The Fortunes of Feminism. Nancy Fraser
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when I propose to focus on the politics of need interpretation. Thin theories of needs that do not undertake to explore such networks cannot shed much light on the politics of needs in contemporary societies. Such theories assume that the politics of needs concerns only whether various predefined needs will or will not be provided for. As a result, they deflect attention from a number of important political questions.3 First, they take the interpretation of people’s needs as simply given and unproblematic; they thus occlude the interpretive dimension of needs politics, the fact that not just satisfactions but need interpretations are politically contested. They assume, second, that it does not matter who interprets the needs in question and from what perspective and in the light of what interests; they thus overlook the fact that who gets to establish authoritative, thick definitions of people’s needs is itself a political stake. They take for granted, third, that the socially authorized forms of public discourse available for interpreting people’s needs are adequate and fair; they thus neglect the question whether these forms of public discourse are skewed in favor of the self-interpretations and interests of dominant social groups and, so, work to the disadvantage of subordinate or oppositional groups—in other words, they occlude the fact that the means of public discourse themselves may be at issue in needs politics. Fourth, such theories fail to problematize the social and institutional logic of processes of need interpretation; they thus neglect such important political questions as: Where in society, in what institutions, are authoritative need interpretations developed? And what sorts of social relations are in force among the interlocutors or co-interpreters?
In order to remedy these blind spots, I propose a more politically critical, discourse-oriented alternative. I take the politics of need interpretation to comprise three analytically distinct but practically interrelated moments. The first is the struggle to establish or deny the political status of a given need, the struggle to validate the need as a matter of legitimate political concern or to enclave it as a nonpolitical matter. The second is the struggle over the interpretation of the need, the struggle for the power to define it and, so, to determine what would satisfy it. The third moment is the struggle over the satisfaction of the need, the struggle to secure or withhold provision.
A focus on the politics of need interpretation requires a model of social discourse. The model I propose foregrounds the multivalent and contested character of needs-talk, the fact that in welfare-state societies we encounter a plurality of competing ways of talking about people’s needs. The model theorizes what I call “the socio-cultural means of interpretation and communication” (MIC). By this I mean the historically and culturally specific ensemble of discursive resources available to members of a given social collectivity in pressing claims against one another. Such resources include:
1. The officially recognized idioms in which one can press claims; for example, needs-talk, rights-talk, interests-talk.
2. The concrete vocabularies available for making claims in these recognized idioms: in the case of needs-talk, for example, therapeutic vocabularies, administrative vocabularies, religious vocabularies, feminist vocabularies, socialist vocabularies.
3. The paradigms of argumentation accepted as authoritative in adjudicating conflicting claims: Are conflicts over the interpretation of needs resolved, for example, by appeal to scientific experts? By brokered compromises? By voting according to majority rule? By privileging the interpretations of those whose needs are in question?
4. The narrative conventions available for constructing the individual and collective stories which are constitutive of people’s social identities.
5. The modes of subjectification: the ways in which discourses position interlocutors as specific sorts of subjects endowed with specific sorts of capacities for action—for example, as “normal” or “deviant,” as causally conditioned or freely self-determining, as victims or as potential activists, as unique individuals or as members of social groups.4
All these elements comprise the MIC in late-capitalist, welfare-state societies. To grasp their function, one must recall that such societies harbor a plurality of forms of association, roles, groups, institutions, and discourses. Thus, the means of interpretation and communication are not all of a piece. Far from constituting a coherent, monolithic web, they form a heterogeneous field of polyglot possibilities and diverse alternatives. In welfare-state societies, moreover, discourses about needs typically make at least implicit reference to alternative interpretations. Particular claims about needs are “internally dialogized,” resonating implicitly or explicitly with competing need interpretations.5 They allude, in other words, to a conflict of interpretations. For example, groups seeking to restrict or outlaw abortion counterpose “the sanctity of life” to the mere “convenience” of “career women”; thus, they cast their claims in terms that refer, however disparagingly, to feminist interpretations of reproductive needs.6
On the other hand, late-capitalist societies are not simply pluralist. Rather, they are stratified, differentiated into social groups with unequal status, power, and access to resources, traversed by pervasive axes of inequality along lines of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and age. The MIC in these societies are also stratified, organized in ways that are congruent with societal patterns of dominance and subordination.
It follows that we must distinguish those elements of the MIC that are hegemonic, authorized, and officially sanctioned, on the one hand, from those that are non-hegemonic, disqualified, and discounted, on the other hand. Some ways of talking about needs are institutionalized in the central discursive arenas of late-capitalist societies: parliaments, academies, courts, and mass circulation media. Other ways of talking about needs are enclaved as socially marked subdialects and normally excluded from the central discursive arenas.7 Until recently, for example, moralistic and scientific discourses about the needs of people with AIDS, and of people at risk of contracting AIDS, were well represented on government commissions, while gay and lesbian rights activists’ interpretations were largely excluded. To change that distribution of discursive power, it was necessary to wage a political struggle.
From this perspective, needs-talk appears as a site of struggle where groups with unequal discursive (and extra-discursive) resources compete to establish as hegemonic their respective interpretations of legitimate social needs. Dominant groups articulate need interpretations intended to exclude, defuse, and/or co-opt counter-interpretations. Subordinate or oppositional groups, in contrast, articulate need interpretations intended to challenge, displace, and/or modify dominant ones. In neither case are the interpretations simply “representations.” In both cases, rather, they are acts and interventions.8
2. ENCLAVED AND RUNAWAY NEEDS: ON THE
“POLITICAL,” “ECONOMIC,” AND “DOMESTIC”
Let me now situate the discourse model I have just sketched with respect to some social-structural features of late-capitalist societies. Here, I seek to relate the rise of politicized needs-talk to shifts in the boundaries separating “political,” “economic,” and “domestic” dimensions of life. However, unlike many social theorists, I shall treat the terms “political,” “economic,” and “domestic” as cultural classifications and ideological labels rather than as designations of structures, spheres, or things.9
I begin by noting that the terms “politics” and “political” are highly contested and have a number of different senses.10 In the present context, the two most important senses are the following. There is, first, an institutional sense, in which a matter is deemed “political” if it is handled directly in the institutions of the official governmental system, including parliaments, administrative apparatuses, and the like. In this sense, what is political—call it “official-political”—contrasts with what is handled in institutions like “the family” and “the economy,” which are defined as being outside the official-political system, even though they are in actuality underpinned and regulated by it. In addition, there is, second, a discursive sense of the term “political” in which something is “political” if it is contested across a broad range of different discursive arenas and among a wide range of different publics. In this sense, what is political—call it “discursive-political” or “politicized”—contrasts both with what is not contested in public at