Philosophy & Rhetoric Nov 2016

blah blah WOMEN blah blah EQUALITY blah blah DIFFERENCE

Elizabeth Wingrove University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

Abstract

Abstract In this article I critically consider the usefulness of Jacques Rancière's “politics of literarity,” as explicated by Samuel Chambers, for understanding feminist politics. Emphasizing the historical and grammatical dimensions of the speech acts central to a politics of literarity, I show that women's assertions of gender injustice remain tightly tethered to a police order whose disruption remains crucial to establishing the political bona fides of any such claim to equality. While Chambers embraces this paradoxical aspect of a politics of literarity—that it both disrupts police and remains embedded within it—I suggest that the paradoxes confronted by those who articulate the “wrongs” of the gender order perforce raise questions about the adequacy of literarity as a linchpin of democratic politics. I elaborate this claim by reconsidering the historical example of Olympe de Gouges, first as her feminist speech is parsed by Joan Scott and second as it is parsed by Rancière.

Journal
Philosophy & Rhetoric
Published
2016-11-21
DOI
10.5325/philrhet.49.4.0408
CompPile
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
discourse analysis gender and writing
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References (15) · 1 in this index

  1. Chambers, Samuel. 2013. The Lessons of Rancière. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     ↗
  2. de Gouges, Olympe. 1791. Les droits de la femme, à la reine. N.p.: n.p.
  3. Larson, Gary. 1984. The Far Side Gallery. Kansas City, MO: Andrew McNeel.
  4. Rancière, Jacques. 1993. Les noms de l'histoire: Essai de poétique du savoir. Paris: Seuil.
  5. Rancière, Jacques. 1999. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Trans. Julie Rose. Minneapolis: University of…
Show all 15 →
  1. Rancière, Jacques. 2001. “Ten Theses on Politics.” Trans. Rachel Bowlby and Davide Panagia. Theory and Event 5 (3).
     ↗
  2. Rancière, Jacques. 2004. “Who Is the Subject of the Rights of Man?” South Atlantic Quarterly 103 (2–3): 297–310.
     ↗
  3. Rancière, Jacques. 2010. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. Ed. and trans. Steven Corcoran. London: Continuum.
     ↗
  4. Rancière, Jacques, Solange Guénoun, James H. Kavanagh, and Roxanne Lapidus. 2000. “Jacques Rancière: Literatu…
     ↗
  5. Rancière, Jacques, and Davide Panagia. 2000. “Dissenting Words: A Conversation with Jacques Rancière.” Diacri…
     ↗
  6. Scott, Joan. 1988. “Deconstructing Equality-versus-Difference: Or, The Uses of Post-Structuralist Theory for …
     ↗
  7. Scott, Joan. 1997. Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Un…
  8. Siebler (2010)
    Far from the Truth
    Pedagogy
  9. Wittig, Monique. 1992. The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Boston: Beacon Press.
  10. Zerilli, Linda M. G. 2005. Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 6 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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