Feminism and the Politics of Rights

A Qualified Defense of Identity-Based Rights Claiming

Bibliographic Data

ID6354503
AuthorsKaren Zivi (University of Southern California, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume1
Issue03
Publication date2005-09-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitics & Gender (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1743-923X • E-ISSN: 1743-9248
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1743923x05050129
OpenAlexW2153700374
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited12

In this essay, I consider whether or not the contestatory potential of rights politics turns on replacing identity claims with universalist ones, and why one might be inclined to urge such a move from “the ontological” to “the political.” While this argument has much to commend it, as it sheds light on the constitutive dimensions of identity-based rights and their depoliticizing tendencies, I remain unconvinced that a better form of rights necessarily requires detachment from identity per se. Engaging the work of Wendy Brown, Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, and Judith Butler, I argue that an understanding of rights as political claims should include an appreciation of the importance of identity and injury, for rights can function as a discourse through which identity is contested and reconfigured rather than simply reified.This article has gone through many revisions and left me with a debt to generous readers too numerous to list here. But for their direct impact on this version and ongoing enthusiasm for the project, I must thank wholeheartedly Paul Apostolidis, Sam Chambers, Michaele Ferguson, Tim Kaufman-Osborn, Jill Locke, Patchen Markell, Laurie Naranch, and the anonymous reviewers at Politics & Gender

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis · Enthusiasm · Feminism · Identity (music · Identity politics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Gender Studies · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics

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