Hegel’s Philosophy and Feminist Thought: Beyond Antigone?

273 Pages·2010·1.77 MB·English

by  Kimberly Hutchings

Hegel’s Philosophy and
Feminist Thought
Breaking Feminist Waves
Series Editors:
LINDA MARTÍN ALCOFF, Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center
GILLIAN HOWIE, University of Liverpool
For the last twenty years, feminist theory has been presented as a series of ascend-
ing waves. This picture has had the effect of deemphasizing the diversity of past
scholarship as well as constraining the way we understand and frame new work.
The aim of this series is to attract original scholars who will offer unique interpre-
tations of past scholarship and unearth neglected contributions to feminist theory.
By breaking free from the constraints of the image of waves, this series will be able
to provide a wider forum for dialogue and engage historical and interdisciplinary
work to open up feminist theory to new audiences and markets.
LINDA MARTÍN ALCOFF is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and
the City University of New York Graduate Center. Her books include Visible
Identities: Race, Gender and the Self (2006); The Blackwell Guide to Feminist
Philosophy (co-edited with Eva Kittay, 2006); Identity Politics Reconsidered (co-
edited with Moya, Mohanty, and Hames-Garcia, Palgrave 2006); and Singing in
the Fire: Tales of Women in Philosophy (2003).
GILLIAN HOWIE is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of
Liverpool. She has edited Gender, Teaching and Research in Higher Education
(2002); Gender and Philosophy (2003); Third Wave Feminism (Palgrave, 2004);
Menstruation (Palgrave, 2005); Women and the Divine (Palgrave, 2008); and the
forthcoming Fugitive Ethics: Feminism and Dialectical Materialism. She is the
founder and director of the Institute for Feminist Theory and Research.
Titles to date:
Unassimilable Feminisms: Reappraising Feminist, Womanist, and Mestiza Identity
Politics
by Laura Gillman
Further Adventures of The Dialectic of Sex: Critical Essays on Shulamith Firestone
edited by Mandy Merck and Stella Sandford
Hegel’s Philosophy and Feminist Thought: Beyond Antigone?
edited by Kimberly Hutchings and Tuija Pulkkinen
Forthcoming:
Essential Re-Orientations
by Gillian Howie
Femmenism and the Mexican Woman Intellectual from Sor Juana to Rivera
Garza: Boob Lit
by Emily Hind
The Many Dimensions of Chinese Feminism
by Ya-Chen Chen
Hegel’s Philosophy and
Feminist Thought
Beyond Antigone?
Edited by
Kimberly Hutchings
and
Tuija Pulkkinen
HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY AND FEMINIST THOUGHT
Copyright © Kimberly Hutchings and Tuija Pulkkinen, 2010.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-62145-9
All rights reserved.
First published in 2010 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-38338-2 ISBN 978-0-230-11041-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230110410
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hegel’s philosophy and feminist thought : beyond Antigone? / edited
by Kimberly Hutchings, Tuija Pulkkinen.
p. cm.—(Breaking feminist waves)
ISBN 978-1-349-38338-2
1. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770–1831. 2. Feminist theory. I.
Hutchings, Kimberly, 1960– II. Pulkkinen, Tuija.
B2948.H35445 2010
193—dc22 2009052994
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: August 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Series Foreword vii
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
About the Contributors xi
One Introduction: Reading Hegel 1
Kimberly Hutchings and Tuija Pulkkinen
Part One Feminist Encounters with Hegel
Two Differing Spirits—Reflections on Hegelian
Inspiration in Feminist Theory 19
Tuija Pulkkinen
Three Queering Hegel: Three Incisions 39
Joanna Hodge
Four Antigone’s Liminality: Hegel’s Racial Purification of
Tragedy and the Naturalization of Slavery 61
Tina Chanter
Five Knowing Thyself: Hegel, Feminism and
an Ethics of Heteronomy 87
Kimberly Hutchings
Six Longing for Recognition 109
Judith Butler
Part Two Re-Reading Hegel’s Method
Seven Beyond Tragedy: Tracing the Aristophanian
Subtext of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 133
Karin de Boer
Eight Reading the Same Twice Over: The Place of
the Feminine in the Time of Hegelian Spirit 153
Rakefet Efrat-Levkovich
vi CONTENTS
Nine Womanlife or Lifework and Psycho-technique:
Woman as the Figure of the Plasticity of
Transcendence 177
Susanna Lindberg
Ten The Gender of Spirit: Hegel’s Moves and Strategies 195
