Reclaiming the Public Space: Critical Phenomenology of Women’s Revolutions in Dark Times

IF 1.1 2区 哲学 0 PHILOSOPHY JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY Pub Date : 2023-10-04 DOI:10.1080/00071773.2023.2257745
Maria Robaszkiewicz
{"title":"Reclaiming the Public Space: Critical Phenomenology of Women’s Revolutions in Dark Times","authors":"Maria Robaszkiewicz","doi":"10.1080/00071773.2023.2257745","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTIn this paper, I focus on feminist protests (exemplary, in Argentina and Poland) defending women's right to access to prenatal diagnostics and abortion, which I reflect upon from the perspective of Hannah Arendt's theory of politics. After briefly referring to Arendt's difficult relationship with feminism, linking it to the struggle of Argentinian women for legalizing abortion, I look at Arendt's theorizing of the body in and beyond the private. I then argue for politicization of abortion as extrinsically enforced and rethink the role of the private in the context of abortion regulations and practices. In the closing section of my paper, I offer a micronarrative of the feminist street protests in Poland, and discuss it as an example of feminist revolutionary moment.KEYWORDS: Abortionfeminist phenomenologycritical phenomenologyHannah Arendtwomen's rightsphenomenology AcknowledgementsEarlier Versions of this paper have been presented at the following conferences: The Self and the Selfless. Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil on Individual Action in Dark Times, Queen's University, Canada in April 2021; SWIP Austria Symposium: Solidarity and Resistance, University of Vienna, Austria in November 2021; and People on Streets: Critical Phenomenologies of Embodied Resistance, Paderborn University, Germany in May 2022. I would like to thank the organizers and all the colleagues present at these events for the opportunity to discuss and improve this essay.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Perkin Daniels, “Colombia legalizes Abortion,” The Guardian, February 22, 2022.2 Biden, “A Proclamation on 50th Anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Decision,” The White House Briefing Room, January 20, 2023.3 Fernando et al., “After Roe v. Wade”, USA Today, June 25, 2023.4 Smith, “Canada has no a abortion right law,” CBC News, June 28, 2022.5 I use the notions of protest and strike interchangeably, as do the activists in Argentina, Poland, and elsewhere.6 Gago, Feminist International, 216; Graff and Korolczuk, Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment, 161–162.7 The most medially visible of which is, as I write these words, the Iranian women’s protest against marginalization of and violence against women after the death Mahsa Amini who was killed in custody of the Iranian moral police after being arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly,” on September 16, 2022.8 I do acknowledge that also non-binary persons and transmen may be affected by anti-abortion regulations but the limited framework of this paper does not allow me to give this issue due attention.9 E.g. Borren, “Human Rights Activism”; Butler, Notes; Hanssen, “Translating Revolution”; Hooker, “Black Lives Matter and the Paradoxes of US Black Politics”; Lang Jr., “Constitutions are the Answer!”; Luttrell, White People and Black Lives Matter, among others.10 Arendt, The Human Condition, 7.11 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 189.12 Arendt, The Human Condition, 40, 231 and elsewhere.13 Amy Allen, Bonnie Honig, Linda Zerilli, to only name a few.14 Borren, “Feminism as Revolutionary Practice.”15 Gago, Feminist International, 13–14.16 Arruzza, Bhattacharya and Fraser, Feminism for 99%, 10.17 Gago, Feminist International, 2.18 Ibid., 14.19 Ibid.20 The history of feminist reception of Arendt’s writings has been reconstructed multiple times, see e.g Dietz, “Feminist Receptions of Hannah Arendt”; eadem, Turning Operations; Young-Bruehl, “Hannah Arendt among Feminists”; Hull, The Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt; Borren, “Feminism as Revolutionary Practice”; recently: Des Portes, “Hannah Arendt’s Hidden Phenomenology of the Body”; Robaszkiewicz and Weinman, Arendt and Politics.21 Hull, The Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt. Of course, feminism does not need to be understood as identity politics and the protests I refer to in this paper are very good examples of this.22 Arendt, The Human Condition, 9.23 