Critical Theory Meets the Ethic of Care

Review: Critical Theory Meets the Ethic of Care: Engendering Social Justice and Social Identities Reviewed Work(s): Care, Gender, and Justice; Feminists Read Habermas: Gendering the Subject of Discourse by Diemut Elisabet Bubeck and Johanna Meehan Review by: Mechthild Nagel Source: Social Theory and Practice , Summer 1997, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer 1997), pp. 307-326 Published by: Florida State University Department of Philosophy Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23559186 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Theory and Practice This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Critical Theory Meets the Ethic of Care: Engendering Social Justice and Social Identities [Review of Diemut Elisabet Bubeck, Care, Gender, and Justice (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), ix + 281 pp., $49.95 cloth; and Johanna Meehan (ed.), Feminists Read Habermas: Gendering the Subject of Discourse (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), xi + 291 pp., $17.95 paper.] Over thirty years ago, Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique started a revolt of a peculiar sort in the U.S.; her book was a catalyst for white, middle-class women to reflect on their status as house wives, which they had acquired through choice or societal expec tations. They began to reject that status, despite the considerable privileges that came along with it. Some of these women partici pated in the "borning struggle" of the civil rights movement by starting consciousness-raising groups and discussing their per ceived sense of oppression as homeworkers; they rejected all the (patriarchal, bourgeois) values associated with it. On the academic front, Marxist feminists started to confront "women's work" in the ensuing debate about the status of domestic labor, which thrived especially in the U.K. In the early 1980s, another liberal feminist author took up a different sort of consciousness-raising within moral psychology. Carol Gilligan's ground-breaking book In a Different Voice (1982) suggests that it is an ethic of care, rather than appeals to justice and rights, which determines girls' moral judgments; Gilligan demanded that this "voice" be heard, not dismissed, in ethical discussions. As a result, feminists across all disciplines, not just feminist ethicists, took up the notion of "woman's way of knowing and caring." The feminist notion of care connotes compassion, attentiveness, devotion to others' needs—values foregrounded in the feminist Copyright 1997 by Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer 1997) 307 This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 308 Mechthild Nagel ethic of care developed by Gilligan, Hill Col Ruddick, and Tronto. Still, not all caring is u always already good caring. Some moralists co who grudgingly serves her child. Authentic mothering, on the other hand, are uncritical validation of such affectivity poses a challenge deontological ethics of Rawls, Kohlberg, and dismisses these affects as personal matters, irr considerations. Feminist ethicists, by contra deontologists for their ideological move of disc private feelings and evaluations as "merely" so-called good life and not to the realm of justic In the 1990s, a sobering realization is taking p the second shift (or even third shift) phenom required a synthesis of the two ethical positi justice. Feminists are again questioning t housework and the sexual division of work. T the importance of care without engaging in fal and romanticization. The question is raised theoretical framework has more to offer to social theorists: Is it desirable to reject the concept of care and turn to a Habermasian deontological ethic, or to return to a Marxian blending of social justice and care? Contemporary social-political thought, such as Habermas's and Rawls's theories of justice, still sidesteps a sustained analysis of gender issues.1 With respect to the early social critical theory of Habermas, the feminists in Meehan's collection propose to repair it so that it accounts for the gendered nature of the bourgeois public and private sphere. Similarly, Habermas's later discourse ethics, or theory of communicative action, is "gender-repaired" with the inclusion of care or affective emotion. Meehan's contributors are marked by what Rawls would call an "overlapping consensus": they want to correct Habermas's social and ethical theories while remaining loyal to his framework. By contrast, Diemut Bubeck, in her book, critiques Rawls's social justice theory, in particular his distribution paradigm, for its inadequacy in accommodating feminist materialist concerns. She thinks that this form of "repair" should be done within the This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Critical Theory Meets the Ethic of Care 309 parameters of a materialist analysis and ultimately rejects Rawls's liberal framework. Both books share a concern with overcoming the misleading disjuncture of justice and care. Of course it is tempting to entertain the question of which project—if either—succeeds in this endeavor; I will attempt to refrain from playing out one against the other while conceding that Bubeck has the more persuasive perspective. Instead, I will address three themes that pertain to both discourse ethics and materialist feminist ethics: the politics of intertwining justice and care, the interconnection of race, ethnicity, and so on with gendered selves in these discourses, and the political nature of care. A feminist who dares to engage with Habermas's critical theory other than in