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Freedom, Recognition, and Obligation: A Feminist Approach to Political Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1989

Nancy J. Hirschmann
Nancy J. Hirschmann*
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College
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Abstract

I argue that a feminist methodology can help liberal political theory get beyond the problems that it has been recycling since the seventeenth century. Taking political obligation as the focus for my analysis, I show how feminist psychoanalytic and psychological theory can help uncover the structural sexism of liberal theory and epistemology and point the way toward more consistent—and less biased—theoretical formulations. Rejecting the essentialist view of gender difference that has been attributed to this literature, I argue that it is more interesting and appropriate to read it as a symbolic language of power and as a heuristic device for uncovering the gendered dimensions of supposedly “neutral” concepts like obligation.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 83 , Issue 4 , December 1989 , pp. 1227 - 1244
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1989

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