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

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.