice is concerned chiefly with
representation
. At one level, which pertains to the boundary-setting aspect of the political, representation is a matter of social belonging; what is at issue here is inclusion in, or exclusion from, the community of those entitled to make justice claims on one another. At another level, which pertains to the decision-rule aspect, representation concerns the procedures that structure public processes of contestation. At issue here are the terms on which those included in the political community air their claims and adjudicate their disputes.
¹⁰
At both levels, the question can arise as to whether the relations of representation are just. One can ask: Do the boundaries of the political community wrongly exclude some who are actually entitled to representation? Do the community's decision rules accord equal voice in public deliberations and fair representation in public decision-making to all members? Such issues of representation are specifically political. Conceptually distinct from both economic and cultural questions, they cannot be reduced to the latter, although, as we shall see, they are inextricably interwoven with them.