Laura Werner
Eleven Matter and Form: Hegel, Organicism, and
the Difference between Women and Men 211
Alison Stone
Twelve Debating Hegel’s Legacy for Contemporary
Feminist Politics 233
Nancy Bauer, Kimberly Hutchings,
Tuija Pulkkinen, and Alison Stone
Bibliography 253
Index 265
Series Foreword
Breaking Feminist Waves is a series designed to rethink the conven-
tional models of what feminism is today, its past and future trajecto-
ries. For more than a quarter of a century, feminist theory has been
presented as a series of ascending waves, and this has come to repre-
sent generational divides and differences of political orientation as
well as different formulations of goals. The imagery of waves, while
connoting continuous movement, implies a singular trajectory with
an inevitably progressive teleology. As such, it constrains the way we
understand what feminism has been and where feminist thought has
appeared, while simplifying the rich and nuanced political and philo-
sophical diversity that has been characteristic of feminism through-
out. Most disturbingly, it restricts the way we understand and frame
new work.
This series provides a forum to reassess established constructions of
feminism and of feminist theory. It provides a starting point to rede-
fine feminism as a configuration of intersecting movements and
concerns—with political commitment but, perhaps, without a singu-
lar centre or primary track. The generational divisions among women
do not actually correlate to common interpretive frameworks shaped
by shared historical circumstances, but rather to a diverse set of argu-
ments, problems, and interests affected by differing historical contexts
and locations. Often excluded from cultural access to dominant modes
of communication and dissemination, feminisms have never been uni-
form nor yet in a comprehensive conversation. The generational divi-
sion, then, cannot represent the dominant divide within feminism,
nor a division between essentially coherent moments; there are always
multiple conflicts and contradictions, as well as differences about the
goals, strategies, founding concepts, and starting premises.
Nonetheless, the problems facing women, feminists, and femi-
nisms are as acute and pressing today as ever. Featuring a variety of
disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, Breaking Feminist Waves
provides a forum for comparative, historical, and interdisciplinary
work, with special attention to the problems of cultural differences,
viii SERIES FOREWORD
language and representation, embodiment, rights, violence, sexual
economies, and political action. By rethinking feminisms’ history as
well as its present, and by unearthing neglected contributions to fem-
inist theory, this series intends to unlock conversations between fem-
inists and feminisms and to open up feminist theory and practice to
new audiences.
—Linda Martín Alcoff and Gillian Howie
Preface and
Acknowledgments
The creation of this book has been a long but enjoyable process. The
earliest phases included two conferences, one held in Jyväskylä in
2003 and the other in Berlin in 2006, on the theme of Hegel and
feminist philosophy. We would like to thank all of the participants in
both of those conferences for providing the initial inspiration for this
book. Greatest thanks are due to all of the contributors to the book,
who have supported the project throughout. We thank Palgrave
Macmillan for their support in the publication process and Elizabeth
O’Casey and Tuija Modinos for their help in editing and formatting
the final version of the manuscript. We have been given permission to
publish two of the chapters in the book that have previously appeared,
in whole or in part, elsewhere. We are grateful to Judith Butler and to
Taylor and Francis Ltd. respectively for giving the following
permissions:
Chapter 6, Judith Butler, “Longing for Recognition,” was first pub-
lished in Studies in Gender and Sexuality 1 (3), 2000, then as Chapter
6 of Undoing Gender (New York and London: Routledge, 2004,
131–151), reprinted here by permission of the author.
Chapter 7, Karin de Boer, “Beyond Tragedy: Tracing the Aristophanian
Subtext of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,” appeared in a different
version as “The Eternal Irony of the Community,” Inquiry Vol. 52
No. 4, 2009: 311–334, reprinted here by permission of the publisher,
Taylor and Francis Ltd.
Kimberly Hutchings and Tuija Pulkkinen
November 2009