Nancy Fraser

En este trabajo se analiza la «mitología cultural" que impregna la concepción de la ciudadanía civil en los Estados Unidos, la cual, para nuestras autoras, es una rémora en orden a que pueda aflorar un nuevo concepto de la «ciudadanía social». Para desbrozar el terreno, desde un punto de vista ideológico, en el que podrían emerger nuevas conceptualizaciones adecuadas para el ideal de la ciudadanía social, Fraser y Gordon hacen una genealogía del modelo dicotómico que se ha impuesto en la modernidad sobre las relaciones humanas, y que consiste en la oposición contrato versus caridad. Sobre la noción de contrato se vertebra la concepción de la sociedad civil propia de1llamado «individualismo posesivo», y la noción contrapuesta de caridad se configura como propia de la «esfera familiar» y privada. Los referentes de género que corresponden respectivamente a estas nociones son lo masculino y lo femenino. Se constituye de este modo «una tendencia cultural a centrarse en dos formas bastante extremas de relación humana: los intercambios contractuales de cosas fungibles equivalentes, por un lado, y la caridad unilateral, no recíproca, por otro». La pregnancia de esta oposición binaria es tal que el lenguaje político en que se legitiman las prestaciones sociales invoca uno u otro de los términos de la polaridad -jerarquizada a favor del contrato--: se trata, ora de «compensaciones al trabajador», ora de «asistencia pública», con los perfiles de género respectivos de sus destinatarios, varones y mujeres. Mientras que «la ciudadanía social» apuntarla a formas diferentes de interacción más allá de estos sesgos ideológico-genéricos: solidaridad, interdependencia, etc.

Globalization is changing the way we argue about justice. Not so long ago, in the heyday of social democracy, disputes about justice presumed what I shall call a “Keynesian-Westphalian frame”. Typically played out within modern territorial states, arguments about justice were assumed to concern relations among fellow citizens, to be subject to debate within national publics, and to contemplate redress by national states. This was true for each of two major families of justice claims, claims for socioeconomic redistribution and claims for legal or cultural recognition

Misrecognition, taken seriously as unjust social subordination, cannot be remedied by eliminating prejudice alone. In this rejoinder to Richard Rorty, it is argued that a politics of recognition and a politics of redistribution can and should be combined. However, an identity politics that displaces redistribution and reifies group differences is deeply flawed. Here, instead, an alternative 'status' model of recognition politics is offered that encourages struggles to overcome status subordination and fosters parity of participation. Integrating this politics of recognition with redistribution enables a coherent Left vision that could redress injustices of culture and of political economy simultaneously.

E n est e ens a yo l a autor a present a u n model o alte r nat ivo a l imaginari o polític o w es t f alian o qu e reconoc e l a “justici a ano r mal ” com o e l horizont e dentr o de l cua l tiene n que pros e gui r actualment e toda s la s batalla s contr a l a injusticia . S e trat a d e un a propuesta const r uct iv a par a afronta r lo s conflicto s acerc a de l “quién ” d e l a justici a e n la s condiciones actuale s d e justici a ano r mal . P o r u n lado , e l concept o d e des-enma r qu e l e pe r mit e realizar l a impugnació n de l marc o w est f alian o d e l a justici a y , a l contempla r l a posibilida d d e que dete r minada s cuestione s d e justici a d e prime r orde n h a ya n sid o enmarcada s injustamente, abr e u n espaci o par a concepcione s n o h e gemónica s de l “quién” . P o r otr o lado , e l principio d e todos-los-sometido s ofrec e un a ví a par a v alora r l a justici a d e lo s “quiénes ” r iv ale s y pe r mit e sopesa r su s mérito s relat iv os

Unruly Practices brings together a series of widely discussed essays in feminism and social theory. Read together, they constitute a sustained critical encounter with leading European and American approaches to social theory. In addition, Nancy Fraser develops a new and original socialist-feminist critical theory that overcomes many of the limitations of current alternatives. First, in a series of critical essays, she deploys philosophical and literary techniques to assess the work of Michael Foucault, the French deconstructionists, Richard Rorty, and Jürgen Habermas. Then, in a group of constructive essays, she incorporates their respective strengths in a new critical theory of late-capitalist political culture. Fraser breaks new ground methodologically by integrating the previously divergent insights of poststructuralism, critical social theory, feminist theory, and pragmatism. Thematically, she deals with varied forms of dominance and subordination in modern, industrial, late-capitalist societies. These themes are integrated in an original theory of 'the politics of need interpretation.' This concept becomes the linchpin of the socialist-feminist critical theory.

"... Fraser and Bartky have brought the encounter between U.S. and French feminism to a new level of seriousness." —Ethics In the last decade, elements of French feminist discourse have permeated and transformed the larger feminist culture in the United States. This volume is the first sustained attempt to revalue French feminism and answer the question: What has been gained and what has been lost as a result of this intercultural encounter? Interviews with Simone de Beauvoir open the book; essays by French feminists Sarah Kofman and Luce Irigaray follow; the North American contributors are Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser, Diana J. Fuss, Nancy J. Holland, Eleanor H. Kuykendall, Dorothy Leland, Diana T. Meyers, Andrea Nye, and Margaret A. Simons.

The recent struggle over the confirmation of Clarence Thomas and the credibility of Anita Hill raises in a dramatic and pointed way many of the issues at stake in theorizing the public sphere in contemporary society. At one level, the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Hill’s claim that Thomas sexually harassed her constituted an exercise in democratic publicity as it has been understood in the classical liberal theory of the public sphere. The hearings opened to public scrutiny a function of government, namely, the nomination and confirmation of a Supreme Court justice. They thus subjected a decision of state officials to the force of public opinion. Through the hearings, in fact, public opinion was constituted and brought to bear directly on the decision itself, affecting the process by which the decision was made as well as its substantive outcome. As a result, state officials were held accountable to the public by means of a discursive process of opinion and will formation.Yet that classical liberal view of the public sphere does not tell the whole story of these events.1 If were examine the Thomas confirmation struggle more closely, we see that the very meaning and boundaries of the concept of publicity was at stake. The way the struggle unfolded, moreover, depended at every point on who had the power to successfully and authoritatively define where the line between the public and the private would be drawn. It depended as well on who had the power to police and defend that boundary. 1. See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger. Nancy Fraser is associate professor of philosophy and faculty fellow of the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research at Northwestern University, where she also teaches in the women’s studies program. She is the author of Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. She is currently working on Keywords of the Welfare State, a jointly authored book with Linda Gordon.

Until recently, struggles for justice proceeded against the background of a taken-for-granted frame: the bounded territorial state. With that "Westphalian" picture of political space assumed by default, the scope of justice was rarely subject to open dispute. Today, however, human-rights activists and international feminists join critics of structural adjustment and the World Trade Organization in challenging the view that justice can only be a domestic relation among fellow citizens. Targeting injustices that cut across borders, they are making the scale of justice an object of explicit struggle. Inspired by these efforts, Nancy Fraser asks: What is the proper frame for theorizing justice? Faced with a plurality of competing scales, how do we know which one is truly just? In exploring these questions, Fraser revises her widely discussed theory of redistribution and recognition. She introduces a third, "political" dimension of justice—representation—and elaborates a new, reflexive type of critical theory that foregrounds injustices of "misframing." Engaging with thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, Michel Foucault, and Hannah Arendt, she envisions a "postwestphalian" mapping of political space that accommodates transnational solidarity, transborder publicity, and democratic frame-setting, as well as emancipatory projects that cross borders. The result is a sustained reflection on who should count with respect to what in a globalizing world.