negative, abstract critique inevitably has to respond defensively to the question, "Why read Habermas?" "Forget Habermas" seems a radical posture to entertain, when Marx, Freud, and Foucault have been made palatable to feminist taste buds through disciple or "bandita" methods. For example, Freudian feminists are disciples, while post-Freudian feminists are banditas. It seems to me that most of the feminist theorists in Meehan's collection are disciples; for example, Jean Cohen avers that Habermas's latest work (Facticity and Validity, 1994) shows his commitment to accommodate feminist concerns and has corrected his earlier "gender blindness" (p. 81, n. 1). Jane Braaten seems at first to use the bandita method, as she re-uses or re-tools the concept of "communicative thinking"; in the end, she too suggests that Habermas's framework can be stretched to address gender concerns. What is Habermas's discursive theory of ethics? In a sweeping and playful gesture, Seyla Benhabib locates it thus: "Discourse ethics is situated somewhere between liberalism and communi tarianism, Kantian universalism and Hegelian Sittlichkeit." More precisely, discourse or communicative ethics attempts to break with a (Kantian) monological conception of the moral self and advocates a democratic proceduralism for establishing universally acceptable norms. Yet Habermas appeals to an abstract rather than substantive moral rationality to ensure the truth claim, the principle of justification, for his ethics, and thus remains within This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 310 Mechthild Nagel the Kantian tradition—and in opposition to fem care. His approach is also Hegelian, insofar as h concept of autonomy is necessary but not communicative ethics. For him, recognition of "generalized other," is key to understanding concerns dealing with justice (and solidarity). Feminists who have taken to critical so particularly to Habermas's theory of communi as all of the authors of Meehan's anthology pro are rethinking what it means to articulate a rela identity that is not blind to gender oppression. the meaning of "we,"3 and confront the politi feminists who are squarely labelled as uncrit "difference," of fragmented and fractured selve These Habermasian feminist theorists share a concern for seeking the conditions of possibility of consensus in a post conventional world. They focus on the role that women play as political agents in the public sphere and analyze the relationship of justice and care vis-à-vis "the concrete other." In evaluating these claims, it is essential to ask whether Habermas's theory is commensurable with feminist praxis. Does it take into account "different voices," different social identities? But first, I want to look at a feminist use of his colonization theory vis-à-vis the application of social care. In her article in Meehan's book, "Critical Social Theory and Feminist Critiques: The Debate with Jiirgen Habermas," Jean Cohen problematically characterizes care in the context of child care commodification, or in Habermas's jargon, "colonization of the life-world." Cohen balks at Nancy Fraser's suggestion (cf. Fraser's article "What's Critical About Critical Theory?") that the family be treated as an economic system, because it fails to take psychological factors, such as identity formations, into account. Also, Cohen is horrified at the idea of treating childcare like any other kind of social labor, since this seems to totally commodify nurturing (65). Indulging in alarmist gestures on this point, she writes: "... when organizational or economic requirements outweigh the communicative tasks of nurturing and teaching, they subvert the raison d'être of the institutions and have pathological This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Critical Theory Meets the Ethic of Care 311 consequences (unnurtured and untaught children)" (66). The commodification of childcare thus stands in the way of committed selfless care and pedagogy. Cohen's argument does not take into consideration positive effects of institutional procedures, for example, grievance procedures, which protect the rights of workers. A general strike of teachers might negatively affect students' education, yet it will inevitably raise the students' consciousness about class struggle and social justice issues. Even if care providers do not excercise their right to strike, Cohen's analysis implies that daycare workers and teachers (K through 12) should not be represented by unions, because collective bargaining agreements unnecessarily contribute to a climate where teachers see themselves exploited and thus tend to alienate them from their caring work. I think it is a mistake to romanticize the child-centered service mostly done by women; instead one ought to take note of the ideological uses of care, which Fraser—following Carole Pateman's materialist analysis—seems to acknowledge in her article. This case highlights the need to understand feminized practices of caring and serving practices in the context of social justice, and not simply as a "personal," private affair. Returning to the question of whether Habermas's theory is commensurable with feminist praxis, let us consider "Women and the 'Public Use of Reason'," Marie Fleming's essay in Meehan's book. She brings up another critique of Habermas's (and, I might add, Cohen's) conservative tendencies. As he worries about the "colonization of the life-world," Habermas warns us against bringing legalities into the (communicative) realm of the life-world, the family, and the school (132). Yet Fleming avers that Habermas is also concerned about the danger of limiting