Reading Summary

Globalizing Feminist Ethics

ALISON M. JAGGAR

The feminist conception of discourse offered below differs zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAfrom classical discourse ethics. Arguing that inequalities of power are even more conspicuous in global than in local contexts, I note that a global discourse community s e e m to be emerging among feminists, and I explore zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAthe zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBArole played by small communities in feminism's attempts to reconcile a commitment to open discussion, on the one hand, with a

recognition of the realities of power inequalities, on the other.

Global trade and interaction are not new but their current intensification is

unprecedented.' Local communities have never been completely closed but

now their boundaries have become so porous that people speak of community

disintegration. Economies have never been entirely self-sufficient but never

before has international trade been so crucial to the prosperity and even the

survival of local economies. These developments have raised new problems for

moral and political philosophy and so for feminist ethics.

Women are located at the center of these contemporary developments.

They constitute a large and increasing portion of the labor force in many newly

industrializing as well as industrialized countries; they (with their children)

constitute 80 percent of the world's refugees; they are trafficked in a world wide prostitution trade; and their bodies are the site of technological interventions

designed both to promote and to control fertility. At the same time, women are frequently taken zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas emblems of cultural integrity, so that defending belea- guered cultures becomes equated with preserving traditional forms of feminin-

ity, especially as these are manifest in traditional female dress and practices of

marriage and sexuality. Thus, women are situated in the vortex of contending

social forces: on the one hand, centripetal tendencies toward increasing glob-

alization and integration and, o n the other hand, centrifugal tendencies toward nationalism and fragmentation.

Contemporary moral theory reproduces these tensions, counterposing a

universalistic discourse of human rights against approaches such as communi-

Hypatia vol. 13, no. 2 (Spring zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA1998) 0 by Alison M. Jaggar

8 Hypatia

tarianism and postmodernism which emphasize the local and so are often construed zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas relativist. In this context, philosophers’ increasing rejection of moral foundationalism makes it difficult to see how conventional and local

norms may be subjected to systematic moral critique. My larger project, from

which this paper emerges, is to develop an account of practical moral reason

that shows how respect for cultural difference may be combined with claims to

postconventional moral objectivity. In developing this account, I draw on the dialogical tradition in Western moral theory that stretches from Plato, through

Locke and Kant, to Rawls and Habermas, and I take seriously the values that lie at the heart of this tradition, including the values of discursive equality,

openness and inclusiveness. In addition to being inspired by this philosophical

tradition, my own understanding of practical discourse is also shaped by reflection on the discursive practices of recent feminist grassroots activism in

North America.*

As developed by Karl-Otto Ape1 and Juergen Habermas, classical discourse

ethics defines moral justification in terms of universal consensus in conditions

of domination-free communication. This definition is often derided as uto-

pian-and so ultimately skeptical-for reasons that include not only practical

difficulties of establishing universal discourse but also what appear to be

insurmountable difficulties of principle, notably the impossibility of imple- menting like domination-free communication. Yet even though such problems

are even more conspicuous in global than in local contexts, the beginnings of

a global discourse community nevertheless seem to be emerging among femi-

nists. These beginnings are most visible in official and semiofficial venues,

such as the several UN Conferences on women since 1975 and their accom- panying nongovernmental organization (NGO) fora, but they are also evident

in a multitude of ongoing interactions among grassroots groups, such as the Network of Eastmest women and the Women’s Global Network for Repro-

ductive Rights.

One respect in which a feminist conception of practical moral discourse

differs from that of classical discourse ethics is that it addresses directly

issues of discursive equality and openness in situations inevitably structured

by power. This paper begins to explore the role played by small communi- ties in feminism’s attempts to reconcile a commitment to open discussion,

o n the one hand, with a recognition of the realities of power inequalities,

o n the other.

ILLUSTRATING THE PROBLEM

My own conception of practical moral discourse seeks to reconstruct the norms guiding the discursive practices of many late twentieth-century groups

of North American feminist activists. These groups have often limited discur-

sive openness in two related ways. One way is by limiting their agendas:

Alison M. Jaggar 9

activist groups typically come together around certain moral convictions, such

as opposing militarism or violence against women; rather than debating these

basic moral commitments, they devote themselves instead to exploring their

implications. Unquestioned within the group, such commitments become

foundational for groups’ moral perspectives. The second way in which groups

have often limited discursive openness is by restricting participation in their

discussions, excluding individuals who do not share the basic commitments of

the group or who do not have “standing” because they are outsiders.

The exclusion of outsiders or the closure of moral agendas are sometimes de

facto but sometimes are matters of explicit and fierce insistence. For example, some prostitutes’ groups have emphatically rejected middle-class feminist

analyses of them zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas victims of sexual exploitation; African American women have sometimes asserted that domestic violence and rape by African American

men are topics off-limits to European Americans; some lesbian women have

sought to exclude heterosexual women from discussing certain lesbian prac-

tices; and, outside the West, some North African women have objected to

Western feminist criticisms of the practices of clitoridectomy and infibulation.

One especially bitter controversy arose around an article co-authored by two

Australian women, an anthropologist of European descent and a “traditional” Aboriginal woman. This article exposed astronomical rates of violence and

rape, including frequent gang-rape, committed by Aboriginal men against

Aboriginal women. The truth of the allegations was undisputed, but some

Aboriginal women objected that it was inappropriate for this topic to be

broached by a white woman, even in collaboration with an Aborigine (Bell and Nelson 1989; Larbalestier 1990; Bell 1990, 1991a, 1991b; Klein 1991;

Huggins et al. 1991; Nelson 1991). Closing some debates and excluding some

topics from some people’s intervention seem to run entirely counter to the

ideal of free and open discussion as that has been understood in Western moral philosophy. I shall suggest, however, that a feminist conception of moral discourse may be able to justify such exclusions without denying that ideal and

may even do so in its name.

Groups of women who have sought to remove their lives from the critical

scrutiny of outsider feminists have offered a number of rationales for their

desire. Prostitutes’ groups have argued that middle-class feminists are ignorant

of the real conditions of prostitute life and some North African women have

argued that Western feminists do not understand the role of clitoridectomy and

infibulation in African cultures. In both cases, the groups whose practices have been challenged by outsiders allege that the criticism is inadequately informed.

Sometimes they also express concern that open discussion of certain issues m a y

have deleterious consequences for their community; for instance, some lesbi-

ans worry that drawing attention to controversial lesbian practices may

encourage attacks from homophobes and some African American women fear

10 Hypatia

that their community may be divided by discussion of violence inflicted by African American men.

