Micro-Politics

by Mann, Patricia S.

• ISBN13: 9780816620494
• ISBN10: 0816620490
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr

Summary

Patricia S. Mann explains our current period as a time of social transformation resulting from an 'unmooring' of women, men, and children from the nuclear family, gender relations having replaced economic relations as the primary site of social tension and change in our lives.

Author Biography

Patricia Mann is an Associate at Cyrus D. Mehta & Associates, a U.S. immigration and nationality law firm in New York City. She has published many articles on contemporary social and political issues.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introductory Reflections	p. 1
Origins of This Postmodern, Postfeminist Project	p. 1
Why a Theory of Agency?	p. 5
Toward a Definition of Agency	p. 9
Putting a Theory of Gendered Agency to Work	p. 13
Historicizing This Theory of Individual Agency	p. 18
On the Ultra-Social Status of Postfeminist Theory	p. 23
Renegotiating Agency: Seizing the Micro-Political Moment	p. 25
Summary Thoughts	p. 31
Love and Injustice in Families	p. 33
Toward a Dynamic Conception of the Private Sphere	p. 34
Equality and Rights within Liberal Families?	p. 37
Marxism and Material Relations of Power in the Family	p. 42
"Women and Children and Slaves," said Plato	p. 44
Aristotle and Patriarchal Benefactors	p. 52
Surd Behavior and Problems of Familial Identity	p. 54
Acting beyond Unjust Identities	p. 61
Glancing at Pornography: Recognizing Men	p. 62
The Feminist Debate over Pornography	p. 63
An Interactive Model of Sexual Agency	p. 67
Freudian Stories, Worldly Mothers, Gendered Disengagement, and Pornography	p. 73
Jacques Lacan and Women's Desires for Recognition	p. 78
Vital Feminist Glances: Painting Ourselves into the Picture	p. 86
Cyborgean Motherhood and Abortion	p. 90
Interpersonal Agency: Rethinking Our Paradigms of Action	p. 91
Foundations of the Abortion Controversy	p. 94
Traditional Maternal Narratives Compromise Abortion Justifications	p. 100
Carol Gilligan: Rethinking Gendered Categories of Moral Agency	p. 105
A Cyborgean Theory of Procreative Agency	p. 109
The Interpersonal Agency of Cyborgean Parents	p. 114
Postfeminism and the Waning of a Material Identity	p. 117
A Genealogy of Individualism	p. 120
A Gendered Genealogy	p. 120
Reenacting Individualism after a Second Unmooring	p. 124
Public Dimensions of Liberal Agency	p. 131
The Incorporated Male Family Self	p. 136
Familial Unmooring: Individuals Reengaging	p. 141
Beyond Liberal Notions of Agency	p. 148
Agency and Politics in a Postfeminist Decade	p. 156
Toward An Embodied Micro-Politics	p. 156
An Intersectional Analysis of Military Mothers	p. 163
When Anita Hill Went to Washington: Passions Are Political	p. 172
The Micro-Politics of Sexual Harassment	p. 180
On Trial: The Patriarchal Grammar of Sexual Desire	p. 189
Becoming Civil about Sex	p. 196
An Ultra-Social Agency	p. 205
Epilogue: Engaging on a Postfeminist Frontier	p. 208
Notes	p. 213
Index	p. 245
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