Respectively: Arendt, “What Remains?,” 12; Young-Bruehl, “Hannah Arendt among Feminists,” 324.24 Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, 135.25 Hull, The Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt, 137; see also Amy Allen’s seminal paper “Solidarity After Identity Politics: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Feminist Theory.”26 Cited in Hull, The Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt, 137.27 Arendt, The Human Condition, 30–31.28 E.g. Mary O’Brien (The Politics of Reproduction, 100) criticized Arendt’s insistence that grounds of worthwhile, human public activity “are ontological rather than biological,” while Adrienne Rich (On Lies, Secret, and Silence, 212) called The Human Condition a “lofty and crippled book.”29 Arendt, The Human Condition, 51.30 Benhabib, “Judgment and the Moral Foundation of Politics in Hannah Arendt’s Thought”, eadem, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt.31 More recent contributions in this field discuss issues as public appearance, assisted reproductive technologies or queer philosophies, see e.g. Davies, “The Architecture of Appearance”; Lochner, Arendt and Spivak: a feminist approach to political worlding and appearing; Biser, “The ‘Unnatural Growth of the Natural’”; Honkasalo, “Hannah Arendt as an Ally for Queer Politics?”.32 Loidolt, Phenomenology of Plurality, 123.33 Ibidem, 129.34 Ibidem, 133.35 Arendt, The Human Condition, 73.36 Loidolt, Phenomenology of Plurality, 126. Loidolt also discusses the shift of authenticity, which is less relevant for this paper.37 Ibidem, 130.38 Arendt, The Human Condition, 71.39 In Phenomenology of Plurality,135–138, Sophie Loidolt convincingly argues that it is not possible to reconstruct a phenomenology of the private based on Arendt’s writings.40 Arendt, The Human Condition, 7.41 Ibidem.42 Loidolt, Phenomenology of Plurality, 87, 113.43 Zerilli, “The Arendtian Body,” 181–184.44 Arendt, The Human Condition, 9.45 Ibidem, 7.46 I borrow this notion from Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, who also writes about family being framed as a “happy object.”47 Arendt, The Human Condition, 46.48 E.g. Arendt, On Revolution, 91.49 Gündoğdu, Rightlessness in the Age of Rights, 58.50 Arendt, The Human Condition, 216, 219; Gündoğdu, Rightlessness in the Age of Rights, 81–87.51 Arendt, “On Hannah Arendt,” 316; Gündoğdu, Rightlessness in the Age of Rights, 64.52 Gündoğdu, Rightlessness in the Age of Rights, 15–16 and elsewhere.53 Ibidem, 83.54 Bartky, Femininity and Domination, 14.55 Graff and Korolczuk, Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Movement, 144–145.56 Gago, Feminist International, 22–23.57 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 155.58 Fernando et al., “After Roe v. Wade”, USA Today, June 25, 2023.59 Smith, “Canada has no a abortion right law,” CBC News, June 28, 2022. The Canadian solution is more an example of a step in the direction of normalizing abortion but cannot be seen as a model, since abortion regulations are implemented on the provincial level, still leaving many women without or with restricted access to the respective diagnostic and care.60 Arendt, The Human Condition, 8, 175–176.61 Arendt Origins of Totalitarianism, 468–473.62 Arendt, The Human Condition, 57.63 Schoonheim, “The Productive Body,” 481.64 Butler, Notes, 8.65 Butler, Notes, 92.66 Arendt, The Human Condition, 51.67 Butler notes that, for many reasons, it is not possible for every person to appear with their body in the physical space of assembly. This is where digital of virtual networks come into play, see Notes, 8.68 This is what, just like Gago, Arruzza, Bhattacharya, and Fraser argue for with the concept of the feminism for the 99%. Their argument is for manifold alliances against patriarchal oppression with all movements that stand against the neoliberal order combining economic and political forces for the sake of capital growth, where the ratio 99 to 1% is a hint to global accumulation of wealth. Their criticism is also directed at the liberal feminism, which complies and contributes to this economic scheme, see Arruzza, Bhattacharya, and Fraser, Feminism for 99%, 14–15 and elsewhere.69 For an empirically based analysis of the events since then, see e.g. Chełstowska & Ignaciuk, “Criminalization, Medicalization, Stigmatization”; Gwiazda, “The Substantive Representation of Women in Poland.”70 Gago, Feminist International, 212–221.71 Butler, “Why Is the Idea of ‘Gender’ Provoking