By: Martin Konstantinov
A quote from Nancy Hirschmann's book,"Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom"
In this paper, I reconstruct Hirschmann’s feminist theory of liberty and emphasize its central characteristics: agency, contexts, synchronic empowerment, the role of language in the process of self-definition, and equality. I then examine the normative guidance that Hirschmann offers as part of her theory—‘political and intellectual separatism’—and argue that Hirschmann is silent on broader participation in the process of changing understandings of problematic contexts, limiting the theory’s scope and force as it relates to genuine self-definition, feminist participation, and the prospect of material change.
First, I provide Hirschmann’s feminist account of liberty, examining her critique of the positive-negative typology as well as use of social constructivism to situate feminist liberty beyond this binary. Second, I critically assess a gap in Hirschmann’s discussion of the process of self-definition as a way to demonstrate the need for more than political and intellectual separatism. I then propose Welch’s feminist social freedom as a tool to weave broader feminist self-definition into Hirschmann’s theory and discuss the ways in which this ‘political and intellectual inclusion’ strengthens her argument.
Part I: Reconstructing Hirschmann’s Feminist Theory of Liberty
The typology of positive and negative liberty that Hirschmann engages with is articulated by Isaiah Berlin as follows:
Negative Liberty: “I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity” (Berlin 2006, 393).
Positive Liberty: “The ‘positive’ sense of the word ‘liberty’ derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master” (Berlin 2006, 397).
Negative liberty is guided by the notion of interference as an external restraint placed on the individual. Positive liberty, on the other hand, focuses on what Hirschmann defines as ‘internal barriers’: “fears, addictions, and compulsions that are at odds with my ‘true’ self can all inhibit my freedom” (Hirschmann 1969, 49).
Hirschmann chooses to engage with the positive-negative typology for several reasons, the most important of which is that it informs “popular understandings of liberty” (Ibid.).[1] As Hirschmann argues, the separation between the clearly demarcated relationship between self and other in negative liberty and positive liberty’s reliance on the inner is crucial in situating contemporary liberal political practices. Hirschmann aims to challenge this opposition, revealing its theoretical inadequacy in tackling feminist concerns.
In order to do so, Hirschmann makes use of the notion of social constructivism, which she defines as “the idea that human beings and their world are in no sense given or natural but the product of historical configurations of relations” (Hirschmann 1996, 51).[2][3] Social constructivism rejects an understanding of human nature as fixed. Instead, sociohistorical context and social relations are the determinants of both: “context is what makes meaning possible, and meaning makes ‘reality’” (Hirschmann 1996, 52). The notion of humans as socially constructed is powerful for feminist claims against gender domination.[4] If one accepts the constructivist position, restrictions on what women can do—legal and political restraints on their capacities as agents—and who they can be—how women conceptualize their existence and determine their desires and preferences—are viewed as the products of a socially formed, patriarchal culture of male superiority and domination (Ibid.). To make concrete, under a constructivist interpretation, the political reality of the gender wage gap or popular conceptions of women as “natural caregivers” can be understood as historically manufactured and socially maintained rather than as a natural fact of life.
From this position, Hirschmann contends that the opposition between the negative and positive conceptions of self and other is itself socially constructed (Hirschmann, 1996, 54). This carries significant evaluative weight for Hirschmann’s argument: because social relations define and limit internal feelings, and internal feelings “act on and influence the external world,” a feminist conception of liberty that makes use of the constructivist position is better able to capture the reality of the factors that influence choice and agency than a positive-negative typology that “reduces the complexities of patriarchy and women's choice to the very same individualist, rationalist assumptions that are blamed for Western liberalism's inability to respond adequately to women's needs” (Hirschmann 1996, 54; 56).
Hirschmann extends the constructivist position to a discussion of power dynamics between men and women. From the fact that people necessarily participate in processes of social construction, the existence of structures of male domination indicates that “some groups of people systematically and structurally have more power to do the constructing than do others” (Hirschmann 1996, 57). As Hirschmann argues, this process of construction is intricately tied to language. When ways of being are conceptually defined through an epistemology that has and continues to shape the structures of male domination, women are unable to adequately define themselves and their relation to others since self-definition “always takes place in and through language (Hirschmann 1996, 52-53; 57).[5] Although Hirschmann couches this argument within an intersectional analysis that ties gender domination to domination based on race, class, and physical ability, her central claim is that patriarchy is “premised on women’s powerlessness and men’s power” (Ibid.). In this sense, women are equal to the extent that they are all victims of shared relations of gender domination that lack adequate conceptualization.