freedom through more juridification (133). This is certainly a point well taken with respect to legislating "community standards" for offensive art, pornography, and so on. Ironically, radical feminists seem to have joined forces with family-values/moral-majority interest groups. On the other hand, I contend that Habermas's idea of (negative) freedom from "internal colonization" (i.e., freedom from unnecessary legal restraints) is inadequate. It romanticizes nurturing by cheering for the preservation of the sanctity and This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 312 Mechthild Nagel purity of unregulated socialization within fam Experience suggests that unless they are pushed institutions rarely fight sexism, heterosexism, oppression. In addition, Habermas's rationalistic tenden embodied intersubjectivity is problematic for al Meehan's anthology. They critique his relianc controversial differentiation of justice and the g preference for abstract moral reason over substa Jane Braaten, in particular, reveals Habermas's K which cannot simply be spirited away to make ethics work for feminists. What are the implications of Habermas's rationality for theory and practice? Jane Braaten with feminist understandings of substantiv community and solidarity, to formulate " thinking." This notion displaces to some extent H of communicative rationality, which is not base ideals (139). Braaten finds Habermas's ideal of co in exploring the notion of solidarity among dive (141). Yet consensus has little relevance as a st feminist collective action; it is often motivated t of compassion for the plight of an individual memb the role of experience, not appeals to univer determines communicative action (143). In a related critique, Braaten argues that Evely Helen Longino's studies of the social sciences character of epistemology have convincingly sho social, substantive ideals that inform knowledg progress, and not the isolated ahistorical Cartesia of knowledge (151). Braaten concludes with the feminist communicative thinking begin with the how oppression works and how one can resi hegemonic institutions. By addressing this conc beyond communicative theory and its worry abo However, she agrees with Habermas that "[c thinking cannot (and need not) ignore questions happen to be formal or general." She argues tha This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Critical Theory Meets the Ethic of Care 313 wary of claiming that women's experiences are simply generalizable. Yet, "[r]emembering and synthesizing from women's stories also creates the bonds of solidarity ... Though we find each other's stories sometimes overwhelmingly unlike our own, our knowledge of them creates the possibility of mutual support" (157). It seems to me that caring is a "substantive" ideal; as such it is clearly meant to be included in her ideal of communicative thinking. But she provides examples that avoid a mere romantic appropriation of care, as does Cohen. Braaten's account also avoids casting a (substantive) principle of care against an (abstract) principle of justice. Even though Braaten insists that she has not repudiated Habermas's theory, I take her feminist proposal for communicative thinking to be a determinate negation (rather than a merely abstract negation) of Habermas's communicative rationality, since it foregrounds substantive, not formal, principles. Bringing forward another limited critique of Habermas, Simone Chambers takes up the question of the primacy of formalism in her analysis of the discursive politics of a feminist peace and justice affinity group. Unlike Braaten, Chambers hesitates to critique Habermas's model. She is attentive to the praxis of successful discourse as outlined by the activists' resource handbook, in which they draw on Gilligan's ethic of care. Habermas's discourse ethics with its emphasis on abstract formalism and correct proceduralism seems undesirable to these activists. Nevertheless, their approach shares proceduralist aspects with Habermas's discourse ethics, by privileging consensus formation over disagreements, conflicts, and difference (170). She also notes the pitfalls of the drive towards group consensus and agrees with Habermas's critique of a communitarian ethos, unsuited to modem pluralist democracies (176). But we need to ask whether Habermas is really immune from that critique himself. After all, communicative ethics is a consensus-driven discourse that tends to silence difference. In her essay, Seyla Benhabib also points out striking similarities between Gilligan and Habermas regarding the necessary interaction between care or solidarity and justice (192). Yet she focuses on disagreements between their ethical theories and seeks This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 314 Mechthild Nagel to forge a third perspective combining the care pe universalist perspective. In her critique of the addresses the "woman's question," Benhabib cla has insufficient reasons for rejecting a univers Habermas's or Kohlberg's (183). On the ot formalistic ethics could benefit from Gilligan approach, important for a postconventional eth for combining (impartial) justice and (contex states cogently that we need both a deontologic our actions and a contextualized moral concern for others: "The generalized other of the justice perspective is always also a concrete other" (192). Care is not merely a personal but also a moral issue, a position that neither Habermas nor Kohlberg would endorse. In the end Benhabib advocates a feminist critical theory with "the right mix of justice and care"—requiring the subject to integrate both autonomy and