Split Decisions

by Halley, Janet E.

• ISBN13: 9780691127378
• ISBN10: 0691127379
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-07-17
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Is it time to take a break from feminism? In this pathbreaking book, Janet Halley reassesses the place of feminism in the law and politics of sexuality. She argues that sexuality involves deeply contested and clashing realities and interests, and that feminism helps us understand only some of them. To see crucial dimensions of sexuality that feminism does not reveal--the interests of gays and lesbians to be sure, but also those of men, and of constituencies and values beyond the realm of sex and gender--we might need to take a break from feminism. Halley also invites feminism to abandon its uncritical relationship to its own power. Feminists are, in many areas of social and political life, partners in governance. To govern responsibly, even on behalf of women, Halley urges, feminists should try taking a break from their own presuppositions. Halley offers a genealogy of various feminisms and of gay, queer, and trans theories as they split from each other in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. All these incommensurate theories, she argues, enrich thinking on the left not despite their break from each other but because of it. She concludes by examining legal cases to show how taking a break from feminism can change your very perceptions of what's at stake in a decision and liberate you to decide it anew.

Author Biography

Janet Halley is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she teaches family law, comparative family law, discrimination law, the legal regulation of sexuality, and legal theory

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
PART ONE Taking a Break from Feminism
The Argument	3	(8)
My Complete and Total Lack of Objectivity	11	(5)
Taxonomies and Terms	16	(1)
m/f, m > f, and Carrying a Brief for f	17	(10)
Governance Feminism	20	(2)
Feminism, Sexual and Reproductive	22	(1)
A Sex Lexicon	23	(2)
Convergentism and Divergentism	25	(2)
A Story of Sexual-Subordination Feminism and Its Others	27	(4)
Liberation and Responsibility	31	(10)
PART TWO The Political/Theoretical Struggle over Taking a Break
Before the Break: Some Feminist Priors	41	(65)
Power Feminism	41	(17)
Catharine A. MacKinnon, Early and Late	41	(17)
Cultural Feminism	58	(21)
Robin West, Caring for Justice	60	(19)
MACKINNON/WEST	76	(3)
Liberal Feminism	79	(27)
Convergentist and Divergentist Hybrid Feminism	81	(26)
The Combahee River Collective Statement	82	(1)
THE COMBAHEE RIVER COLLECTIVE STATEMENT/THE COMBAHEE RIVER COLLECTIVE STATEMENT	89	(2)
Gayatri Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?"	91	(1)
MACKINNON/WEST/COMBAHEE RIVER COLLECTIVE/SPIVAK	102	(4)
The Break	106	(81)
Gay Identity/Feminism/Queer Theory	107	(12)
Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex"	114	(5)
Receiving French Social Theory	119	(13)
Michel Foucault, Volume One	119	(13)
FOUCAULT/MACKINNON/WEST/GAY IDENTITY POLITICS	124	(8)
The Split, from Feminism and within It	132	(18)
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet	133	(3)
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble	136	(4)
BUTLER/MACKINNON	139	(1)
Butler, "Imitation"	140	(6)
Rubin, "Interview"	146	(4)
Feminism from Its Outside: Queer Theory by Men	150	(37)
Leo Bersani, "Is the Rectum a Grave?"	151	(16)
BERSANI/TAKING A BREAK	165	(2)
Duncan Kennedy, "Sexy Dressing"	167	(20)
KENNEDY/TAKING A BREAK	181	(6)
Feminism and Its Others	187	(96)
Feminist "Paralysis"	187	(96)
Paranoid Structuralism and the Moralized Mandate to Converge	188	(19)
An Experiment in Political Stylistics (do try this at home)	192	(15)
1990-2000: From Political to Ethical Feminism	207	(14)
Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller, Conflicts in Feminism, and Elisabeth Bronfen and Misha Kavka, Feminist Consequences	208	(13)
1990-95: Getting to Deadlock	221	(6)
Judith Butler and Joan W Scott, Feminists Theorize the Political, and Seyla Benhabib et al., Feminist Contentions	221	(6)
Around 1993: Mapping Feminism and Queer Theory	227	(33)
Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin, The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader	228	(2)
Sedgwick, Tendencies, and Michael Warner, Fear of a Queer Planet	230	(1)
MACKINNON/SPIVAK/WARNER/SEDGWICK	237	(7)
Elizabeth Weed and Naomi Schor, feminism meets queer theory	244	(16)
1998: Trans Theory Splits While Staying in Place	260	(44)
Jay Prosser, Second Skins	261	(1)
PROSSER/BUTLER/RUBIN	273
PART THREE How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism
Taking a Break to Decide (I)	283	(21)
The Costs of "Making Difference Costless"	285	(5)
Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services	290	(14)
The Costs and Benefits of Taking a Break from Feminism	304	(44)
The Costs	304	(15)
Getting Rid of Feminism	304	(2)
Silencing Women	306	(2)
Flight from Feminism, Imagined as Limits, to the "Queer Utopia," Imagined as Libertine, Unbounded or Libertarian	308	(1)
Definitional Violence; the Foreclosure of Critique; and the Reinscription of Heterosexism in Queer Theory	309	(3)
Reifying Mere Terminology	312	(1)
Matricide, Misogyny, and Male Identification	312	(4)
Weakening Feminism and So Harming Real Women	316	(3)
The Benefits	319	(29)
Breaking with the Politics of Injury/Seeing around Corners of Our Own Construction	319	(21)
Seeing the Brain Drain as a Good Thing	340	(1)
Resisting Bad Faith	341	(3)
Minimizing Moral Perfectionism and Magic Realism	344	(1)
Deconstituting Women's Suffering	345	(3)
Taking a Break to Decide (II)	348	(17)
Twyman v. Twyman	348	(17)
Notes	365	(26)
Index	391