Because under her argument everything is determined by social context, and because women live in relations of gender domination, Hirschmann contends that the process of social construction “paradoxically allows women no other way to see themselves” (Ibid.). Hirschmann’s post-structural solution is to advocate for the construction of new contexts through which women can begin to reformulate existing vocabularies in ways that empower them to adequately engage in self-definition. Such contexts include women's workshops and community groups. The proposed contexts represent a kind of ‘political and intellectual separatism’; they are closed relationships among women and women alone in which they create vocabularies that articulate shared experiences of gender domination and ideas for changing these contexts (Hirschmann 1996, 59).[6]
This constructivist solution both has roots within and moves beyond the positive-negative typology. It is positive in the sense that it is an exercise concept that emphasizes the active role that women can take in determining their own awareness of the problems of existing social relations. It is negative in the sense that it seeks to enhance opportunities for individual choice and limit internal and external barriers to self-definition (Ibid.).
Hirschmann’s advocacy for separatist spaces, then, becomes a way in which women can collectively engage in the process of self-definition. Being aware of different contexts and being able to choose the contexts that one supports through their participation gives women the power to identify their agency and ability to collectively shape the world around them (Hirschmann 1996, 61). As Hirschmann explains, women have to make these choices because “if the social translation of the human value of being a woman is not done by women, it will be done by men according to their criteria” (Ibid.). Only when one accurately understands and defines their own contexts does material change become possible.
Part II: Feminist Liberty and Rigid Separatism
Although there are several strengths to Hirschmann's theory, her reliance on separatism and silence on broader participation in the process of forming new vocabularies weakens the theory’s normative connection to self-definition, cross-gender solidarity, and the prospect of material change. If the guiding action of a feminist theory of liberty is that only women can participate in relationships that change one’s understanding of problematic contexts, then only women can really be feminists. But Hirschmann relies on an expansive constructivist position in order to demonstrate the source and scope of gender domination. Given this reliance, I present the following questions:
1. Do only women lack awareness of the language necessary to understand problematic gender relations?
2. Do only women need to shift their understanding and awareness of these problematic contexts in order to enact material changes?
Question 1: Recall the premises of Hirschmann’s discussion of power relations in social contexts. On Hirschmann’s account, men are systematically and structurally more free to perform acts of social construction than women. This construction takes place through language: definition, expression, dialogue. From this, it follows that women are barred from genuine self-definition because vocabularies are shaped through a masculinist epistemology. However, implicit within Hirschmann’s argument is the acknowledgement that most men that are supposedly free to engage in self-definition also do so through this problematic epistemology.[9] Because the nature of a masculinist epistemology is that it obscures what is problematic about certain experiences and contexts, it is the case that both men and women are constrained by the fact that they often lack the language necessary to articulate their roles within these experiences and contexts. This fact is captured in Fricker’s notion of hermeneutical injustice, defined as the process of masking one’s social experience owing to discriminatory flaws in the mechanisms of social interpretation (Fricker 2007, 148-152). As Fricker argues, both those in power and the powerless are “cognitively handicapped by the hermeneutical lacuna” (Fricker 2007, 151). Because Hirschmann’s argument ultimately rests on the notion that we are all always participating in the field of social construction, she cannot have it both ways: men cannot both be genuinely free to self-define and constrained by the dominant masculinist epistemology. It may be easier for men to construct vocabularies and define themselves within, but in performing the latter they often make use of the same problematic constructs as women.