Outsider feminists whose interventions are rejected often remain uncon-

vinced by these argument^.^ Some may respond by asserting their familiarity with the cultures or subcultures in question; others may argue that first-person

experience is not authoritative, noting that victims frequently rationalize their

abuse, as well as their “choices” to remain in abusive situations. The outsiders

may also object t o what they perceive as misplaced concern for “the

community” as a whole at the expense of some women within it. They may

even argue that ignoring the plight of such women is racist or ethnocentric,

insofar as i t suggests a moral double standard according to which high levels of abuse and exploitation are regarded as “culturally acceptable” for some women

but not for others.

In evaluating these difficult and complex issues, it is important to notice

that these examples all share some significant features. In each of the foregoing cases, those who seek to protect their lives from scrutiny belong to a group that

is socially stigmatized, and/or is a cultural minority, and/or has a history of

colonization, while those whom they wish to exclude belong to more powerful

or hegemonic groups. Each of the groups whose practices are in question is

struggling under external pressure to maintain a sense of self-respect and

cultural integrity; and each has been a frequent object of study by psycholo- gists, sociologists, anthropologists, even criminologists from outside that

group. These social scientists have typically assumed that their studies have

made them experts on the lives of those studied, whom they have often

presented zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas exotic, as victims, or as pathological. In this context, some communities’ resistance to opening their lives for

critical feminist examination from the outside may be interpreted less as an attempt to limit the discursive autonomy of others than as a claim to discursive

autonomy for themselves. Women from nonhegemonic groups have good

reason to suppose that if their lives were to become the subject of feminist

discussion, their zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAown perspectives might be discounted. The views of feminists with professional credentials would likely be taken as authoritative, especially

if they were published in scholarly journals, where authors are positioned as experts and those studied become “informants” whose opinions are merely

data for expert analysis. One critic of the white Australian anthropologist

Diane Bell observed that even though Bell’s controversial article was officially

co-authored with an Aboriginal woman, Topsy Napurmla Nelson, Nelson’s

words were placed in italics framed by Bell’s prose, a device that distinguished Nelson’s input from “the dominant White voice controlling the shape and

tone of the academic text” (Larbalestier 1990, 147). Objections to the discursive intervention of feminist outsiders do not nec-

essarily depend on any particular hypothesis about the outsiders’ motivation.

Outsiders may wish to advance their professional reputations by becoming

Alison M. Jaggar zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA11 recognized as experts on some group of marginalized women; they may enjoy

posing zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas the rescuers of victimized women; or they may care deeply for the welfare of the women about whose lives they speak. Regardless of the speakers’ motivations, the structure and context of their discursive interventions may

have the consequence of positioning the subjects of their discourse as less than

equal. In these circumstances, discussion of some issues by some feminists may

not only mute the voices of other women but even suggest that they are

incapable of speaking for themselves. Ironically, it was precisely the recogni-

tion of these kinds of oppressive dynamics that led Western women to form the

feminist groups in which they developed the sorts of discursive practices that

I now call Feminist Practical Dialogue. Reflection o n the previous examples reveals that idealized understandings

of practical discourses as politically innocuous exchanges of ideas occurring in

some timeless domain are seriously misleading. To address the moral and political issues surrounding empirical discourse, feminists must recognize that

practical discussions are historical events with real-life consequences, not all

of which may be controlled or foreseen. In addition, we must never forget that

empirical discussions are always infused with power, which influences who is

able to participate and who is excluded, who speaks and who listens, whose

remarks are heard and whose dismissed, which topics are addressed and which are not, what is questioned and what is taken for granted, even whether a

discussion takes place at all. These aspects of moral discourse should be

considered not only in feminist practice but also in philosophical theory. For

instance, philosophers can appeal to them in explaining why inclusive partic-

ipation and an open agenda may, on some occasions, impede rather than

promote unconstrained discussion. Such considerations also help to explain

the epistemological indispensability of closed communities of discourse.

THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL INDISPENSABILITY OF CLOSED COMMUNITIES

Themes of voice and silencing have been central to twentieth-century

Western feminism and by now there exists an extensive feminist literature

dissecting women’s domination in or exclusion from discourse. One classic

discussion is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak‘s essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,”

in which the author details how “subaltern” Third World women have been

represented in discourse in ways that have obscured their subjectivity while

promoting the interests of the authors of the texts. (Spivak 1988) In Spivak’s example, Indian widows immolated on their husbands’ funeral pyres in the

practice of zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAsuti were represented by some British colonizers as victims who must be saved from the slaughter of “backward practices” and by some Indian men as heroes loyal to “Indian” cultural traditions! In both Marxist structuralist and post-structuralist accounts the widows’ subjectivities were equally invisi-

ble. Meanwhile, Spivak asserts, the subaltern woman remains mute because

12 Hypatia

she herself “cannot know or speak the text of female exploitation’’ (Spivak

1988,288).

W h y the subaltern woman cannot zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAspeak of her exploitation at first does not appear mysterious; perhaps this is Spivak‘s rhetorical way of saying that her

indigenous language is incomprehensible to intellectuals or that she cannot

produce “texts” because she is illiterate. But why can’t she even know about her exploitation? Even if she is unfamiliar with classic texts of exploitation,

such as Marxism, surely she must be aware that there is something wrong with

her situation. How can she be content in her oppression? One answer to this

puzzle is suggested by Indian feminist Uma Narayan:

Girls (of my grandmother’s background) were married off

barely past puberty, trained for nothing beyond household tasks

and the rearing of children, and passed from economic depen-

dency on their fathers to economic dependency on their hus-

bands to economic dependency on their sons in old age. Their

criticisms of their lot were articulated, if at all, in terms that

precluded a desire for any radical change. They saw themselves

as personally unfortunate, but they did not locate the causes of

their misery in larger social arrangements. (Narayan 1989,

267-68)

Narayan’s words suggest that the Subaltern woman’s muteness is rooted not

in slavish contentment but in her inability to conceptualize the injustice to

which she is subjected. Like all diagnoses, this analysis implies the appropriate

remedy: what the subaltern woman needs is a conceptual framework, a lan-

guage capable of articulating her injuries, needs, and aspirations. The existing

discourses or texts of exploitation do not provide such a language: even when

they promise explicitly to liberate the subaltern, they obscure the distinctive

nature of her oppression; indeed, by purporting to speak for her, they position her as mute. In order to articulate her specific exploitation, the subaltern

woman must create her own language.

Language is a public construct and its absence is a public, not a private,

deficit. Creating a new language is by definition a collective project, not

something that can be accomplished by a single individual; if the subaltern

woman seeks to enter practical discourse alone, therefore, her experience is

likely to remain distorted and repressed. She can overcome her silence only by

collaborating with other subaltern women in developing a public language for

their shared experiences. She must become part of a group that explicitly

recognizes itself as sharing a common condition of oppression-in Marxist

terms, a group that constitutes itself as a class for itself zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas well as in itself. She must claim a collective identity distinct from her identification as the partic-

ular daughter, wife, and mother of particular others. O n l y by creating a collective identity with other women in similar situations, perhaps with other

Alison M. Jaggar 13

daughters, wives, and mothers, can the subaltern even come to see herself as

subaltern and only in this way can she break through the barriers to her speech.

