Feminist Theory in Pursuit of the Public: Women and the “Re-Privatization” of Labor (Education, Politics and Public Life)

Argues that feminism needs to develop a theory of the public responding to a moment when feminism's impetus to reconstitute the private sphere left a huge gap in its political thinking on the public. Feminist Theory in Pursuit of the Public argues that feminism needs to develop a theory of the public. It responds to a moment when feminism's impetus to reconstitute the private sphere left a huge gap in its political thinking on the public. This inattention to the public is particularly worrisome now when the nation-state and its publics seem to have diminishing power and compromised democratic agency. The waning of power in the public sphere diminishes the influence that citizens can have in deciding on the conditions of life, and therefore minimizes the changes that feminists can envision or enact in the social field to work towards equality, access, deliberation, participation, just distribution, rights, and authority for women Front Matter....Pages i-vii Introduction....Pages 1-14 Feminism and the Retreat from the Public....Pages 15-49 The Habermasian Public Sphere: Women’s Work within the Critique of Instrumental Reason....Pages 51-85 Beirut Fragments: The Crumbling Public Sphere, Language Privatization, and the “Re-Privatization” of Women’s Work....Pages 87-123 Adorno Faces Feminism: Interiority, or Modern Power and the Liquidation of Private Life....Pages 125-157 Baghdad Burning: Cyborg Meets the Negative....Pages 159-192 Conclusion....Pages 193-197 Back Matter....Pages 199-263