A Basis for Feminist Theory and Practice
Jane Braaten
The feminist critique of science and reason has figured centrally in the development of feminist theory in the last twenty years. The principal targets of this critique are the apparent links between traditional conceptions of reason on the one hand, and androcentric theories of autonomy, models of political legitimacy, and ideals of community on the other. Although Jurgen Habermas rejects the “philosophy of the subject,” which locates the foundations of knowledge in the thinking subject, some of these objections still apply to his theory of communicative rationality. I argue that it is his limitation of a critique of reason to a theory of justification, rather than the content of that theory, that constitutes the crucial point of divergence from feminist conceptions of reason and knowledge. While Habermas is correct in seeing a relation of dependence between conceptions of knowledge and ideals of community, feminist theory tends to reverse the traditional relation of dependence, deriving criteria of rationality and knowledge from substantive ideals of solidarity and community, rather than vice versa. I will discuss these ideals, and outline a conception of feminist thinking—communicative thinking—rooted in a feminist understanding of solidarity.
Feminist theory is inherently a critical sort of theory. For those who understand “critical theory” as inquiry rooted in what Kant called Kritik, or Habermas the “philosophy of critique,”—a tradition whose critical, self-reflective moment
begins in Kant’s Copernican turn—this statement provokes the question of foundations. The philosophy of critique is above all concerned with foundations of all possible theory and of critical philosophy itself. For Kant, the question of foundations was motivated by the twin challenges of dogmatism and scepticism. For Hegel, this question is made critical by the historicity of the understanding; for Marx, foundational questions become questions about history, and they call for the analysis of lived practical historical experience for answers. Socialist and Marxist feminism have shared the Marxist concern to relocate the foundations of theory in lived experience, while remaining aware of the historical (and particularly the en-gendering) conditions of this experience.1
Though Marxist analysis has been useful in providing a foothold for the development of an epistemology that begins with the experience of the oppressed, its reliance on the fundament of the ‘logic’ of production—the theory of the forces and relations of material production—and its intrinsic focus on the male worker, has posed obstacles for the use of Marxist theory as a systematic analysis of patriarchy, women’s oppression, and the possibility of women’s emancipation.2 Attempts to supplement Marxist analysis with analyses of patriarchy have met with a dawning awareness that “women’s experience” has few common denominators, and the question has arisen of whether any systematic analysis of women’s experience is possible. It is not clear that there is a sufficient common basis in women’s experiences to support a full systematic analysis of patriarchy. Feminist theory has responded to the call for more open, less presumptive, less segregated communication about women’s experiences—a form of communication that is not only comfortable with the diversity of those experiences but committed to a solidarity that is founded upon that diversity.3
The debate about what this commitment entails for the possibility of feminist analyses of systematically oppressive structures is not an easy one. Oppression takes many faces, and some of those faces are our own, depending upon the privileges we enjoy relative to others. Not only have the dimensions of women’s oppression multiplied, but those dimensions are charged with vulnerability and defensiveness, even within the women’s movement. The need for a reexamination of how we as feminists communicate and how we think about what we hear is more sharply felt now than ever before. In this chapter, I shall frame my reflections within the critical philosophical tradition of the critique of reason, and specifically, in a dialogue with Jurgen Habermas’s theory of communicative rationality. What I wish to emerge from this dialogue is a picture of feminist reasoning—what I will call communicative thinking—and an understanding of feminist solidarity upon which communicative thinking is based. I shall also raise the issue of the rational “basis,” or foundation, of feminist thinking, as well as the complementary issues of a peculiarly feminist scepticism.
From those thinkers in the tradition of critical philosophy and critical theory, Habermas is an especially promising partner in dialoging, since his critique of the legacy of the Cartesian “philosophy of the subject,” his requirement of the plurality of participants in dialogue, and his insights into the interdependence of conceptions of knowledge and conceptions of community resonate with aspects of feminist epistemology. Admittedly, judging from his publications, his acquaintance with both feminist theory and activism appears to be minimal, and his social categories mirror gender divisions just as unre — flectively as Marx’s does. Nancy Fraser criticizes Habermas’s analysis of the welfare state on the grounds that his distinction between material reproduction and symbolic reproduction reifies gender divisions, and as a result, he “fails to understand precisely how the capitalist workplace is linked to the modem restricted male-headed nuclear family.”4 Though they are pertinent to a broader analysis of Habermas’s work, I will set these issues aside and focus for the most part only on his defense of the theory of communicative rationality.5 Habermas’s analysis of communicative rationality, and its conceptual development in terms of the ideal of consensus, can be useful in investigating the nature of feminist thinking, analysis, and solidarity. Because the need for further exploration of communicative thinking and analysis is so evident in the building of solidarity between diversely identified women, I will identify and examine the points of convergence and divergence of Habermas’s conception of communicative rationality with that project.
In the following section, I will present Habermas’s conception of communicative rationality as one that is developed in tandem with conceptions of autonomy, social relationship, and community. Habermas’s communicative theory of epistemic justification provides the content of a concept of autonomy as the ability to participate in argumentation (communicative competence), of a concept of social relationship as the mutuality of shared grounds, and of a concept of community as a community of the communicatively competent. Though Habermas departs from Kantian “philosophy of consciousness,” these concepts of autonomy, relationship, and community are essentially Kantian. I raise the question of whether this Kantian conceptual development is appropriate for feminist epistemology.
In the second section, I compare the historical and critical motivations of Habermas’s and feminist critiques of reason and knowledge. Where Habermas sees the construction of a theory of mutual understanding to be crucial in an age that has abandoned the search for ultimate foundations, but must forge a rational basis for interaction and cooperation, the critical focus of feminist epistemology lies in the connections between traditional conceptions of reason and patriarchy. I look for points of divergence and convergence between these two projects and argue that the sceptical issues facing each of them are fundamentally distinct. Habermas, with traditional epistemology, is concerned with
defending the possibility of science and moral law against the new historicism of late modernity. Thus his conception of justification takes priority over his conception of intersubjectivity and community. Feminist epistemology rejects the sceptical roots of this project and seeks instead a vision of reasoning that is derivative of ideals of solidarity and community. Contrary to Habermas, feminism gives visions of solidarity and community a foundational role in developing conceptions of thought and analysis. This may be the most philosophically contentious claim in this paper, since it amounts to the introduction of substantive social values as constitutive values of reasoning, unlike the traditional values of truth and right, which are widely thought to transcend substantive commitments.
In the third and final section, I take up the question of what those visions of solidarity and community entail, and suggest a form of communication, thought, and analysis (communicative thinking) derived from the solidarity of diversely identified communities. I address Iris Young’s argument that the ideals of community and friendship impose unreasonable requirements on radical political movements and the forms of association that they wish to realize. She argues that an ideal of “city life” better captures the ideal of a politics committed at the same to particular communities and to mutual support between communities. I use the ideal of solidarity implicit in this image of city politics to outline a conception of feminist thinking as focused on specialized and local projects, while also informed by cross-communication between projects, aware of their diverse impacts.