Articulating women’s distinctive interests requires a language and this, in turn,

requires a community. Without either of these, the emergence of coun-

terhegemonic moral perspectives remains impossible.

Small communities, whose members are known personally to each other,

have been indispensable to the development of Western feminist moral per-

spectives. They have enabled Western feminism to offer alternative under-

standings of social phenomena expressed in a distinct vocabulary that includes

expressions like “sexism,” “womanism,” “sexual objectification,” “date rape,”

“othermother,” “the double day,” “sexual harassment,” “the male gaze,”

“mestizaje,” and “emotional labor.” Such communities typically have focused

on some specific aspect of what they have taken to be women’s subordination

and they have taken some beliefs for granted, as given within that group. They

may have accepted zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas given the wrongness of militarism or rape or domestic violence or pornography, or they may have accepted as given the value of lesbianism or peer counseling or woman-produced music or erotica. Assuming

some such beliefs as foundational for them, the members of the Community

then have gone on to explore the implications of these beliefs and to elaborate

a distinctive moral perspective. For example, once the moral legitimacy of

lesbianism was accepted, lesbians went on to raise questions about why people,

especially women, are heterosexual, about the social and political conse-

quences of a norm of heterosexuality, about the ways in which heterosexuality

is implicated in Western conceptions of gender, and about prevailing defini-

tions of sexuality and family.

It is not only feminists or even moral thinkers whose systems of ideas have

been developed in the context of small personal communities united by adherence to certain beliefs or methods. The history of science is full of

accounts of “invisible colleges” or groups of scientists working from shared

assumptions. David L. Hull calls such groups “demes,” by analogy with local populations of organisms sufficiently isolated that they play an important role

in biological evolution (Hull 1988,433-34). The notion of “schools” of artists,

such as the Bauhaus, is commonplace and philosophers have frequently

worked in groups such as the Jena Circle (to which Hegel belonged), the

Vienna Circle, the Frankfurt School and the Oxford philosophers. All these small, usually face-to-face communities functioned as intellectual crucibles in

which systems zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAof ideas were explored and elaborated. Helen Longino notes that progress in science would be impossible unless

certain questions were closed to debate at least temporarily. She writes:

The knowledge-extending mission of science requires that its

critical mission be blocked. Were the critical dimension of

science not controlled, inquiry would consist in endless testing;

14 Hypatia

endless new proposals and new ideas would be subjected to

critical scrutiny and rejected. (Longino 1990, 223)

Developing systems of moral and political ideas also requires that certain

premises be held constant. By uniting around certain shared assumptions, moral and political communities provide intellectual space in which members

are freed from pressure continually to defend their premises and explain their technical vocabulary. Because they are typically small and the members known personally to each other, communication within such communities is likely to

be informal and rapid. Half-formed ideas may be tried out and sometimes may be developed by members literally thinking together.

When the ideas involved are heretical by the standards of the larger society,

such communities provide emotional zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas well as intellectual support for their members. Patricia Hill Collins asserts that a “realm of relatively safe discourse, however narrow, is a necessary condition for Black women’s resistance” (Col-

lins 1990,95). zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAA single dissenting individual is likely to be labeled crazy, if not wicked, and, in the absence of support, she may even come to regard herself as

wicked or crazy. Maria Lugones observes, “unless resistance is a social activity,

the resister is doomed to failure in the creation of a new universe of meaning,

a new identity, a zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAram zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAmstiza. Meaning that is not in response to and looking for a response fails as meaning” (Lugones 1992, 36). When others share the dissenter’s views or endorse her methods, the conditions exist for developing

an oppositional identity that individuals often find validating, even emancipa-

tory. Sarah Hoagland writes that “coming out zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA(as a lesbian) was, for me, coming home. I experienced the sensation of landing and centering. It is lesbians who inspire me, lesbian energy which enlivens me. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA, . .” (Hoagland 1988,3) Within the safety of her community, the dissenter may feel that finally

she has the freedom to “be herself.” She n o longer has to be on guard or to dissemble. Finally, she is free to be “authentic,” to say-and therefore dis-

cover-what she “really” thinks. Paradoxically, however, the same features

that enable small moral communities to liberate the thinking of their members

often simultaneously operate to limit that thinking.

MORAL AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL HAZARDS OF CLOSED COMMUNITIES

While it is liberating for the members of closed communities to be freed from having to defend their basic assumptions, their thought is also restricted

by the constraints on what may be questioned within those communities. In

scientific communities, shared assumptions often remain hidden and only

idiosyncratic beliefs are challenged (Longino 1990, 233). The same is true in

moral and political communities of right, left, and center, all of which appeal to foundational values often thought to be enshrined in documents taken as

authoritative, such as the Bible, the Communist Manifesto or the U S . Con-

Alison M. Jaggar zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA15 stitution. In consequence, intragroup disagreement is typically cast zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas debate over how to interpret the community’s foundational values or texts.

Although it would be impossible to develop systems of moral and political

ideas unless certain assumptions were temporarily taken for granted, it is

equally true that, if those assumptions are never opened to challenge, the

system based on them becomes a form of dogmatism. Members of the commu-

nity find themselves forced to express questions and disagreements obliquely, perhaps even to suppress them entirely, at best to articulate them in the

approved language, larded with references to the approved texts. People on the

outside may regard the community as a cult, especially if the ideas to which it

is committed are heretical or unorthodox.

All communities exert pressure on their members to conform to the prevail- ing interpretation of their unifying assumptions and values. These pressures are

likely to be especially intense in small oppositional communities beleaguered

by pressures from the larger society. Fearful of assimilation or defeat, such communities may regard internal conformity as a necessary condition of their survival and, in these circumstances, dissent may appear as betrayal. Commu- nity resistance to challenge and change is also likely to be stronger when the members’ self-definitions are centrally bound up with the community as

constituted, since dissent challenges more orthodox members of the commu-

nity to modify their cherished beliefs and threatens values integral to their

sense of who they are. When members regard their identities as inseparable from the community, they may also fear that change in the values of the

community will not only affect the way the community is perceived by

outsiders but also reflect on the members personally. If the community has a leader or leaders, they are likely to feel their authority threatened by dissenters, a challenge they are especially likely to resist if their work with the community

is central to their life activity.

