Drucilla Cornell

Anti-racism, multiculturalism and the ethics of identification

In theoritical and political writings, multiculturalism is most frequently understood in the language of recognition. Multiculturalist initiatives responds to the demands of minority cultures for political and cultural recognition so long denied them with devastating effects. In this article, we argue that the politics of recognition may have implicit dangers. In so far as it is articulated as a demand placed upon a dominant group and integrally tied to the substantiation of pre-given or fixed identity, it can easily mask or even reiterate cultural hierarchization associated with Eurocentrism. We argue that it is necessary to understand recognition in terms of equal dignity; at the core of our argument is the insistence that all of us must have our potential to shape our identifications recognized by the state, such that we – and not the state – are the source of the meaning that they have to us, as individuals and as members of groups.

Autonomy Re-Imagined

Iwould like to extend the concept of dignity, a term usually understood with regard to individuals, to family and kinship relationships. At stake in this extension is our freedom not to fall prey to drives that prevent us from being able to express our desire, pursue it, and rationally evaluate it. This understanding of dignity is a re-interpretation of its meaning that can only be made with the help of psychoanalytic theory, and more especially, the interventions that have been made in that body of theory by feminist analysts and theorists. Psychoanalysis defends dignity as the moral mandate in which all of us are viewed as subjects who, in principle, can articulate their desire as well as morally evaluate their ends. The articulation of desire has always been assumed as necessary for moral freedom and responsibility. Indeed, much political philosophy takes it for granted that we act as actively desiring subjects who simply shape our own lives.1 Of course, some of the earliest critiques of canonical political theory offered by feminists argued that it was easy to make this assumption because the subjects in the purview of the theory were not all human beings, but straight white men of a certain class background.2 As I have defined it within the legal sphere (Cornell, Imaginary), the imaginary domain is the moral and psychic right to represent and articulate the meaning of our desire and our sexuality within the ethical framework of respect for the dignity of all others. This domain is imaginary in the sense that it is irreducible to actual space. But it is also imaginary in a psychoanalytic sense: our assumed identities have an imaginary dimension since they are shaped through our identification with primordial others. Without these identities, we cannot envision who we are. Our identifications with others as they have imagined and continue to imagine us thus form our self-image. These identifications color the way in which we envision ourselves, but they do not determine the reach of our imagination in dreaming up who else we might be. We must thus distinguish the imaginary from the radical imagination in which we envision new worlds and configure what has otherwise remained invisible. The radical imagination demands some degree of psychic separation. Otherwise our dreams of who we might become, both individually and collectively, would be captured by unconscious claims on us. Another reason for my psychoanalytic conception of the imaginary is that I defend feminism as an ego ideal. We form ego ideals by envisioning ourselves either through real or imagined others. Since ego ideals are formed through our primordial, pre-oedipal identifications, they carry with them unconscious material that we cannot fully elucidate. Indeed, we can never exactly know how these ideals are formed out of our identifications. Because we are not conscious of how our identifications have shaped these ideals, it is thus futile to think there is an easily accessible genealogical path that, if followed, will return us to the psychic origins of our identifications. What this means, interestingly enough, is that we cannot simply debunk ego ideals without at the same time appealing to some other ideal, even if that ideal is that we should ideally be suspicious of all ego ideals. Such suspicion is undoubtedly an ego ideal of how we should be. We imagine either that we reach an ideal or that we can become what the ideal holds out for us as a possibility. Feminism envisions how we might be as free and equal persons in our day-to-day lives. As an ego ideal, it cannot be imposed. Nor can we say that one must act or be a certain way in order to be a feminist. To make such impositions undermines the power of feminism as an ego ideal. To understand feminism psychically is to defend its spirit of generosity because each woman or man will internalize it as an ideal in her or his own way. This

The role of the Kantian imagination in realization-focused comparison

In this article I review Amaryta Sen’s powerful critique of transcendental institutionalism and his own ‘realization-focused comparison’ as an alternative way to think about justice. While deeply sympathetic with his critique of John Rawls I also argue that the role of the Kantian imagination is extremely important in figuring ideals of justice, which must guide ‘realization-focused comparison’. To do so I turn to Kant’s Critique of Judgment and his development of what he calls ‘aesthetic ideas’ as ways of representing the great ideals such as freedom and equality, which can be aesthetically represented but never fully known.

Review essay: Trauma, eros and democratic futures:

In the relation to woman as the spoil and handmaid of communal lust is expressed the infinite degradation in which the human being exists for himself, for the secret of this relation has its unambiguous, decisive, plain and undisguised expression in the relation of man to woman and in the manner in which the direct and natural species relation is conceived. The direct, natural, and necessary relation of human being to human being is the relation of man to woman. In this natural species relation the human being’s relation to nature is immediately his relation to the human being, just as his relation to the human being is immediately his relation to nature – his own natural destination. In this relation, therefore, is sensuously manifested, reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which the human essence has become nature to the human being, or to which nature has to him become the human essence of the human being. From this relation one can therefore judge the human being’s whole level of development.

Exploring the imaginary domain

This interview is dedicated to David Rasmussen. Few English-language philosophy journals have endeavored to expand the domain of the philosophical as has Philosophy cF Social Criticism. Under his leadership, not only has American philosophy encountered wide-ranging debates in Continental philosophy, but feminist voices have been understood as part of the conversation.

Review essay : Defining personhood: Gary L. Francione, Animals, Property, and the Law (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1995) and Gary L. Francione, Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1996

In the past two years, Rutgers law professor Gary Francione has produced two books about the philosophical concept of animal rights and the political ideology of the animal rights movement. These books, both of which are clearly written and tightly argued, are important for what they say about the human/animal relationship, and Francione has emerged without challenge as the most lucid, provocative, and original spokesperson for the view that the exploitation of nonhumans by humans cannot be morally justified. Francione’s work is important for another reason that transcends the particular context of his concern. In analyzing the issue of animal rights, Francione has identified key concepts about the role of rights in moral theory, and, specifically, he has produced an interesting theory about personhood. His theory is similar to my own views about the role of deontological moral thought in feminist theory, and it is clear that my work on feminism and Francione’s animal rights

Feminist challenges: a response

It would be impossible for me to adequately respond to the careful and provocative critiques of my work offered by Peg Birmingham and Linda Zerilli. But I am grateful for the opportunity to do so since I have been provoked by their insight to reflect in detail on my elaboration of what I have named ’ethical feminism’. Feminism challenges us to rethink the boundaries of the traditional disciplines, and the categories of thought developed in those disciplines, in order to grapple with what