solidarity. Furthermore, she proposes (in contrast to Nietzschean, Marxist, and postmodern identity notions) an intersubjective yet coherent self-identity—a self that is constituted and reconstructed through the web of others' narratives (200). But I want to ask, what narratives are to be considered legiti mate? How are different voices recognized and represented, es pecially in the context of a white supremacist society? Benhabib shares Habermas's optimistic Enlightenment project that fails to acknowledge its adherence to the logic of identity, that is, "dif ference" always already succumbs to identitarian thinking. Thus Benhabib lacks a social-political framework or a narrative that could address issues of fairness, of distribution of (public) care among groups of people differentiated by gender, class, caste, eth nicity, and so on. To my mind, it does not suffice to allude to the conception of a coherent self who is vaguely connected to others. While Benhabib insists on an undefined "right mix" of care with justice, Jodi Dean advocates a "progressive Gilligan reading" of contextualized (i.e., gendered) care givers and takers (207). She critiques Habermas's stage theory, with its preconventional, conventional, and postconventional levels, that underscores Kohlberg's moral system. This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Critical Theory Meets the Ethic of Care 315 Dean claims that it is also necessary to revise discourse ethics so that it can include the concerns of women (208), because Habermas's own analysis is not concerned with the gendered nature of authority. She notes that in his ethics, recognition (of the other as subject) is only treated either as competition or cooperation, with competition in the ascendant; one argument, even in a supposedly coercion-free environment, must "win out." Empathy is neglected as a "personal," not moral, intuition so that it plays no constitutive role in recognizing the other. Dean chides Habermas for bringing in "empathy 'from behind'." As a corrective move, she puts forth the category of connection —that is, that empathy and attachedness are constitutive elements of intersubjective relationships—to revise his ethics (220). She also suggests that one has to overcome "role recognition in favor of the mutual recognition of subjects deserving equal respect" (222) to answer the question of how such ethics works at a postconventional level for both men and women. Dean, like Benhabib, questions the concept of mutually respectful, reciprocal relationships at the postconventional level, relationships between the observer and the generalized other; she asserts that the latter has to be thought of as multiple others, not as the other (224). To return to my initial question about accounting for differences, Benhabib and Dean answer that Habermas's discourse ethics offers a recipe to feminists that successfully addresses the concerns of "different voices" and identities. To my mind, the question remains of how we engage in this Utopian "leap" towards postconventional, undistorted, rational value judgments. Is it enough to postulate a "critical distance" to ensure that we do not get trapped in conventional hypocrisies and prejudices? Communicative, critical practice has to be concep tualized differently, so that it does not get entangled in a methodo logical solipsism. Reason ought to be subservient to our human-practical needs and not be appealed to in isolation of them. Habermas's postconventional perspective ignores our irrational, distorted emotions as well as our care-free play, risk-taking, which contribute to our daily moral decision-making. As Dean notes, one cannot simply bring "care" into Habermas's ethics as an afterthought. Undoubtedly, a Habermasian ethicist This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 316 Mechthild Nagel could respond that the problems I mention are not for his discourse ethics, because they addre conventional level. However, I contend that the between conventional and postconventional stag to obscure the methodological solipsism at wo appeal to my own rational capacity to sort out u judgments and find my account simply confirm (rational) self. As Dean points out, discourse eth recipes that tell the moral agent which venue o making to follow on the postconventional level. fall-back position seems to be this: What cou judgment, which needs to be weeded out in discu seems to be predicated on the Kantian "neutral" of a coherent, self-interested, and monological s The ethic of care also relies on a modernis intersubjectively posited, relational selves. It is way that indicates a limited understanding of l Most Gilligan feminists have in mind a care that filtered, virtually free of distorted sentiments; "care" for dependents, for the sick, is unquestion ask: Are carers obliged to be serving their ablewho are abusers? Can practicing "authentic" car of abusiveness? Neither theories of justification care provide adequate answers for such question Let me now turn to another problem of th dimension of discourse ethics. One of the under entertained in Meehan's anthology is that of how t additive approach, that is, one that simply adds a that erase the gendered (and raced) first-world s discourse ethics. If Habermas's account is gende it be repaired to deal seriously with sexism, het interlocking oppressions of sexism, racism, and Allison Weir, in Meehan's book, delineates coge of a relatively coherent self, even taking into acc self-identification, such as Gloria Anzaldúa's sel a Catholic-raised, lesbian Chicana who is trying her borderland experience (265). Braaten, too, g analysis of the differing