Most small communities encourage conformity through formal or informal

sanctions, even if these are no more than chilliness toward or ridicule of

certain ideas. Often, such communities also seek to strengthen group loyalty

by developing a sense of superiority in relation to the larger society. Commu- nity members are encouraged to view themselves as an enlightened elite, dismissing those who disagree with them as sinful, ignorant, or victims of false

consciousness. This perception may be used to justify different standards of

behavior towards those within and those outside the community. T h e sense

that the community comprises a n in-group enjoying a privileged religious,

scientific, political, or moral perspective also strengthens the community’s

ultimate weapon for enforcing conformity; namely, the threat of expulsion.

Not merely excluded from the group, a nonconformist may be defined as

unworthy to belong to it. She is labeled zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAa heretic or a pagan, a quack or a charlatan, a traitor, a renegade or a counterrevolutionary, n o longer a “true”

feminist or communist, unprofessional, or un-American.

16 Hypatia

The threat of expulsion is the ultimate sanction enforcing conformity in

most communities. How far the threat is successful in suppressing dissent

depends on how much community members fear exclusion and this fear varies

according to the type of community in question, its relationship to the larger

society, the needs i t satisfies for its members, and the dependence members feel

on that community. If the members of a religious community believe that excommunication will result in an eternity of hellfire, they have an extremely

powerful incentive to conform; so do members of a professional organization

for whom expulsion will result in the loss of their occupational licenses. By contrast, the prospect of expulsion from a neighborhood swimming club is

likely to be unpleasant but not especially frightening, because club member-

ship does not represent the only way members can fulfil their needs for exercise

and social affiliation.

When belonging to a particular community is central to a member’s sense

of her own identity, the threat of expulsion is likely to loom extraordinarily

large. Leaving the community may represent losing connection with the

religious, moral, political, or cultural values that have given meaning to her

life. It may represent losing her emotional home, her sense of belonging, her

colleagues, comrades, friends and lovers. Such fears are especially intense for

members of raciallethnic and oppositional communities, because no compara-

ble alternatives are likely to be available. This is one reason why community

loyalty and discipline are often especially strong among ethnic and cultural

minorities and on both the right and the left of the political spectrum.

Some communities may seek to forestall challenges to their beliefs or values

by limiting diversity among those they admit, excluding people thought likely

to hold disruptive opinions or values or even people with an unacceptable

image. Ethnic or cultural minorities may refuse to admit “half-bloods” or

people who have been “Westernized”; lesbian communities may refuse to

admit bisexuals; gay groups may exclude drag or leather queens. Conscious

policies of exclusion reinforce the tendencies towards cultural homogeneity

that exist in all small communities whose members rely on each other for

emotional as well as intellectual support (Young 1990, 235). Policing the

boundaries of the community serves to maintain the “purity” of its beliefs and

values by insulating its members from the challenge of alternative thinking

(Phelan 1989).

Endemic to closed communities are a number of closely related epistemo-

logical and moral dangers. They include the dangers of repression and denial

of autonomy, dogmatism, intellectual dishonesty and self-deception, elitism,

and partialism. For these reasons, zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAI contend that, although temporarily closed communities are indispensable for the development of systematic alternatives

to hegemonic moral systems, the alternatives they produce eventually must be

subjected to wider moral evaluation. In order to increase the degree to which

Alison M. Jaggar 17

their moral agreements are justified, communities ultimately must open their

basic commitments to critical scrutiny from the outside.

GLOBALIZING FEMINIST DISCOURSE

For contemporary Western feminists to open our basic commitments to

critical scrutiny requires considering or reconsidering perspectives we have

hitherto excluded. This may mean that we reconsider the views of those

Western antifeminists who assert that a woman’s place is in the home and that

date rape and harassment are figments of paranoid feminist imaginations. I t may also mean that we take account of Nonwestern perspectives, especially

those ignored or demonized by Western media. Most immediately and urgently, however, it requires that Western feminists learn to hear and consider respect- fully the views of Nonwestern women from the so-called Third World, includ-

ing women whose voices are muted, even within their zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAown nations.’ Most especially, we should pursue critical engagement with those members of Non-

western communities who share some of our own commitments but who may have disagreements or different perspectives on particular issues. Critical

dialogue between members of communities that have significant differences

but still share some basic concerns is likely to be more immediately useful in

promoting reassessments of our own commitments and refinements of our own views than “dialogue” with those whose commitments and worldviews are far removed from our own. Dialogue with those who share many of our values and

commitments is also practically indispensable for making social change within

democratic contexts.

Some would challenge the possibility of global feminist dialogue on the

grounds that feminism is not a worldwide movement. Such a view has often

been held by Western feminists, who have assumed that the lot of Nonwestern women can be improved only through the introduction of Western feminist

ideas. Chandra Talpade Mohanty observes that Western feminist images of

the “average third world woman” have often portrayed her as leading “an

essentially truncated life based o n her feminine gender (read: sexually

constrained) and her being ‘third world’ (read: ignorant, poor, uneducated,

tradition-bound, family-oriented, victimized, etc.).” Mohanty contrasts

this representation of Nonwestern women with the implicit self-represen-

tation of Western women “as educated, as modern, as having control over

their own bodies and sexualities, and the freedom to make their own

decisions” (Mohanty 1991b, 56).

Nonwesterners as well zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas Westerners have often portrayed feminism as an exclusively Western phenomenon. Kumari Jayawardena observes,

The concept of feminism has . . . been the cause of much confusion in Third World countries. It has variously been

18 Hypatia

alleged by traditionalists, political conservatives and even cer- tain leftists, that feminism is a product of “decadent” Western

capitalism; that it is based o n a foreign culture of no relevance

to women in the Third World; that it is the ideology of women

of the local bourgeoisie; and that it alienates or diverts women

from their culture, religion and family responsibilities on the

one hand, and from the revolutionary struggles for national

liberation and socialism on the other. (Jayawardena 1986,2)

The belief that feminism is primarily a Western phenomenon, ironically

shared by both Nonwestem antifeminists and many Western feminists, is in

fact mistaken. Kumari Jayawardena documents how women in Asia and the

Middle East have fought collectively against their subordination from the late

nineteenth century on, though Nonwestern women have been less likely than

Western women to form autonomous women’s organizations and have been

more likely to express their feminism in the context of nationalist struggles,

Working-class agitation and peasant rebellions (Jayawardena 1986). Uma Nar- ayan writes that the pain that motivated her Indian feminism “was earlier than

school and ‘Westernization,’ a call to rebellion that has a different and more

primary root, that was not conceptual or English, but in the mother-tongue”

(Narayan 1997, 7). Chandra Talpade Mohanty observes that “No noncontradictory or ‘pure’

feminism is possible” (Mohanty 1991a, 20) Today, the world beyond the industrialized West proliferates both small groups and large, government-spon-

sored organizations dedicated to improving the status of women and, in

Nonwestern as in Western contexts, the beliefs of these groups reveal tensions

between conservative and radical ideas. For instance, some Nonwestern move-

ments assuming the label “feminist” have failed to address forms of domination

affecting the lives of poor and peasant women or to challenge the ideology of

the middle-class family; meanwhile, other Nonwestern movements concerned

with increasing the self-reliance of poor women and enlarging their choices

nevertheless refrain from direct challenges to male privilege (Newland 1991,

130) or eschew the label “feminist” because they perceive it zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas a white, middle-class movement narrowly defined as a struggle against gender discrim-

ination (Johnson-Odim 1991, 313). Everywhere in the world, feminism is

maligned and contested.

