The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom

by Nancy J. Hirschmann

This book reconsiders the dominant Western understandings of freedom through the lens of women's real-life experiences of domestic violence, welfare, and Islamic veiling. Nancy Hirschmann argues that the typical approach to freedom found in political philosophy severely reduces the concept's complexity, which is more fully revealed by taking such practical issues into account.


Hirschmann begins by arguing that the dominant Western understanding of freedom does not provide a conceptual vocabulary for accurately characterizing women's experiences. Often, free choice is assumed when women are in fact coerced--as when a battered woman who stays with her abuser out of fear or economic necessity is said to make this choice because it must not be so bad--and coercion is assumed when free choices are made--such as when Westerners assume that all veiled women are oppressed, even though many Islamic women view veiling as an important symbol of cultural identity.


Understanding the contexts in which choices arise and are made is central to understanding that freedom is socially constructed through systems of power such as patriarchy, capitalism, and race privilege. Social norms, practices, and language set the conditions within which choices are made, determine what options are available, and shape our individual subjectivity, desires, and self-understandings. Attending to the ways in which contexts construct us as "subjects" of liberty, Hirschmann argues, provides a firmer empirical and theoretical footing for understanding what freedom means and entails politically, intellectually, and socially.

Genres: Feminism, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Feminist Theory, Academic

308 pages, Paperback

First published September 3, 2002

About the author

Nancy Hirschmann is a Professor of Politics at the University of Pennsylvania. Her specialties are the history of political thought, analytical philosophy, feminist theory, disability theory, and the intersection of political theory and public policy.

Reviews

[Quin Rich · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very disappointing. Hirschmann does not really deliver on what she promises, not clearly articulating her "theory of freedom" until a few scattered sentences in the book's final chapter. Moreover, she repeatedly asserts the importance and omnipresence of discourse and social construction, only to routinely backpedaled into repudiations of an unspecified "postmodernism." Her chapter on Islamic veiling recapitulates the same racist, tired orientalist tropes (including a strange opposition between the "East" and the "West") that she seeks to displace.

This book is perhaps useful for its bibliography, as many of the authors she references do have compelling and insightful things to say about the book's key themes of freedom, feminism, and subject formation. Nonetheless, feminists interested in what this book claims to be about would be better off spending their time reading classic works of feminist theory such as Brown's "States of Injury," Beauvoir's "The Ethics of Ambiguity," Butler's "Giving an Account of Oneself" and "The Psychic Life of Power," Winnubst's "Queering Freedom," and Roberts' "Killing the Black Body," among others.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a truly excellent work. Hirschmann gives an genealogical account of freedom in the western philosophical tradition. She shows that prevailing notions of freedom are masculinist. She then offers a concise summary of social constructivism and based on the points elaborated therein, she offers a new theory of feminist freedom. Her theory is focused on the three levels of social construction she identifies in chapter three: ideological, material, and discursive. The second half of the book is applied theory--she analyzes the experiences of battered women, women on welfare, and muslim women who wear the veil in light of the theory developed in chapter three.
This book is clearly written, engaging, and nuanced. She pretty much makes Catherine MacKinnon look like a kook. This book would be equally excellent to teach at the undergraduate or graduate level.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should be loving this book, given that it relates to my research interests and advances some of my own views on the limits of freedom within liberalism. But I can't seem to get engaged.