Feminists Redraw Public and Private Spheres

Abortion, Vulnerability, and the Affective Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment

Bibliographic Data

ID2227438
AuthorsClara Fischer (0000-0003-3683-3525, University College Dublin, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume45
Issue4
Pages985-1010
Publication date2020-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSigns: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0097-9740 • E-ISSN: 1545-6943
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/707999
OpenAlexW3034175667
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited10

On May 25, 2018, Irish citizens voted in a referendum to repeal a constitutional amendment to allow for reform of Ireland’s prohibitive law on abortion. In this article, I examine parts of the Irish repeal campaign, focusing particularly on the interplay between “public” and “private” in the context of a public, feminist campaign that sought changes to public policy on matters that have traditionally been conceived of as private. I also explore some affective elements of the campaign, including its rejection of shame through visibility and exposure, and the emotive testimony it relied on. The article thus highlights the centrality of feeling to this particular feminist campaign, pointing to emotion as shared political phenomenon that cuts across public and private spheres to motivate political change. In so doing, it develops a largely undertheorized aspect of Judith Butler’s work, establishing the affective dimension of vulnerability in the context of feminist campaigning. My analysis thus delineates the role of public and private in the exposure entailed by affective vulnerability as a means of nonviolent, feminist resistance and points to women’s testimony and the affective revealing of trauma as a means of making the ideas of public and private tangible and translatable into grassroots feminist activism

Context (archaeology) · Criminology · Political science · Politics · Repeal · Sociology · Feminism, Gender, and Intersectionality · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Law

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