Going Public: Feminism and the Shifting Boundaries of the Private Sphere

by Joan Wallach Scott, Debra Keates (Editor) (Editor), Debra Keates (Editor)

In Going Public, a collection of international thinkers convene to reconsider the public/private distinction, an issue long central to feminists in their academic and political work. The feminist critique of rights has been fundamental to changes in Western liberal democracy and global human rights campaigns. These essays, in geographically and theoretically diverse case studies, test the currency of the categories of public and private as they determine social practices including protections and invasions of privacy by states, employers and other institutions. They ask what counts as 'the private' in different cultural contexts and, in their unique discussion with one another, reconsider the history and direction of social change. The unexpectedness of the approaches in these essays will unsettle received opinion, provoke new discussion, and challenge readers to think more seriously about the importance of figurative language, the power of common and uncommon usage, and the meaning of rights.

424 pages, Hardcover

First published January 5, 2005

About the author

Joan Scott is known internationally for writings that theorize gender as an analytic category. She is a leading figure in the emerging field of critical history. Her ground-breaking work has challenged the foundations of conventional historical practice, including the nature of historical evidence and historical experience and the role of narrative in the writing of history, and has contributed to a transformation of the field of intellectual history. Scott's recent books focus on gender and democratic politics. Her works include The Politics of the Veil (2007), Gender and the Politics of History (1988), Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (1996), and Parité: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism (2005). Scott graduated from Brandeis University in 1962 and received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1969. Before joining the Institute for Advanced Study, Scott taught in the history departments of Brown University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Rutgers University.