positionality of the li This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Critical Theory Meets the Ethic of Care 317 activists. Nevertheless, the discussion of race (and imperialism) is marginal. To be sure, this anthology is subtitled "Gendering the Subject of Discourse." Yet their lack of attention to race and racism ought to be troubling to the contributors, since surely none of the contributors wants to commit Habermas's error of draping the subject in a universal—that is, white (fe)male—masquerade. Concretely, I want to question whether the "generalized other" in its feminist expanded version is always already a raced subject as well as a gendered subject (and Dean and Meehan convincingly "fill in" the missing subject formations in this context). Despite the emphasis on substantive rationality, on the importance of the particular, contextualized, gendered subject positions, I would have found it helpful if the processes of racialization, of the intersectionality of race and gender, had been addressed and not simply posed as an "added-on" problem. Perhaps we have reached the discursive limits of Habermas's discourse ethics with respect to the topic of race and racism; one indication might be his use of terms such as "colonization thesis," which for him simply denotes the process of increasing commodification in the life-world (already lamented by Guy Debord's Situationist Internationale in the 1960s). To my knowledge, critical race theory has not made use of Habermas's reflections on juridification to advance its penetrating critique of Anglo-American legal institutions. In their discussions of relational feminist approaches to social identity, the Habermasian theorists foreground affective care, albeit critically, and discuss its usefulness for a feminist discourse ethics. However, they tend to focus on normative moral claims, independent of the economic reality that agents find themselves in. To the credit of Diemut Bubeck, her account of care begins with a discussion of women's work. Bubeck takes a materialist feminist perspective which is an oddity in ethic-of-care discussions. "Women's work" is a technical term that is used in a descriptive sense, not as an essentializing move. As an instructive guiding thread throughout her book, Bubeck uses (in)famous statistics of the U.N. that effectively dramatize the appalling economic inequalities women experience globally. Women receive only one-tenth of the world's income and This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 318 Mechthild Nagel own less than one-hundredth of the world's pro they do seventy-five per cent of the wo consideration of care is motivated by a desire socioeconomic distribution of benefits and burd a number of social justice theorists have been have, for the most part, only marginally dis division of labor. In contrasting her account of the mainstream ones, Bubeck states resolutely: women's work as care... is my final and positiv challenge of showing how women are unjustly While many feminist theorists (including recently argued for a synthesis of "care" a Bubeck's decisive thesis that in fact to see ju opposites is wrong, "that the choice between c false choice" (13). Equally misguided are fem celebrate care as a liberatory notion while co rights. (Yet, she also notes correctly that there are that have little to do with care and are in direct Habermas's theory, which foregrounds abstract substantive reason, seems to me—and to the contributors to Meehan's collection—to be a case of such false choice. Bubeck starts her analysis by critiquing two conflicting Marxian theories of work: (a) the problem of necessary versus abundant labor and (b) the dialectic of labor. The first theory is gender-blind, since it assumes that all work can be reduced or abolished. This leaves open for speculation the question of what Marx would do with certain unfree labor that is irreducible and typically women's work—unless, of course, one might stipulate, that for Marx, rearing children is a kind of play. Bubeck has a sterner vision in mind and conjures up a cyborg-like scenario that confirms Jean Cohen's horror of increasing bureaucratization: "Thus imagine a society in which sick, old-aged, and disabled people are put into fully automated hospitals and asylums, and where children are brought up by robots" (28). Marx, as Bubeck notes critically, is not only unaware of the problem of how to minimize "women's work," but he is also silent as to how to address minimization of necessary labor for racial minorities in an advanced industrial society (32). Necessary This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Critical Theory Meets the Ethic of Care 319 labor may very well be minimized for the (racial, ethnic) majority, but what distributive safeguards does Marx put in place so that minorities are not left to bear the brunt of labor that cannot be reduced? The second theory, the dialectic of labor, gives an account of the changing relationships of workers under different modes of production. In the first phase, workers identify "slavishly" with their work, with their craft. In the second phase, under capitalism, workers become alienated from their product, yet at the same time "free" themselves from natural, slavish identification with their work. Finally, under communism, workers come to consciously realize themselves in their work (36-37). This account is also clearly gendered, as Bubeck notes. While it is conceivable to include women's work in the division of labor and in dialectical stage theory, Marx does not mention anywhere a "slavish" rela tionship of women or that their work could be sublated (41). If the dialectical progression were to be applied to their work, women would cease to be naturally designated carers and nurturers and could choose to be hunters, shepherds, and critics (43). Since Marx's dialectic of labor fails to include women's work, Bubeck turns to the analyses of Second Wave Marxist feminists. Yet the Anglo-American domestic labor debate reveals to Bubeck that Marxist theory is ill-equipped to understand and measure women's work in particular, because by focusing on the aspect of production (of use values), it fails to grasp the care dimension of women's activities (64). However, I would argue that Miriam Greenspan's notion of the "labor of relatedness" and Ann Ferguson's account of sex-affective production is commensurable with Bubeck's materialist theory of care, since they also address explicitly the exploitative nature of domestic production, that is, of the extraction of surplus labor.6 While the domestic labor debate started out to theorize women's domestic work and women's oppression by men, these feminist demands were, as Bubeck convincingly shows, systematically derailed by the functionalist Marxist position, for example, by the claim that the capitalists benefit from women's housework (78). The problem with this "benefit" position is that it sidesteps the issues of how men, not just capitalists, benefit from women's unpaid labor and why This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 320 Mechthild Nagel women tend to do this kind of work. It fails t explanation of how capitalists actually benef housework by paying a family wage and ign capitalists do not necessarily even pay a family The insights to be learned from this functionalis avoid fitting women's work into the Marxist fr Marxist analytic concepts can be used as tools a Despite her own materialist penchant, Bubeck irreverent with Marx and the Marxist tradition—more bandita like—than the feminists in Meehan's collection are with Habermas, since all of them profess to stay put within the framework of discourse ethics. Bubeck rejects simplistic exploitation stories, which often overlook the material status of exploited and exploiter. She gives a functionalist definition, saying that those whose labor burdens exceed their benefits are exploited (92). But what measures does one apply? A utilitarian calculus? How do caring and charity work get measured? Bubeck concedes that burden and benefits are not easily assessed, especially when a person occupies both positions (enjoying privilege and being exploited) in different circum stances. Therefore it seems to me that it is futile to base such a definition on material status, especially since Bubeck does not comment on who is doing the "counting" (of beneficial and burdensome shares).7 So what kind of ethic of care is liberating? Bubeck avoids prescribing a particular meta-ethical theory, but seems to lean towards a utilitarian greatest-happiness model, emphasizing minimization of harm. Noddings's "myopic model" assumes the existence of a sharp distinction between "law and justice" on the one side and "receptiveness, relatedness, and attentiveness" on the other side. In upholding her ethic of care, Noddings simply and completely rejects considerations of justice. Bubeck realizes that it is difficult to imagine that an ethic of care could indeed allow for distributive justice to work within it. She avers that one simply needs to avoid a romantic and repressive ethic of care. So rather than outright rejecting an ethic of care, Bubeck is interested in expanding a Gilligan and Noddings model that takes women's different positionalities into account. This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Critical Theory Meets the Ethic of Care 321 In her reworking of the ethic of care, she is interested in decentering previous models that focus on the agent alone and not on her effects. Instead of endorsing a subj ectivist model, she favors an objective one, which looks at both private and public care. Public care is beneficial because it is impersonal, or rather could be impersonal, and thus could help relieve a mother's chores, guilt ridden anxieties, and so on. Bubeck contrasts her advocacy for public care with Noddings's appreciation for proximity and relatedness of care. Noddings apparently affirms an agent's choice to prefer caring for a bigoted relative rather than becoming active in a progressive cause. Bubeck uses Noddings's problematic example to stress the need to use care in a less personalized, more public setting (220). Public care (e.g., in a hospital emergency room) needs to adhere to principles of justice; one key issue is to avoid the appearance of favoritism, of tending to one's own kin first. Yet, this does not require that public care has to be devoid of personal attentiveness. Even though many ethic-of-care theorists focus on the agent, the care-giver, they still fail to ask the pertinent question: Why is it that women still do the bulk of care, across race and class boundaries? Bubeck gives an account of a revised Marxist feminist "exploitation story" that looks critically at the ideological con struction of women's care, "the circle of care," which proves to be an abyss from which women cannot escape (181). Bubeck disagrees with those Marxists who claim that it is primarily the capitalist who benefits from women's household work; she also finds limiting feminists who argue that it is husbands who benefit. Rather it is all men who benefit from women's unpaid work; we need to look at this work, more specifically, as care, in which women engage and are exploited. Hence, care is most of all an exploitative