Page 168 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

154 Citizenship

others. Nevertheless, her most compelling argument for the presence of
women in the political process is that, because women share certain expe-
riences, they will articulate views which would not otherwise be heard.
This argument makes little sense without the assumption that women
share a certain perspective which makes them different from men, even

though Phillips qualifies her argument by saying that there are no guar-
antees that this is the case (Nash, 1997 ). She is, then, arguing for special
political rights for women on the grounds that there may be a real, though
not necessarily natural, difference between the sexes.
The essentialist assumptions of Phillips ’ s argument for political rights
are clear in contrast to the more resolutely anti - essentialist position of
Judith Butler (1993) . In her view, any use of the term “ women ” to des-
ignate a social group is misguided. In terms of the distinction articulated
by Fuss, she argues against real and nominalist essentialism. Butler main-
tains that “ women ” does not exist outside performances which bring the
identity into practice. Any representation of women as an existing social
group, in feminist debates and in the campaigns of the women ’ s move-
ment, just as much as in more obviously repressive instances of the use
of the term, is actually productive of that categorization rather than the
representation of a given reality.
According to Butler, the reification and regulation of gender relations

produced in discourse are precisely what feminists should militate against.
Far from arguing for political rights for women, since “ the feminist
subject turns out to be discursively constituted by the very political system
that is supposed to facilitate its emancipation … an uncritical appeal
to such a system for the emancipation of ‘ women ’ will be clearly self -
defeating ” (Butler, 1990 : 2). Feminists should be concerned rather to
disrupt and problematize the use of the term “ women ” wherever possible
in order to overturn the “ heterosexist matrix ” which requires the duality
of the sexes. Butler ’ s work has been as influential in queer theory as in

feminist theory and we will return to this point in the following section.
For the moment, however, it is important to note that, for Butler, and for
other post - structuralist feminists, the invocation of “ women ” for political
purposes makes such a goal impossible. It contributes to the rigidity of the
sexual division by foreclosing in advance the emergence of new identities
which could transform or expand existing sexual differences. In this way,
feminism is part of the problem because it contributes to the reifi cation of
sexual difference rather than to the dissolution of the problem itself.
Phillips ’ s proposals and Butler ’ s arguments against any feminist
representation of women as a social group illustrate the polarity of femi-
nist views in the current debates on essentialism. There is no obvious