Posthuman Feminism. Rosi Braidotti
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are successful ongoing experiments. However, as Howie sharply put it: ‘the amount of extraordinary work already published in the field of feminist theory is a blessing and a curse’ (2010: xi), as theory does not always connect to practice. Academic feminist scholarship has indeed produced extensive commentaries on the major topics and texts in the Humanities and Social Sciences, from companions and encyclopaedias, to the Handbook of Critical Menstruation Studies (Bobel et al., 2020). Despite intersectional efforts, however, the issue of diversity is still central to feminism and the few feminist professors of colour in the mostly white women’s and gender studies curricula experience isolation and extra burdens of responsibility (Wekker, 2016). Greater efforts are needed to diversify gender studies and to respect multiple axes of oppression, in keeping with demands voiced by contemporary movements to change the university and to decolonize the curriculum. Moreover, the success of academic feminism has been contained mostly within the faculties of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Women’s, feminist, gender and queer studies courses are practically absent in the Life Sciences and generally slow in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education.
But the data also tell another, more cautionary, tale. The social category of ‘women’, which was statistically absent from most social and economic data research in the post-Second World War years in keeping with traditional patterns of patriarchal exclusion of gendered subjects, has now been made very visible. Emancipation can therefore be assessed by the extent to which women have achieved the status of fully quantified statistical units. Their individual complaints, pain, secrets and silences have been reformatted into manageable scientific information, which is a powerful tactic in data-driven cognitive capitalism (Moulier-Boutang, 2012). Gender metrics and statistics are a welcome index of progress, which indicates that ‘women’ are now a majoritarian category integrated into the economic and social structure of advanced economies (Braidotti, 2002). The hegemony of gender as a feminist notion can be seen ‘as a sign of the hegemonization and denaturalization of the gender apparatus, as well as its consolidation across a spectrum of social and political contexts’ (Repo, 2016: 126).
This is definitely a step forward, but, on closer scrutiny, the newly acquired quantified visibility turned out to be a sideways move, mostly confined to Europe and North America, that created as many problems as it solved. Firstly, metrics tell a partial tale and even the documented extent of the political and professional success of women is incomplete at best. The relative degrees of equality in fact are not evenly spread across all social classes and ethnicities and a sole statistical focus on gender plays to the detriment of other intersectional variables (Chow, 2010). This restricts the field of relevance and applicability of feminist politics.
Secondly, gender mainstreaming comes with a hefty price tag. It is indeed the case that since the 1980s, analyses of gender have become a widespread practice in leading institutions such as the World Bank and the European Union, which is the main source of the figures I am presenting in this chapter. Gender has become an accepted instrument to assess the discrepancies in power and privilege in relation to social progress and capital accumulation. The objective of gender equality in most liberal democracies is not to reform or remove gender roles but ‘to break down their stringency in order to allow individuals to make allegedly better, more rational choices for the benefit of the species and the economy’ (Repo, 2016: 154).
Equality narrowly defined as balancing the ratio between the two sexes, however necessary as a starting point for the implementation of a feminist agenda, is not sufficient on its own. Even assuming that women – or rather, some women – have become more equal, who are they actually equal to? (Braidotti, 1994; Irigaray, 1994 [1987]). Which vision of the human have they become the equal of, similar to, or even the same as? What’s the human for feminism? Clearly the outreach and wider implications of the feminist agenda mobilize not only the whole of society, but also shared assumptions about our species. This is why I think that feminism is indeed the mother of all questions (Solnit, 2017); that it is for everyone (hooks, 2000), and although not everyone actually is a feminist, maybe they should be (Adichie, 2014).
But the generous fecundity of the assertion that feminism is for everybody is tricky. For one thing, the fact that the more radical or transformative aspects of the feminist political agenda are still in progress means that everyone can activate them. The tendency of liberal economies to blur the boundaries of binary gender oppositions also means that women – even in their great variety – do not own feminism. It is undeniable that today ‘Men, nonbinary and genderqueer people are proud to call themselves feminists and use feminist thought in their work’ (D’Ignazio and Klein, 2020: 14). With mainstreaming comes transversal diversification.
The contradictions of neoliberal feminism expose the limitations of the project of equality-minded emancipation but also its enduring appeal. It is worth stressing that I recognize the necessity of continuing to pursue this project, limitations notwithstanding. In this respect, I disagree with Grosz’s assertion that recognition is not worth fighting for (Grosz, 2002). I would rather say that recognition alone is not sufficient, but it is necessary and a very good place to start from. What matters, however, is to keep on moving and not get stuck in the Master’s gaze, even in his tolerant mode (Brown, 2006).
Assuming that feminism is in its essence a transformative project, not just a reparative one, and without wishing to dismiss the often-encouraging statistics, I am worried by in-built drawbacks of equality-minded feminism, be it in their liberal, socialist or anti-racist versions. Demographic, quantitative and economic analyses of gender equality are not neutral. They are based on an implicit notion of the social subject as a liberal individualistic self. This vision assumes adherence to the dominant parameters of subjectivity, such as belonging to the dominant ethnicity, being a legal citizen, practising heterosexuality, speaking a standard language, being able-bodied and healthy and engaged in waged labour. This is hardly an inclusive understanding of what it means to be human today, even in advanced economies and democratic regimes, let alone elsewhere. All these factors police access to entitlements and advantages. They underplay the multiple systemic structures of oppression and exclusion by patriarchal, capitalist and colonial powers and how they affect the social status of marginalized others. These structures can no longer be contained within the parameters of emancipation platforms that were drawn up at a different historical stage of capitalism. Feminists today cannot speak solely in terms of access to labour, child-care or a bank account – though these issues are still unsolved. We need to broaden that range and scale of social and economic activities and assess our participation in the advancement of cognitive capitalism. This requires a change of scale and a more complex sense of time. The framework of the posthuman convergence is an urgent and necessary way of updating this political platform for feminist practices, as I will further argue in the next chapter.
Feminist Socialist Humanism: Class Equality
The flagrant contradictions of liberal feminism can leave one aghast. Like a character in Sally Rooney’s Normal People (2018), one stops and wonders at the incongruous behaviour of those most responsible for the economic and social injustices of our times. Never was so much owned by so few to the detriment of so many. In January 2019 the world’s twenty-six richest people owned as much as the poorest 50 per cent. The World’s Inequality Report co-authored by economist Piketty shows that between 1980 and 2016, the poorest 50 per cent of humanity received 12 per cent in every dollar of global income growth. By contrast, the top 1 per cent, got 27 cents of every dollar. No wonder that the widespread acceptance and mainstreaming of liberal feminism triggered a strong reaction on the Left of the political spectrum, making socialist feminism more relevant than ever.
Although socialist humanism shares with liberalism the belief in ‘Man’ as the universal emblem for all humans, it bases its political faith in structural revolutionary changes. Socialist humanism rests its revolutionary faith on the teleological idea of history that Marxism borrowed from Hegel and argues that the fulfilment of humanity’s full potential is contingent on the elimination of capitalism. Contemporary socialist feminism has inherited a close historical relationship to the political Left, but cooperation is also fraught with difficulties. People may forget, in this regard, that the second feminist wave was indeed marked by ‘a structural critique of capitalism’s