Whether or not they call themselves feminist, innumerable groups outside

the West are currently working to promote what Maxine Molyneux calls

women’s “gender interests.” Molyneux defines gender interests as “those that

women (or men for that matter) may develop by virtue of their social position- ing through gender attributes” (Molyneux 1985,232). She distinguishes prac-

tical from strategic gender interests. Women’s practical gender interests emerge

directly from their concrete life situations and include such immediately

Alison M. Jaggar 19

perceived necessities as food, shelter, water, income, medical care, and trans-

portation. Molyneux notes that demands for these “do not generally zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA. . . challenge the prevailing forms of subordination even though they arise directly

out of them” (1985, zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA2 3 2 - 3 ) . Indeed, addressing women’s practical gender interests may even reinforce the sexual division of labor by reinforcing the assumption that it is women’s responsibility to provide for their families. By

contrast, women’s strategic gender interests are defined zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas necessary to over- coming women’s subordination. According to Molyneux, they may include all

or some of the following, depending on the social context:

the abolition of the sexual division of labor; the alleviation of

the burden of domestic labor and childcare; the removal of

institutionalized forms of discrimination such as rights to own land or property, or access to credit; the establishment of polit-

ical equality; freedom of choice over childbearing; and the

adoption of adequate measures against male violence and con-

trol over women. (Molyneux 1985, 2 3 3 )

It is groups working to promote women’s strategic gender interests that are

most likely to share the basic commitments held by many Western feminists.6

Because of their potentially challenging nature, local grassroots groups

dedicated to addressing women’s strategic gender needs in the Third World are

largely unsupported either by national governments or bilateral aid agencies

(Moser 1991,109-10). They may be seen as communities of resistance compa-

rable in many ways to Western feminist communities. Like some Western

feminist groups, which may open women’s health centers or zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBArun automobile or home maintenance workshops, many Nonwestern groups find that they can

develop the skills and motivation necessary for addressing women’s strategic

gender interests by working immediately on women’s practical gender inter- ests. One example is the Forum Against Oppression of Women which, in 1979,

began campaigning in Bombay to draw attention to issues such as rape and

bride burning but soon shifted its focus to housing, which was an especially

acute problem for women deserted or abused by their husbands in a culture

where women by tradition had no access to housing in their own right. Organizing around homelessness raised awareness of the male bias in inheri-

tance legislation, as well as in the interpretation of housing rights, and ulti- mately ensured that women’s strategic gender needs related to housing rights

were placed on the mainstream political agenda (Moser 1991, 109).

Even if we grant a significant base of similar commitments between Western

feminists and Nonwestern women committed to advancing women’s strategic

gender interests, many obstacles exist to dialogue that is genuinely egalitarian,

open, and i n c l ~ s i v e . ~ Still, these are not insuperable obstacles to the possibility of global feminist discourse.

20 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAHypatia WHO MAY PARTICIPATE IN GLOBAL FEMINIST DISCOURSE?

If feminism is committed to inclusiveness, one might reasonably infer that everyone concerned about ending the subordination of all women is eligible

to participate in global feminist discourse. To draw this inference, however, is to forget our earlier recognition that discourse is not an ahistorical abstraction

but rather a series of discrete encounters that occur at specific places and times

among specific individuals, who stand to each other in a variety of specific

social, including power, relations. Even though I contend that equality, open- ness, and inclusiveness are central norms of feminist moral discourse, we have

seen that they are not incompatible with limiting some people’s access to some

discussion about some topics on some occasions.

In putting the ideals of openness and inclusiveness into practice, it is

necessary to remember both the social constitution of moral rationality and

the vast power inequalities between the present Western and Nonwestem worlds. The first point entails that it is reasonable to exclude from specific

moral discussions people who seem to share no common convictions on the

basis of which rational discussion could occur; such people indeed exclude

themselves. The second point suggests that it is sometimes reasonable for a

beleaguered moral community to exclude members of more powerful commu-

nities, especially when the beleaguered community is addressing certain inter-

nal or domestic issues, such as the earlier example of Aboriginal violence

against women. Members of subordinated groups may not wish to discuss

problems affecting their community with members of more powerful commu-

nities, especially if the powerful communities already claim cultural superior-

ity. Criticism of one’s own cultural practices in the hearing of outsiders may be

experienced as a form of betrayal, and the presence of outsiders who are

perceived as more powerful may inhibit discussion among insiders. That the

ideal of unconstrained discourse may sometimes permit or even require mem-

bers of dominant groups to be excluded from the discourse of subordinated

groups does not entail, of course, that it is equally legitimate for the members

of dominant communities to exclude members of subordinated groups from

their discussions, especially when the dominant groups are discussing practices

that have a significant impact on the subordinated groups.

Even though there may be reasonable grounds for excluding members of

dominant groups from specific occasions of discourse, outsiders’ concerns

about the situation of women in specific cultures are not necessarily illegiti-

mate. When cultural relativism is espoused by the relatively powerless and

impoverished, it may be a means of expressing resistance to cultural imperial-

ism; when it is advocated by the wealthier and more powerful, however,

cultural relativism is just zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas likely to express imperial arrogance as an ethno- centric insistence on the absolute superiority of the norms of the wealthier

culture. For instance, it is certainly presumptuous for Westem feminists to

Alison M. Jaggar zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA21 assume that they are already aware of the most important problems faced by

women outside the West, or that they are experts on how those problems

should be solved, but it does not manifest genuine cultural respect to assume

without question that Nonwestern women are content with lives that Western

women would find constraining, exhausting, or degrading. Conversely, it is

equally legitimate for Nonwestem women to raise questions about the moral

permissibility of practices widely accepted by Westem feminists, practices that might include sex work or the integration of women into the military. Global

feminism requires concern for women in other communities and nations and

raising questions about the moral justifiability of foreign practices is very

different from peremptorily condemning those practices, let alone intervening

unilaterally to change them.