Backlash the World Over?”72 Honkasalo, “Revitalizing Feminist Politics of Solidarity in the Age of Anti-Genderism.”73 Gago, Feminist International, 9.","PeriodicalId":44348,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2023.2257745","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"PHILOSOPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I focus on feminist protests (exemplary, in Argentina and Poland) defending women's right to access to prenatal diagnostics and abortion, which I reflect upon from the perspective of Hannah Arendt's theory of politics. After briefly referring to Arendt's difficult relationship with feminism, linking it to the struggle of Argentinian women for legalizing abortion, I look at Arendt's theorizing of the body in and beyond the private. I then argue for politicization of abortion as extrinsically enforced and rethink the role of the private in the context of abortion regulations and practices. In the closing section of my paper, I offer a micronarrative of the feminist street protests in Poland, and discuss it as an example of feminist revolutionary moment.KEYWORDS: Abortionfeminist phenomenologycritical phenomenologyHannah Arendtwomen's rightsphenomenology AcknowledgementsEarlier Versions of this paper have been presented at the following conferences: The Self and the Selfless. Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil on Individual Action in Dark Times, Queen's University, Canada in April 2021; SWIP Austria Symposium: Solidarity and Resistance, University of Vienna, Austria in November 2021; and People on Streets: Critical Phenomenologies of Embodied Resistance, Paderborn University, Germany in May 2022. I would like to thank the organizers and all the colleagues present at these events for the opportunity to discuss and improve this essay.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Perkin Daniels, “Colombia legalizes Abortion,” The Guardian, February 22, 2022.2 Biden, “A Proclamation on 50th Anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Decision,” The White House Briefing Room, January 20, 2023.3 Fernando et al., “After Roe v. Wade”, USA Today, June 25, 2023.4 Smith, “Canada has no a abortion right law,” CBC News, June 28, 2022.5 I use the notions of protest and strike interchangeably, as do the activists in Argentina, Poland, and elsewhere.6 Gago, Feminist International, 216; Graff and Korolczuk, Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment, 161–162.7 The most medially visible of which is, as I write these words, the Iranian women’s protest against marginalization of and violence against women after the death Mahsa Amini who was killed in custody of the Iranian moral police after being arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly,” on September 16, 2022.8 I do acknowledge that also non-binary persons and transmen may be affected by anti-abortion regulations but the limited framework of this paper does not allow me to give this issue due attention.9 E.g. Borren, “Human Rights Activism”; Butler, Notes; Hanssen, “Translating Revolution”; Hooker, “Black Lives Matter and the Paradoxes of US Black Politics”; Lang Jr., “Constitutions are the Answer!”; Luttrell, White People and Black Lives Matter, among others.10 Arendt, The Human Condition, 7.11 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 189.12 Arendt, The Human Condition, 40, 231 and elsewhere.13 Amy Allen, Bonnie Honig, Linda Zerilli, to only name a few.14 Borren, “Feminism as Revolutionary Practice.”15 Gago, Feminist International, 13–14.16 Arruzza, Bhattacharya and Fraser, Feminism for 99%, 10.17 Gago, Feminist International, 2.18 Ibid., 14.19 Ibid.20 The history of feminist reception of Arendt’s writings has been reconstructed multiple times, see e.g Dietz, “Feminist Receptions of Hannah Arendt”; eadem, Turning Operations; Young-Bruehl, “Hannah Arendt among Feminists”; Hull, The Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt; Borren, “Feminism as Revolutionary Practice”; recently: Des Portes, “Hannah Arendt’s Hidden Phenomenology of the Body”; Robaszkiewicz and Weinman, Arendt and Politics.21 Hull, The Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt. Of course, feminism does not need to be understood as identity politics and the protests I refer to in this paper are very good examples of this.22 Arendt, The Human Condition, 9.23 Respectively: Arendt, “What Remains?,” 12; Young-Bruehl, “Hannah Arendt among Feminists,” 324.24 Arendt, The Jew as Pariah, 