practice; this is why Bubeck is less sympathetic to feminist accounts, particularly that of Noddings, who ignores that evaluation and thus reinscribes the oppressive function of care (184). Benhabib's discussion of the generalized versus concrete other is portrayed by Bubeck as another extremist position. Bubeck points out that justice cannot neatly be aligned with the generalized other, and care with the concrete other (215), so that the issue, no This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 322 Mechthild Nagel matter what, says Benhabib, is not to present the and justice." Care is not always a proximate, per as the case of public care shows. In fact em hospitals is—and ought to be—completely ministered, and relatedness or nepotism is u That does not mean that personalized attention public care, even if this is one's impression fr care workers entangled in a web of bureauc Rather than lamenting the impersonalized characte one ought to reflect on the beneficial aspect professional carers who are not related to the peop are often better trained to take care of them th This argument should allay Jean Cohen's fe cratization of the life-world. In Bubeck's careful analysis, "justice cum mechanical adding up of principles, but is i ferentiated. Thus she does not repeat the mistaken of the ethic-of-care feminists, and has to be recko critics (e.g., Habermas, Kohlberg) who dismiss for being essentialist, "justice-blind," and s problematic. The strength of Bubeck's analysis lies in her c of various models of ethic of care; she interrogate the basis of whether they are useful in high oppression, or whether in fact their heralding of voice" furthers rather than subverts wome Bubeck claims that Noddings's radically contex care lends itself to that latter interpretation. In th rejection of considerations of justice, ethic-o overlook the problem of fair distribution, or the b unremunerated "labor of love" that carers carry With refreshingly unsentimental materialist explores the benefits of being subjected to e might create the conditions of refusal, of resis who become aware of their situation might eng opportunity, carers could very well turn into figh the notion of "othermothering" comes to mind standpoint theory and ethic of care to forge an Af This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Critical Theory Meets the Ethic of Care 323 theory highlighting affinity or connectedness among women in black communities. Care, in this context, rather than being oppressive, is seen as a force of resistance.9 Some of the weaknesses of Bubeck's book have to do with the commonality versus difference problem. Even though Bubeck does not build her own exploitation story on the model of women as wives, her attempt to see women as carers still draws on the model of the nuclear family (in a white-dominated industrialized country such as the U.K.), for instance, in the ethical dilemma examples she poses. How differentiated is the generalized other, one might ask with Benhabib? In her variability catalogue, she mentions immigrants who "tend" to have larger family sizes and rely on extended kin for caring practices. While I am not going to dispute the facts that she seems to base this on, why assume that the (white) nuclear family model she employs for her examples is fact not fiction? Another blind spot is her insistence that care is to be distributed equally among "able-bodied" adults. Is she trying to establish some objective measure of quality care? Surely, she cannot mean to disqualify older children who care for their younger siblings and other kin? Or differently-abled persons who want to take care of themselves and their partners, children, and so on, but are forced to live in an environment that discriminates against them, so that they have to rely on other care-takers. It may be too sweeping and reductivistic a charge to state that all men benefit from female (maternal) care and don't participate equally—and I am not just thinking of elderly men taking care of their ailing wives.10 While Bubeck critiques Delphy and Leonard's antiquated model of family relations and obligations (123), there is also very little discussion of "queerie" family settings in her own account. Can we only imagine gay men as caricatures of female care behaviors, à la Torchsong Trilogy, where one partner imitates/parodies the maternal side? There seems to be more than simply the "good will of a husband" that is at stake here (cf. 99). The problem with talking about "care," theorizing care, is that we have a commonsensical notion of it, and we may very well be espousing fictional, stereotypical platitudes of "authentic care" This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 324 Mechthild Nagel and leave very little room for mythic-tran realistic portrayals of what real people do (mot Medea, notwithstanding). Bubeck has taken up mystification of care, particularly when care service. Meeting a need for a dependent, for an in function, whereas satisfying needs of someone activity for himself is merely rendering a serv A key challenge for the ethic-of-care theoris an essentialist construction of a "woman's voice" that is not necessarily a "victim's voice"; here Bubeck's insistence on talking about the vulnerability of women as carers comes to mind (124). If Foucault is right in suggesting that power also comes from below, how can that be applied to women's resistance to care? From antiquity on, a number of narratives about women's (mythic) resistance to patriarchal, imperialist hegemony have recounted the possibility of withholding reproduction—a birth-strike; rarely, if ever, are there accounts of