In an interesting discussion of the relative advantages and disadvantages of insiders and outsiders who engage in social criticism, David Crocker argues

that insiders are not exclusively privileged in morally evaluating their zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAown cultures. Insiders enjoy the advantages of understanding the cultural meaning

of their own society’s practices, of being able to express their evaluations in

language accessible to their community, and of possessing undisputed standing

for engaging in social criticism; but they also suffer characteristic disadvan-

tages, such as possible ignorance of alternative ways of seeing and doing things

and susceptibility to social pressures that may inhibit their freedom to express

their criticisms. Outsiders suffer the disadvantages of unfamiliarity with cul-

tural meanings, the perception that they are not entitled to intervene discur-

sively in the affairs of another culture, and the possibility of ethnocentric

arrogance or its inverse, romanticization of the culture in question. But they

also enjoy the advantages of external perspectives, which may reveal things

hidden from insiders, familiarity with novel moral ideas, and relative social

freedom to say what needs to be said (Crocker 1991).

Despite the difficulties and dangers of cross-cultural moral discourse, it is not

impossible for outsiders to participate in evaluating the internal practices of

another culture. Advocates of women’s strategic gender interests in both the

West and the Third World therefore should not regard questions and criticisms of our own cultural practices by our foreign counterparts as inevitably presump- tuous or unwarranted but should view them rather zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas moral resources. For feminism to become global does not mean that Western feminists should think

of themselves as missionaries carrying civilization to primitive and barbarous lands, but neither does it mean that people concerned about the subordination

of women in their own culture may dismiss the plight of women in others. At

least on the level of morality, global feminism means that feminists in each

culture must re-examine our own commitments in light of the perspectives

produced by feminists in others, so that we may recognize some of the limits

and biases of our own beliefs and assumptions. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAOf course, the moral evaluations of any cultural practice must always be “immersed” rather than “detached,”

22 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAHypatia taking account of “the practices, the perceptions, even the emotions, of the

culture” (Nussbaum and Sen 1989, 308). Elsewhere, I suggest that a feminist conception of discourse, with its emphasis o n listening, personal friendship,

and responsiveness to emotion, and its concern to address power inequalities,

is especially well suited to facilitate such an immersed evaluation.

We have seen already that the more conformist members of any community

are likely to challenge dissenters’ status zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas insiders; in a Third World context, attempts have sometimes been made to discredit the voices of African femi- nists or Western-trained medical personnel when they have been raised in

opposition to traditional practices such as female genital surgery, portraying

such critics as no longer authentic members of their communities. But com-

munity membership is partly, though not entirely, a matter of self-definition

and it is rarely clear who is entitled to define others as inside or outside moral

communities or by what process. All communities change and there is no reason to identify a community with its most conservative elements or to

assume that individuals who dissent from some of their community’s moral

beliefs thereby renounce their membership in that community.

Recognizing the possibility, indeed the inevitability, of disagreement zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAwithin as well as zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAamong moral communities complicates our hitherto simple model of insiders and outsiders. For instance, if we were to determine that issues that

appeared to concern only a single group might be assessed solely by members

of that group, so that only prostitutes could evaluate prostitution and only

African women could discuss clitoridectomy and infibulation, we would

immediately encounter new problems of identity, authorization, and legitima-

tion. Who is entitled to speak for a group as a whole and whence derives her authority?’ Can ex-prostitutes speak for prostitutes who are currently working?

Can an African woman who has received a Western education fairly represent

other African women? There is no reason to suppose that African women, or

prostitutes, or lesbians, or African American women all think alike, and

dissenters in these groups may be silenced by women who claim to speak for

the whole. It is interesting to notice how the urban Aboriginal women who participated in the Bell controversy delegitimated the voice of Topsy

Naparrula Nelson by labeling her “traditional,” even though it could well be argued that Nelson was better qualified than her Western-educated challeng-

ers to speak for other Aboriginal women precisely by virtue of her traditional

identity. Some Aboriginal women who had no opportunity to participate in

the published debate might have agreed with Nelson in welcoming the inter-

vention of an outsider whose professional credentials enabled her to be heard

while their own voices were ignored.

Most people actually belong to more than one community and as the world becomes increasingly integrated through international trade, population

migration, and electronic communication, communities are increasingly likely

to overlap and individuals to be multicultural or multilingual. Poet Meena

Alison M. Jaggar 23

Alexander, born in India, educated in North Africa and Britain, currently

living in New York City, describes herself as a “woman cracked by multiple migrations.”

Everything that comes to me is hyphenated. A woman poet, a woman poet of color, a South Indian woman poet who makes

up lines in English, a postcolonial language, as she waits for the

red lights to change on Broadway. A Third World woman poet, who takes as her right the inner city of Manhattan, making up

poems about the hellhole of the subway line. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA. . .” (Nair 1991, 71)

In the circumstances of the contemporary world, even women who never physically leave their communities of origin are increasingly likely to evaluate

their own lives in light of what they know about the situation of women in

other cultures-though it remains true that Nonwestern women are likely to

know much more about Western cultures than Westerners about Nonwestern

cultures. When external influences operate through a local response to things

learned elsewhere, Nussbaum and Sen argue it is still an internal rather than

an external evaluation of the practices of a given culture. They contend that

“criticizing the position of women in, say, today’s Iran by reference to freedom enjoyed by women elsewhere is no more ‘external’ than reference to the position of women in Iran’s own past” (Nussbaum and Sen 1989,321).

Although cultural communities are not fictions, they are set increasingly in

a larger global context in which moral traditionalists often bemoan the impos- sibility of banishing external or foreign influences. Not only do many direct

forms of economic and political intervention exist but, when global commu-

nications are so rapid and extensive, the sheer existence of alternative ways of

life itself becomes a moral intervention. Once again, it must be noted that the

external pressure for change is much stronger on Nonwestern than on Western

cultures and that Western economies and politics inevitably will undermine some aspects of Nonwestern cultures while reinforcing others. Because noth-

ing seems likely to prevent these eventualities, it is especially important for

Western feminists to seek ways of being allies to Nonwestern women who are

seeking to affect these developments so that they may promote rather than

undermine the strategic gender interests of women in their communities.

WHAT IS ON THE GLOBAL FEMINIST AGENDA?

Western feminists have often assumed that priority in international feminist

discourse must be given to what they perceive as horrific Nonwestern practices

such as polygamy, the sex-selective abortion of female fetuses, female seclu-

sion, arranged and child marriage, unilateral divorce, brideprice and bride burning, female infanticide and, currently the most popular topic of all,

24 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAHypatia so-called female “circumcision” or female genital surgery. The last, in particu- lar, has now become a stock example in Western classroom discussions of moral

universalism versus cultural relativism and consideration of this issue has generated an extensive literature on topics such as discursive incommensura-

bility and moral relativism.

