Feminism, the Public and the Private

The categories of public and private have been at the centre of feminist theory for the past three decades. Focusing on the gendered relations of sexuality and the body, family life and democratic citizenship, feminists have redirected public debate on questions of privacy and publicity. They have challenged leading theories of the public sphere, adding immeasurably to the historical and cross-cultural understanding of public and private life, from the rise of liberal and democratic institutions in the 18th and 19th centuries to today's media-saturated public sphere. This volume presents the results of this multi-disciplinary feminist exploration. Contributors demonstrate the significance of the public/private distinction in feminist theory, its articulation in the modern and late modern public sphere, and its impact on identity politics within feminism in recent years.Table of ContentNotes on Contributors. Joan B. Landes: Introduction. I. The Public/Private Distinction in Feminist Theory. 1: Sherry B. Ortner: Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?. 2: Mary G. Dietz: Context Is All: Feminism and Theories of Citizenship. 3: Seyla Benhabib: Models of Public Space: Hannah Arendt, the Liberal Tradition and Jurgen Habermas. 4: Bonnie Honig: Toward an Agonistic Feminism: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Identity. II. Gender in the Modern Liberal Public Sphere. 5: Joan B. Landes: The Public and the Private Sphere: A Feminist Reconsideration. 6: Leonore Davidoff: Regarding Some `Old Husbands' Tales': Public and Private in Feminist History. 7: Mary P. Ryan: Gender and Public Access: Women's Politics in Nineteenth-Century America. 8: Marilyn Lake: The Inviolable Woman: Feminist Conceptions of Citizenship in Australia. 9: Carole Pateman: The Patriarchal Welfare State. III. Gendered Sites in the Late Modern Public Sphere. 10: Lauren Berlant: Live Sex Acts (Parental Advisory: Explicit Material). 11: W. J. T. Mitchell: Interview with Barbara Kruger. 12: Nancy Fraser: Sex, Lies, and the Public Sphere: Reflections on the Confirmation of Clarence Thomas. 13: Patricia J. Williams: On Being the Object of Property. 14: David Bell, Jon Binnie, Julia Cream, Gill Valentine: All Hyped Up and No Place to Go. 15: Jennifer Wicke: Celebrity Material: Materialist Feminism and the Culture of Celebrity. 16: Erica Jong: Hillary's Husband Re-Elected!: The Clinton Marriage of Politics and Power. IV. Public and Private Identity: Questions for a Feminist Public Sphere. 17: Iris Marion Young: Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critiques of Moral and Political Theory. 18: Wendy Brown: Wounded Attachments: Late Modern Oppositional Formations. 19: Anne Phillips: Dealing with Difference: A Politics of Ideas or a Politics of Presence?. Index