135.25 Hull, The Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt, 137; see also Amy Allen’s seminal paper “Solidarity After Identity Politics: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Feminist Theory.”26 Cited in Hull, The Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt, 137.27 Arendt, The Human Condition, 30–31.28 E.g. Mary O’Brien (The Politics of Reproduction, 100) criticized Arendt’s insistence that grounds of worthwhile, human public activity “are ontological rather than biological,” while Adrienne Rich (On Lies, Secret, and Silence, 212) called The Human Condition a “lofty and crippled book.”29 Arendt, The Human Condition, 51.30 Benhabib, “Judgment and the Moral Foundation of Politics in Hannah Arendt’s Thought”, eadem, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt.31 More recent contributions in this field discuss issues as public appearance, assisted reproductive technologies or queer philosophies, see e.g. Davies, “The Architecture of Appearance”; Lochner, Arendt and Spivak: a feminist approach to political worlding and appearing; Biser, “The ‘Unnatural Growth of the Natural’”; Honkasalo, “Hannah Arendt as an Ally for Queer Politics?”.32 Loidolt, Phenomenology of Plurality, 123.33 Ibidem, 129.34 Ibidem, 133.35 Arendt, The Human Condition, 73.36 Loidolt, Phenomenology of Plurality, 126. Loidolt also discusses the shift of authenticity, which is less relevant for this paper.37 Ibidem, 130.38 Arendt, The Human Condition, 71.39 In Phenomenology of Plurality,135–138, Sophie Loidolt convincingly argues that it is not possible to reconstruct a phenomenology of the private based on Arendt’s writings.40 Arendt, The Human Condition, 7.41 Ibidem.42 Loidolt, Phenomenology of Plurality, 87, 113.43 Zerilli, “The Arendtian Body,” 181–184.44 Arendt, The Human Condition, 9.45 Ibidem, 7.46 I borrow this notion from Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, who also writes about family being framed as a “happy object.”47 Arendt, The Human Condition, 46.48 E.g. Arendt, On Revolution, 91.49 Gündoğdu, Rightlessness in the Age of Rights, 58.50 Arendt, The Human Condition, 216, 219; Gündoğdu, Rightlessness in the Age of Rights, 81–87.51 Arendt, “On Hannah Arendt,” 316; Gündoğdu, Rightlessness in the Age of Rights, 64.52 Gündoğdu, Rightlessness in the Age of Rights, 15–16 and elsewhere.53 Ibidem, 83.54 Bartky, Femininity and Domination, 14.55 Graff and Korolczuk, Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Movement, 144–145.56 Gago, Feminist International, 22–23.57 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 155.58 Fernando et al., “After Roe v. Wade”, USA Today, June 25, 2023.59 Smith, “Canada has no a abortion right law,” CBC News, June 28, 2022. The Canadian solution is more an example of a step in the direction of normalizing abortion but cannot be seen as a model, since abortion regulations are implemented on the provincial level, still leaving many women without or with restricted access to the respective diagnostic and care.60 Arendt, The Human Condition, 8, 175–176.61 Arendt Origins of Totalitarianism, 468–473.62 Arendt, The Human Condition, 57.63 Schoonheim, “The Productive Body,” 481.64 Butler, Notes, 8.65 Butler, Notes, 92.66 Arendt, The Human Condition, 51.67 Butler notes that, for many reasons, it is not possible for every person to appear with their body in the physical space of assembly. This is where digital of virtual networks come into play, see Notes, 8.68 This is what, just like Gago, Arruzza, Bhattacharya, and Fraser argue for with the concept of the feminism for the 99%. Their argument is for manifold alliances against patriarchal oppression with all movements that stand against the neoliberal order combining economic and political forces for the sake of capital growth, where the ratio 99 to 1% is a hint to global accumulation of wealth. Their criticism is also directed at the liberal feminism, which complies and contributes to this economic scheme, see Arruzza, Bhattacharya, and Fraser, Feminism for 99%, 14–15 and elsewhere.69 For an empirically based analysis of the events since then, see e.g. Chełstowska & Ignaciuk, “Criminalization, Medicalization, Stigmatization”; Gwiazda, “The Substantive Representation of Women in Poland.”70 Gago, Feminist International, 212–221.71 Butler, “Why Is the Idea of ‘Gender’ Provoking Backlash the World Over?”72 Honkasalo, “Revitalizing Feminist Politics of Solidarity in the Age of Anti-Genderism.”73 Gago, Feminist International, 9.