Nonwestem women naturally resent what they regard as a sensationalized Western focus on non-Westem marital and sexual practices? Western discus- sions are typically predicated on the assumption that female genital surgery is

morally unjustified, thus framing the issue as one of balancing the threats to

the health and welfare of Third World women against the evils of maternalism or cultural imperialism. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAA related problem is that so much focus o n these practices encourages Western feminists to regard themselves as missionaries

spreading the civilizing word of feminism, while simultaneously positioning

Nonwestern women as backward, barbarous, and victimized. Finally, Westem

discussions of female genital surgery and similar Nonwestem practices often

misleadingly homogenize Nonwestern communities and ignore the existence

of indigenous forms of dissent.”

Regardless of the circumstances in which it may become legitimate for

outsiders to involve themselves in the domestic affairs of another community

or nation, our increasingly integrated contemporary world does not lack issues

that affect women more globally. Some cluster around the worldwide phenom-

enon of gendered violence against women; this phenomenon was explored at

a global tribunal of nongovernmental women’s organizations that met in

Vienna in 1993 in conjunction with the Second World Conference o n Human Rights to urge that violence against women be recognized as a violation of

human rights, as well as to highlight the connections between the murder,

torture and sexual coercion and abuse of women and their economic

vulnerability. Many other issues are much less comfortable for Western

feminists to address, since discussion may reveal that most Westerners are

on the wrong rather than the right side of the moral divide. Central to these

uncomfortable questions is the justice of the global system itself, a question

that has been addressed directly by few Western feminists, especially femi- nist philosophers.

There are many ways in which what happens on one side of the world affects

women on the other; even if Third World women’s oppression cannot be

reduced to imperialism, it nevertheless exists in a context of economic domi-

nation reinforced by Western military interventions, either directly or by proxy. Matters of international feminist concern therefore include not only

explicitly gendered issues, such as efforts by Western agencies to include Third

World women in “development” or to control their fertility by linking so- called aid with prohibitions on abortion or insistence on contraception; they

also include less evidently gendered issues about the nature of development

and the forces that currently define it.

Alison M. Jaggar 25

Most pressing among these issues may be the debt owed by the Third World

to the West. During the late 1960s and 1970s, when interest rates were low, the

Third World engaged in massive borrowing to finance economic and social

development. By the end of the 1970s, with interest rates rising, the Third World had increasing difficulty paying the interest on its loans and a world debt

crisis resulted. Since 1982, severe “structural adjustment” policies have been

imposed o n the Third World by Western-controlled financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, whose primary

concerns are to ensure that the debt to Western banks be serviced. These

institutions’ insistence on export-led development in the Third World and on

sharp reductions in the economic and welfare functions of Third World states

resulted, as early as 1986, in a net annual outflow from the Third World to the

West three times as large zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas the amount received in aid from all Western sources. This hemorrhage of Third World wealth has inevitably had cata-

strophic consequences for the living standards of most Third World women,

though i t has benefitted Third World elites (George 1988, 1992).” Related

issues of global feminist concern include plant relocations by multinational corporations from the West to the Third World, multinational extraction of

Third World resources and, even more generally, Western conceptions of

development and patterns of consumption (Mies 1986; Shiva 1988; Mies et a1

1988; Enloe 1990; Mies and Shiva 1993; Scott 1996). These provide a context

for discussing issues such as environmental degradation in both the Third

World and the West (Shiva 1988); the trade in heroin and cocaine (George

1992); militarism (Enloe 1990); tourism, including sex tourism (Enloe 1990);

population control (Hartmann 1987; Jacobson 1990; Dixon-Mueller 1993);

and the international traffic in women.

Western and Third World women are not affected equally by recent changes in the world economic order: Third World women are generally affected more

adversely than Western women. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAA tiny minority of Third World women and a much larger proportion of Western women benefit from these changes, at least

in some respects; but in both “worlds” the poorest women suffer most. In both

“worlds,” moreover, the contemporary structure of the world economic order

affects the lives of women differently from-and generally more harshly than the way it affects men’s lives. This is why these superficially ungendered

matters actually are issues of the most urgent feminist concern.

IS THERE zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAA GLOBAL FEMINIST DISCOURSE COMMUNITY! Many Western accounts of moral rationality invoke idealized conceptions

of moral community.12 Idealizations offer simplified theoretical models that are

often illuminating but may also mislead. My own project of developing a feminist conception of practical moral discourse is motivated by the convic- tion that the idealized communities postulated by many Western moral philos-

26 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAHypatia ophers obscure several crucial features of empirical moral discourse, including

considerations of social power.

Some authors have suggested that global feminism should be understood in

terms of an “imagined community” (Mohanty 1991,4; Ferguson 1995). This

expression gained its contemporary currency from Benedict Anderson’s book, zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Imagined zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBACommunities, which describes the myths and practices used by build- ers of modem nation-states to create a sense of common national identity and

patriotism among disparate peoples (Anderson, 1983). Drawing on Anderson’s

insight that all communities are bound together by a shared conception of

their history and traditions, ideals and values, Ann Ferguson suggests that

thinking of global feminism in terms of an imagined community might inspire

individual feminists to see themselves as part of a global sisterhood. Ferguson

emphasizes that such identification must be more than a fantasy, requiring

engagement in actual meaning- and value-making rituals with women who are

not of one’s own national origin (Ferguson 1995, 385). Margaret Walker,

however, worries about the hazards of imagining a global feminist community.

“Imagined communities are seductive because they yield real psychic comforts,

powerful feelings of belonging and mattering; imagined communities are

irrelevant or dangerous because they distract our attention from actual

communities” (Walker 1994,54).

Frequently overlooked features of actual communities include their fluidity

and internal heterogeneity. T h e boundaries of empirical communities are

shifting, permeable, and frequently contested; empirical communities are

often riven by dissent and their members often belong simultaneously to other communities. Ignoring these aspects of empirical communities

encourages what Uma Narayan calls “cultural essentialism,” that is, images

of national and cultural contexts as “sealed rooms, impervious to change,

with a homogenous space ‘inside’ them inhabited by ‘authentic Insiders’ who all share a uniform and consistent account of their institutions and

values” (Narayan 1997,33). “Cultural essentialism” has often been used to

serve colonial purposes but Narayan observes that today it is sometimes

adopted uncritically by Western feminists in well-meaning efforts to recog-

nize “Difference.” Narayan argues that cultural essentialism is problematic not

only because of its empirical inadequacy but because it promotes sharp oppo-

sitions which, like all binaries, over value one pole while disparaging the other.

Cultural essentialism typically draws contrasts between Western and Non-

western cultures. One version assigns to the “West” a commitment to such

values zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas liberty and equality, despite innumerable examples of Western subju- gation and inequality, while portraying such appalling but exceptional prac-

tices as zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAsati as central to “Indian” culture (Narayan 1997); another version accepts a romanticized picture of Nonwestern cultures as spiritual and harmo-

nious while representing Western culture as exclusively materialist and geno-

cidal. Cultural essentialism reifies selected differences between “East” and

Alison M. Jaggar zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA27 “West,” and in doing so exaggerates the difficulties of discourse between

feminists from each “world.”

