Power and Feminist Agency in Capitalism: Toward a New Theory of the Political Subject

Description

How do we become political subjects? Put another way, how do we become actors who have the power to instigate political change? These are questions that have long vexed political theorists, particularly feminist and critical race scholars who think about how to achieve real political transformation. According to postmodern scholars, subjects are defined only through their relationship to institutions and social norms. But if we are only political people insofar as we are subjects of existing power relations, there is little hope of political transformation. To instigate change, we need to draw on collective power, but appealing to a particular type of subject, whether "working class," "black," or "women," will always be exclusionary. This issue is a particular problem for feminist scholars, who are frequently criticized for assuming that they can make broad claims for all women, while failing to acknowledge their own exclusive and powerful position (mostly white, Western, and bourgeois). Recent work in political and feminist thought has suggested that we can get around these paradoxes by wishing away the idea of political subjects entirely or else thinking of political identities as constantly shifting. In this book, Claudia Leeb argues that these are both failed ideas. She instead suggests a novel idea of a subject in-outline. Over the course of the book Leeb grounds this concept in work by Adorno, Lacan, and Marx - the very theoriests who are often seen as denying the agency of the subject. Leeb also proposes that power structures that create political subjects are never all-powerful. While she rejects the idea of political autonomy, she shows that there is always a moment in which subjects can contest the power relations that define them. -- from dust jacket. Cover......Page 1 Power and Feminist Agency in Capitalism......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Dedication......Page 6 Contents......Page 8 1. Introduction......Page 12 Part I The Subject-​in-​Outline......Page 30 2. The When of Sociopolitical Transformation: The Moment of the Limit......Page 32 3. Who Changes the World: The Political Subject-​in-​Outline......Page 66 4. How to Transform the World: Rethinking Theory and Practice......Page 93 5. What Makes Us Rebel: Suffering Reconsidered......Page 120 Part II Applications......Page 152 6. Rejecting the Politics of (Mis)Recognition: Butler Revisited......Page 154 7. The Working-​Class Woman and Marx: Biased Constructions......Page 177 8. Disrupting the Fantasy: Adorno and the Working-​Class Woman......Page 197 9. Conclusion......Page 216 Index......Page 226