Feminist politics is irreducibly torn between claims as women and claims as humans.

Evidence

I want to take a moment here to discuss the close presence in this argument of the work of Joan Scott and of Ann Snitow. In her 1996 book Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man, Joan Scott argues that modern feminism is rooted in a foundational contradiction between women’s political claims as women, a class wrongfully excluded from citizenship and full humanity, and women’s political claims as humans, regardless of, and repudiating the meaningfulness of, gender difference. … This contradiction remains inevitable in feminist thought and politics. — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited, 854

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the earlier chapters on the sixties split between universalist utopian politics and postmodern particularism, and to the wider ‘abstract universal subject vs. particular marked body’ thread developed in ch22 and ch25. — connects to: Eliminating gender difference was the second wave’s modern arm, affirming womanhood its postmodern arm. — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 855; Multiple sometimes conflicting identities can coexist in one subject’s politics — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 262

Broader Connections

• Multiple sometimes conflicting identities can coexist in one subject’s politics #expands (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 262