Other dangers of imagining a global feminist discourse community include

the temptation to imagine some transnational feminist counterpublic, within

which varying local interpretations of women’s subordination receive final and

authoritative adjudication. This could encourage acceptance of a model of

moral rationality, according to which local communities generated distinct

moral perspectives that would be assessed by “the” global community and

perhaps finally ratified by a consensus of all feminists. Such a model would be

misleadingly simple and mechanistic, relying on a neopositivist distinction

between “discovery” and “justification” while ignoring the inevitably provi-

sional nature of feminist agreements. Finally, the notion of imagined commu-

nity might distract feminists from recognizing the real and continuing

inequalities of power both within and among communities. Walker notes the

danger of

responding to an imagined (international or global) commu-

nity of women or of feminists, while failing to take account of,

and so responsibility for, the many ways our actual national and

cultural communities make the imagined community simply

impossible, and the invocation of it irrelevant, if not insulting. (Walker 1994,54)

Despite the real dangers of imagining communities, I suggest that they be taken not as conclusive objections to any feminist imaginings of community

but rather as warnings against inventing romanticized discursive utopias. If all communities are imagined, in the sense that they depend on a shared self-con-

ception, then reinventing and reimagining communities becomes a crucial

political task for feminists at the local, national, and global levels (Narayan

1997). In imagining a global feminist discourse community, however, we must

avoid generating feminist versions of the na‘ively apolitical idealizations pro-

duced in mainstream moral theory; for instance, we must avoid premature

postulations of a global sisterhood. Instead, we must recognize that global

feminist discourse communities are not philosophical or political fantasies but

real entities that already have begun to exist. Innumerable feminists are

engaged already in discussing issues that cross national borders and they are

increasingly cooperating in working to address these issues. ‘The” global

feminist discourse community is not singular, because global feminist discourse

occurs in multiple and overlapping networks of individuals and communities

and with varying and changing agendas. Indeed, it is a community in the

making and, in this sense, it is not only both ideal and imagined but continu-

ally being reimagined. Feminist imaginings offer ideals toward which to aspire;

imagining a global feminist discourse community that seeks constantly to be

28 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAHypatia more inclusive, open, and equal may serve as a heuristic for feminist moral discourse and a basis for feminist political action.

NOTES

1. This paper draws on several sections of my zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAbook in progress, Sex, Truth and Power: A Feminist Theory of Moral Reason. I read the first version of this paper at an invited symposium of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association

in March 1997; the topic of the symposium was “Cultural Relativism and Global Feminism,” and I thank its organizer, Dean Chatterjee. I read the second version at SOFPHIA and I thank all those who participated in the discussion, especially my introducer, Bat Ami Bar-&. Many people have offered valuable comments on the ideas

presented here but in preparing this version I am grateful for help from Ann Ferguson, Sandra Harding, Jim Maffie, Linda Nicholson, and Margaret Walker. Special thanks go to Uma Narayan, who has discussed these issues with me over several years and who

went carefully and sympathetically through an originally rambling draft, providing extremely helpful suggestions for organizing and focusing it.

2. For a first account of my conception of feminist practical discourse, see Jaggar 1995.

3. Some insiders also remain unconvinced. A good example of an insider critique of exclusionary views can to be found in Crenshaw 1997. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA

4. Spivak notes both that the British “grotesquely mistranscribed” the names of the women and that sati actually translates as “good wife” and is a common name for Indian girls.

5. Terminology is a problem. 1 am especially interested in the possibility of dialogue between feminists from the wealthy industrialized or postindustrial capitalist nations,

located mainly in Western Europe, Australasia, and North America, on the one hand,

and, on the other, women from the poor rural or industrializing nations, located mainly in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, South and Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Some people refer to each side of this divide zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas North and South respectively, but I avoid this usage here because “North” is often taken to include Japan and possibly Central

and Eastern Europe and “South” to include Australasia. Instead, I choose to contrast Western feminisms-the Eurocentric feminist traditions of North America, Western

Europe, and the Antipodeseither with Nonwestern feminisms, even though this usage linguistically privileges the West; or with Third World feminisms, even though the Second World no longer exists. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA

6 . One recent study of global feminist activism is Amrita Basu’s Challenge of Local Feminism: Women’s Movements in Global Perspective (Basu 1995).

7. One question confronting those who seek global feminist dialogue is whether conceptual and moral incommensurability make moral discourse impossible across cultural boundaries. I have no space here to address this question, but I argue elsewhere that incommensurability in moral perspectives does not entail mutual incomprehen-

sion sufficient to make moral dialogue impossible. Of course, that people can commu- nicate with each other in principle does not at all guarantee that they understand each

other in practice.

8. An excellent discussion of these issues is Alcoff 1991-92.

Alison zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAM. Jaggar 29 9. It has sometimes appeared to me that prurience is one factor encouraging this

focus. For instance, a recent prize-winning “news” photograph portrayed a young woman examining herself after female genital surgery. She surely thought she was unobserved and the angle of the photograph suggested that the photographer was hiding in a tree with a telephoto lens. In my view, the photograph not only objectified and exoticized the young woman but grossly invaded her privacy.

10. In 1994, South Asian women’s groups in Canada protested a Canadian doctor’s willingness to abort female foetuses for lndian Canadians. The doctor defended himself by saying that he would be guilty of “cultural arrogance” if he criticized the practices of another ethnic community but his critics called his attitude racist, saying that sex selection was not inherent in South Asian cultures.

11. The social consequences of these policies may be summed up in a single figure from UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) which estimates that half a million children die every year zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAas a direct result of the debt crisis. The suffering and death of these children, a disproportionate number of whom are girls, obviously affects women’s lives much more severely than men’s; it is primarily women who struggle to care for these children, who cope with the malnutrition-caused disorders of the children who survive, and who bear more children at the cost of their own health and sometimes their lives.

12. For instance, Kant contends that a necessary condition of moral agency is membership in a community of equals, but he views this not as a specific empirical community but rather an idealization, an imagined transhistorical community compris- ing all rational beings. John Rawls’s community of parties in the original position is also a thought experiment that is explicitly unrealizable. Habermas’s communicative ethics is apparently more naturalistic in postulating an empirical discourse community but, because this community is defined in terns of conditions that are inevitably counter- factual, I would argue that it, too, turns out to be an idealized community. A t first sight, communitarianism appears to be even more naturalistic than discourse ethics because it posits a variety of historically specific communities that have emerged organically and are characterized by adherence to distinctive moral traditions. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA1 would contend, how- ever, that communitarianism deals also in idealized communities because it works from a romanticized and essentialist vision of community.

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