women's "care-strikes" except for the truly monstrous mothers accounts, such as Euripides' Medea. Of course, as with the fear of castration, these stories may reveal more about male erotic anxieties than about women's actual threatening initiatives. In conclusion, I want to return to Meehan's collection and ask: What are the promises of Habermasian discourse ethics vis-à-vis social justice? Despite the laudable efforts by this successor of the Frankfurt School (of Horkheimer/Adorno) to provide us with a model that does not merely reflect the Kantian monological subject, and the considerable attempts of the feminists of Meehan's collection to imbue the social self with gender (and other voices), I am skeptical of whether Habermas's social theory, in particular his postconventional ethics, supplants or sublates the Marxian notion of ideology critique. Rather than questioning Habermas's politics and commitment to social justice, all the feminist authors are preoccupied with tearing down some of his structuralist distinctions (e.g., life-world versus system, justification versus application, abstract rationality versus substantive reason, generalized other versus concrete other), to make the master theory more amenable to their concerns about solidarity, respect, and care. This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Critical Theory Meets the Ethic of Care 325 Yet, arguably, Hossenfelder's polemic gesture with respect to the uses of a postmonological discourse ethics hits the mark and puts into doubt the merits of such revisionist efforts: "Here, too, the few have to lead the discourse on behalf of all (of us), and in order to accomplish this credibly, they have to follow the criteria of rationality. But then the detour via discourse is superfluous, since one could simply follow those criteria."11 Despite fetishist disavowals of the monological, solipsistic subject, the proposal to add-and-stir-in the flavors of pluralism and the uncoerced force of the better argument to the Kantian moral subject only reinforces the monological, albeit pluralist monological character of the Habermasian subject(s). Even though I also remain skeptical about the political merits of an ethic of care, Bubeck's materialist conception of it and her Marxist use of ideology critique seem in the end to be more promising than the proposal of a feminist user-friendly communi cative rationality that could also somehow encompass care.13 Notes 1. Bubeck and Meehan thus continue the trend of revisionist interpretations in feminist political theory; some other notable contributions to this field are Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell (eds.), Feminism as Critique (Minnea polis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), and Mary L. Shanley and Carole Pateman (eds.), Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory (Cam bridge: Polity Press, 1991). 2. Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1992). 3. On the postmodem angle of the debate, see Andrew Cutrofello, "Must We Say What 'We' Means? The Politics of Postmodernism," Social Theory and Practice 19 (1993): 93-109. 4. On a more "interactive" debate between the two camps, see Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, and Nancy Fraser, Feminist Contentions (New York: Routledge, 1992). 5. On this topic, see Rainer Marten, Lebenskunst (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1993), p. 50. 6. See Miriam Greenspan, A New Approach to Women and Therapy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983); and Ann Ferguson, Blood at the Root: Mother hood, Sexuality and Male Dominance (London: Pandora, 1987). This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 326 Mechthild Nagel 7. Nevertheless, Bubeck proceeds with her own "exploit feminists such as Spelman for disavowing generalizati one ought to clarify, is not Elizabeth Spelman's positio that of postmodern feminists (e.g., Judith Butler), contr mistakenly assumed. Spelman has merely raised the spe generalizations, invoking an unreflected "speaking for an arrogant claim of commonality in order to approp Spelman, Inessential Woman (Boston, Beacon Press, "Woman: The One and the Many." Delphy and Leo women's exploitation is certainly guilty of such false the other hand, as Bubeck's own account shows, it is p "women" to speak on behalf of women, since, as Spelm all claims about commonality are arrogant. 8. However, in reality, emergency care is far from bein and impartially: practices of heterosexism, class bias, r trism abound in U.S. hospitals. 9. See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (New 1990); and Stanlie James and Abena Busia (eds.), Theor nisms (New York: Routledge, 1993). 10. As Dagmar Ganssloser has argued in her discussion o Jewish women survivors of Auschwitz, it is misleading women practiced care, e.g., by creating "families" in the strategy. Men also developed solidarity groups, even e recipes as a strategy to combat a persistent hunge "Schwarze Milch der Friihe: Überlebende berichten fib sale in Auschwitz" (unpublished Master's thesis, Frankf 11. Malte Hossenfelder, "Überlegungen zu einer transzen des kategorischen Imperativs," in Forum fur Philosop (1988), p. 291; cited in Guido Lôhrer, Menschliche Wü liche Geltung und metaphorische Grenze der praktisch (Freiburg: Alber, 1995), p. 95. 12. Lôhrer, p. 456. 13. Many thanks to Roger Gottlieb and Mary Manke for the earlier versions of the paper. Mechthild Nagel Department of Women s St Mankato State Universi [email protected]. This content downloaded from 24.59.96.164 on Sun, 12 May 2024 20:15:55 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms