Decolonizing Universalism


Book Description

Decolonizing Universalism argues that feminism can respect cultural and religious differences and acknowledge the legacy of imperialism without surrendering its core ethical commitments. Transcending relativism/ universalism debates that reduce feminism to a Western notion, Serene J. Khader proposes a feminist vision that is sensitive to postcolonial and antiracist concerns. Khader criticizes the false universalism of what she calls 'Enlightenment liberalism, ' a worldview according to which the West is the one true exemplar of gender justice and moral progress is best achieved through economic independence and the abandonment of tradition. She argues that anti-imperialist feminists must rediscover the normative core of feminism and rethink the role of moral ideals in transnational feminist praxis. What emerges is a nonideal universalism that rejects missionary feminisms that treat Western intervention and the spread of Enlightenment liberalism as the path to global gender injustice. The book draws on evidence from transnational women's movements and development practice in addition to arguments from political philosophy and postcolonial and decolonial theory, offering a rich moral vision for twenty-first century feminism.




The Right to Difference


Book Description

The revolution reconsidered -- France's Jewish star -- Universalism in Algeria -- Zola and the Dreyfus affair -- The Jew in Renoir's La grande illusion -- Sartre's "Jewish question"--Finkielkraut, Badiou, and the "new antisemitism" -- Conclusion: "Je suis juif




Human Rights in Global Politics


Book Description

There is a stark contradiction between the theory of universal human rights and the everyday practice of human wrongs. This timely volume investigates whether human rights abuses are a result of the failure of governments to live up to a universal human rights standard, or whether the search for moral universals is a fundamentally flawed enterprise which distracts us from the task of developing rights in the context of particular ethical communities. In the first part of the book chapters by Ken Booth, Jack Donnelly, Chris Brown, Bhikhu Parekh and Mary Midgley explore the philosophical basis of claims to universal human rights. In the second part, Richard Falk, Mary Kaldor, Martin Shaw, Gil Loescher, Georgina Ashworth and Andrew Hurrell reflect on the role of the media, global civil society, states, migration, non-governmental organisations, capitalism, and schools and universities in developing a global human rights culture.




Body Politics


Book Description

The politics of the body is often highly contested, culturally specific, and controlled, and this book calls our attention to how bodies are included or excluded in the polity. With governments regulating bodies in ways that mark the political boundaries of who is a citizen, worthy of protection and rights, as well as those who transgress socially proscribed norms, the contributors to this volume offer a systematic investigation of both theoretical and empirical account of bodily differences broadly defined. These chapters, diverse in both the populations and the political behaviours examined, as well as the methodological approaches employed, showcase the significance of body politics in a way few edited works in political science currently do. Arguing that the body is an important site to understand power relations, this book will be of interest to those studying the unequal application of rights to women, racial and ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ community, and people with disabilities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Politics, Groups, and Identities.




Indifference to Difference


Book Description

'Indifference to Difference' organises around Alain Badiou's suggestion that, in the face of increasing claims of identitarian specificity, one might consider the politics and practice of being indifferent to difference. Such a politics would be based on the superabundance of desire and its inability to settle into identity. Madhavi Menon shows that if we turn to another kind of universalism - not one that insists we are all different but one that recognizes we are all similar in our powerlessness to contain desire - then difference no longer becomes the focus of our identity.




Willful Subjects


Book Description

In Willful Subjects Sara Ahmed explores willfulness as a charge often made by some against others. One history of will is a history of attempts to eliminate willfulness from the will. Delving into philosophical and literary texts, Ahmed examines the relation between will and willfulness, ill will and good will, and the particular will and general will. Her reflections shed light on how will is embedded in a political and cultural landscape, how it is embodied, and how will and willfulness are socially mediated. Attentive to the wayward, the wandering, and the deviant, Ahmed considers how willfulness is taken up by those who have received its charge. Grounded in feminist, queer, and antiracist politics, her sui generis analysis of the willful subject, the figure who wills wrongly or wills too much, suggests that willfulness might be required to recover from the attempt at its elimination.




Universalism as it is


Book Description




The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics


Book Description

As a field of scholarship, gender and politics has exploded over the last fifty years and is now global, institutionalized, and ever expanding. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics brings to political science an accessible and comprehensive overview of the key contributions of gender scholars to the study of politics and shows how these contributions produce a richer understanding of polities and societies. Like the field it represents, the handbook has a broad understanding of what counts as political and is based on a notion of gender that highlights masculinities as well as femininities, thereby moving feminist debates in politics beyond the focus on women. It engages with some of the key aspects of political science as well as important themes in gender and feminist research (such as sexuality and body politics), thereby forging a dialogue between gender studies in politics and mainstream political science. The handbook is organized in sections that look at sexuality and body politics; political economy; civil society; participation, representation and policymaking; institutions, states and governance as well as nation, citizenship and identity. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics contains and reflects the best scholarship in its field.




Universalism Vs. Particularism


Book Description