> Quite frankly, I think that the so-called "solidarity" with the "downtrodden
> masses" of the Middle East is a bunch of nonsense - ritualistic mantras
> created and repeated mainly by Western intellectuals. In reality, there is
> no such thing as masses, downtrodden or otherwise - in the Middle East or
> elsewhere - only different interest groups pursuing their own interests
> defined in their own terms and picking their own battles in the name of
> those interests.
I wrote this review in my blog few months ago The book deals with similar issues (liberalism and group interests).
http://khepa.livejournal.com/tag/liberalism
Currently reading _Challenging Liberalism: Feminism As Political Critique_ by Lisa Schwartzman, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. The book questions and analyzes some underlying assumptions of liberalism. She argues that liberalism fails as a theory of justice because of its deficiency to uncover and resist oppression. She investigates some underlying abstractions and individualism that are central to liberal methodology and shows how these create number of problems. She is not undermining the liberal concepts used by feminists. She is questioning the methods used to employ liberalism. "Feminist theory and practice embody an alternative methodology, one that does not eschew all abstraction and individualism but reformulates these concepts and situates them in a critical analysis of women's oppression, thus avoiding some of the problematic aspects of contemporary liberalism."
Schwartzman begins with delineating three essential concept of liberalism:
1) all persons have an essential interest in leading a life in accordance with their own conception of value 2) all persons have an interest in freedoms and liberties needed to develop and revise their conception of the good and 3) the government must treat individuals with equal concern and respect.
Critic of liberalism by feminists is nothing new. In 1983, Allison Jagger wrote _Feminist Politics and Human Nature_. According to Jagger, many problems with liberalism stem from a flawed conception of human nature that involves an individualistic understanding of human rationality. Schwartzman quotes from Jagger:
"The assumption in this case is that human individuals are ontologically prior to society; in other words, human individuals are the basic constituents out of which social groups are composed. Logically if not empirically, human individuals could exist outside a social context; their essential characteristics, their needs and interests, their capacities and desires, are given independently of their social context and are not created or even fundamentally altered by that context. This metaphysical assumption is sometimes called abstract individualism because it conceives of human individuals from any social circumstances."
The book's main problem with liberalism is similar to Jagger's argument. However, it does not involved a metaphysical assumption about human nature. Schwartzman questions the methodology of focusing primarily on each and every individual as an individual, "rather than calling attention to the social context and to the relations of power in which individuals live." She argues that feminist theorists need to pay close attention to structures of power and by examining the concrete experiences of women living within these structures.
She mentions that such theorizing must 1) focus more attention on social groups, 2)analyze actual socio political structures , and 3) examine and critique male dominance as a form of oppression that intersects with other forms. She talks about controversy over pornography. Liberal theorists tend to view this issue as a conflict between the rights of individuals and the moral values of the community. On the other hand feminists raise questions about how the industry, culture, and socioeconomic workings of pornography affect women as a group. One of the crucial point of her argument is that she does not want to reject the individualism in favor of a focus on the entire "community" or its "traditions". She wants to focus on specific group as mentioned above. She claims that only by examining how members of the group are affected by certain form of oppression and domination we can understand the feminist objects.
(She is highly critical of liberal theorists such as Ronald Dworkin , Martha Nussbaum, and John Rawls).
Table of Contents: Part One A Feminist Critique of Liberalism 1 Individualism, Oppression, and Liberal Rights Theory 2 Abstract Ideals and Social Inequality: Dworkin's Equality of Resources 3 Rawlsian Abstraction and the Social Position of Women
Part Two Abstraction, Ideals, and Feminist Methodologies 4 Idealization, Abstraction, and the Use of Ideals in Feminist Critique 5 Feminism as an Alternative Methodology
Part Three Feminist Postmodernism: An Alternative to Liberalism? 6 Politicized Identity, Women's Experience, and the Law 7 Speech, Authority, and Social Context
Conclusion: Toward a Feminist Approach to Political Theorizing
--sharif