By focusing only on processes of raising awareness and shifting understanding within female relationships, Hirschmann ignores the fact that men also go through an obscured process of self-definition and as such are barred from understanding both their role in facilitating problematic gender relations and the effects of this facilitation on women. Of course, the important difference is that female experiences as oppressed subjects within patriarchal contexts are the sources of harm, domination, and exploitation whereas male experiences are often not. Fricker says as much when she argues that the male’s “cognitive disablement is not a significant disadvantage to him” (Ibid.).[10] However, from Fricker’s account it follows that understanding oppressive gender relations from both male and female perspectives is what allows those in power, in addition to the powerless, to engage with feminist concerns in their individual and relational processes of self-definition. Additionally, broader participation creates room for discussions between men and women that can mutually inform both male and female understandings of their own circumstances within oppressive relationships. Finally, it enables the construction of spaces for female empowerment beyond the restrictions inherent in separatism.[11] These effects are valuable because:
Question 2: Given the distribution of power in existing social structures, both men and women need to shift their understanding and awareness of oppressive contexts of gender domination in order to participate in changing material relations. You cannot change what you lack the ability to recognize and understand.[12]
Without proposing further guidance beyond radical separatism, there is a gap in Hirschmann’s theory through which we lose out on more extensive accounts of gender domination and ignore the capacity and need for males to shift their understanding of problematic contexts. Of course, there is value in the unique ability of the oppressed to collectively articulate their lived experiences. I am not claiming that women’s use of ‘safe spaces’ qua female relationships should not form a necessary component of a successful feminist theory of liberty, nor am I claiming that this cannot occur prior to more inclusive discussions and moments of collective articulation. Rather, I argue that inclusion at some point in the process of creating and inhabiting new vocabularies should be part of Hirschmann’s account because it is important for achieving the goals of any coherent feminist theory: creating broad shifts in our understanding of problematic gender relations in order to empower the oppressed and become collectively aware of what needs to change.
Part III: The Prospect of Intellectual Inclusion
Social Freedom and Deliberative Cooperation
What would this ‘political and intellectual inclusion’ look like; how would it fit into Hirschmann’s theory? Welch offers a feminist account of social freedom in which women “choose to act with and through other community members” in order to collectively construct values, norms, and institutions in ways that end relations of gender domination (Welch 2012, 23). This theory is feminist because it recognizes the social importance of relationships to questions of individual and collective autonomy and empowerment (Welch 2014, 99). Welch’s theory is therefore compatible with Hirschmann’s in that she takes a constructivist position in assessing gender relations and locates relationships as the vehicles through which change is enacted. Like Hirschmann, Welch does not deny the individual agent’s capacity to self-define; choice is still central. However, instead of focusing on the facilitation of separate contexts, Welch locates this choice within community-oriented relationships between those in power and the powerless in which the powerless are empowered through the fact of their inclusion.
In order to recognize and subsequently dismantle oppressive social contexts and the power relations that condition and make them possible, Welch’s theory of social freedom is based on the implementation of ‘deliberative cooperation,’ a process through which people reasonably “construct and converge upon a dominant shared understanding” of oppressive contexts and desired alternatives (Welch 2014, 101-102).[13] This shared construction avoids the problem of limiting male and female perspectives because it focuses on the individual’s awareness of others’ experiences. As Welch argues, this is important because “a multifarious perspective” creates room for the emergence of “shared moral concepts” that disseminate across a community (Welch 2014, 99). Furthermore, deliberative cooperation is premised on the equal participation and contribution of all members of the community (Welch 2014, 100).
Welch’s account thus 1) recognizes the merit of empowering women through broader communal relationships based on joint social participation and 2) gives space for a shift in both male and female understandings of oppressive contexts of gender domination. In doing so, her theory seemingly fills the gap in Hirschmann’s normative guidance in a way that respects agency, empowerment, and equality in the process of relational self-definition while broadening the scope of feminist participation.
There's a compelling case to be made that political and intellectual inclusion strengthens Hirschmann's feminist theory of liberty in a way that separatism alone cannot. The shortcoming of my proposed extension of Hirschmann’s theory is that it ultimately rests on the effectiveness of broad and effective participation. Without this participation, the harms of male exercises of power remain. From this, areas of critical inquiry that are beyond the scope of my argument here but that would inform discussions of deliberative cooperation include examining the ways in which we can promote broad and effective participation, as well as how we can account for moderate disagreement or rejection.[14] Nevertheless, ‘including’ political and intellectual inclusion within Hirschmann’s feminist theory of liberty is important because it expands participation in the feminist project and creates broader avenues of understanding that inform genuine processes of self-definition for both women and men in ways that can inspire meaningful, liberating material change.
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Bibliography
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