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Davies,《外观的建筑》;洛克纳、阿伦特与斯皮瓦克:政治世界与政治表现的女性主义视角Biser,“自然的非自然生长”;汉娜·阿伦特作为酷儿政治的盟友? >,第32页Loidolt,《多元性现象学》,123.33 Ibidem, 129.34 Ibidem, 133.35阿伦特,《人类状况》,73.36 Loidolt,《多元性现象学》,126。Loidolt还讨论了真实性的转变,这与本文的关系不大在《多元性现象学》(135-138)中,索菲·洛伊多尔特令人信服地指出,在阿伦特的著作基础上重构私人现象学是不可能的阿伦特,《人类状况》,7.41,《多元化现象学》,87,113.43,泽里利,《阿伦特的身体》,181-184.44,阿伦特,《人类状况》,9.45,《阿伦特》,7.46,我从萨拉·艾哈迈德的《幸福的承诺》中借用了这个概念,她也写过家庭被塑造成“幸福的对象”。47阿伦特,《人类状况》,46.48 e.g.阿伦特,《论革命》,91.49 Gündoğdu,《权利时代的无权利》,58.50阿伦特,《人类状况》,216,219;Gündoğdu,权利时代的无权利,81-87.51阿伦特,《论汉娜·阿伦特》,316页;Gündoğdu,权利时代的无权利,64.52 Gündoğdu,权利时代的无权利,15-16和其他地方伊比登,83.54巴基,女性和统治,14.55格拉夫和科罗尔切克,民粹主义运动中的反性别政治,144-145.56加戈,女权主义国际,22-23.57阿伦特,在过去与未来之间,155.58费尔南多等人,“在罗伊诉韦德案之后”,今日美国,2023.59史密斯,“加拿大没有堕胎权法”,CBC新闻,2022年6月28日。加拿大的解决办法更多地是朝着使堕胎正常化的方向迈出的一步,但不能被视为一种模式,因为堕胎条例是在省一级执行的,仍然使许多妇女无法或只能有限地获得相应的诊断和护理阿伦特,《人类状况》,8,175 - 176.61阿伦特,《极权主义的起源》,468-473.62阿伦特,《人类状况》,57.63斯库恩海姆,《生产身体》,481.64巴特勒,注释,8.65巴特勒,注释,92.66阿伦特,《人类状况》,51.67巴特勒指出,由于许多原因,每个人都不可能带着他们的身体出现在集会的物理空间中。这就是数字虚拟网络发挥作用的地方,见注释,8.68这就是Gago, Arruzza, Bhattacharya和Fraser所主张的99%的女权主义概念。他们的论点是,反对父权压迫的各种联盟与反对新自由主义秩序的所有运动,为了资本增长而将经济和政治力量结合起来,其中99比1%的比例暗示了全球财富的积累。他们的批评也指向自由主义女权主义,自由主义女权主义顺应并促进了这种经济体制,参见Arruzza, Bhattacharya和Fraser,《99%的女权主义》,14-15和其他地方对于自那时以来的事件进行的基于经验的分析,请参见Chełstowska和Ignaciuk,“刑事定罪,医疗化,污名化”;《波兰妇女的实质性代表》。70 Gago,《国际女权主义》,212-221.71 Butler,“为什么‘性别’的概念在世界范围内引发反弹?”“72 Honkasalo”,在反性别主义时代重振女权主义团结政治。73 Gago,女权主义国际,9。
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