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Sharing without Knowing: Collective Identity in Feminist and Democratic Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Michaele L. Ferguson
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Abstract

Many feminist and democratic theorists share the presumption that politics requires a pregiven subject (“women” or “the people”) whose identity is grounded in commonality. Drawing on Linda Zerilli's interventions in feminist debates, Ferguson develops an alternative account of collective identity that emerges instead from multiple, overlapping, and discontinuous social practices. This reconceptualization of identity demands a corresponding reconceptualization of democracy, characterized by the ongoing contestation of the very subject (“the people”) whose existence it presupposes.

Type
Radical Interventions
Information
Hypatia , Volume 22 , Issue 4: Special Issue: Democratic Theory , Fall 2007 , pp. 30 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by Hypatia, Inc.

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