Ethics and political imagination in feminist theory

Bibliographic Data

ID4367018
AuthorsEvelina Johansson Wilén (0000-0002-4908-1783, Örebro University, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume22
Issue2
Pages268-283
Publication date2021-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1464700120958256
OpenAlexW3089041927
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited14

This article discusses three different conceptions of ethics within contemporary feminist theory and how they depict the connection between ethics and politics. The first position, represented by Wendy Brown, mainly describes ethics as a sort of anti-political moralism and apolitical individualism, and hence as a turn away from politics. The second position, represented by Saba Mahmood, discusses ethics as a precondition for politics, while the third position, represented by Vikki Bell, depicts it as the 'external consciousness' of the political, and as destabilising political discourse by confronting it with singularity and 'radical' difference. Though they represent distinct positions, the article argues, all three suffer from a tendency to reify ethics by failing to give a contextualised account of it. The article then introduces the ethical perspective of Judith Butler, arguing that she - while offering both a transhistorical and a contextualised dimension - tends to psychologise and individualise ethics and politics. The last part of the article introduces Terry Eagleton and what, in a Marxist vein, could be called a 'materialist ethics' or an 'ethics of socialism', and argues that this way of framing the relationship between ethics and politics provides a solution to the trap of reification identified in the three described positions. This part also discusses how Eagleton's theory relates to - but also differs from - arguments made by Butler. One advantage of Eagleton's work, the article argues, is that it does not psychologise and individualise ethics and politics as Butler's work does

Epistemology · Information ethics · Marxist philosophy · Meta-ethics · Morality · Normative ethics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Gender Studies · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy

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