| How is it that the same liberal ideals that guide liberatory social change can also impede that change by justifying oppressive institutions? Focusing on Ronald Dworkin's liberalism, I argue that abstract theoretical ideals can function to reinforce social hierarchies when they are defined and applied under conditions of structural inequality, including sexist and racist oppression. As an alternative to liberalism's abstraction, I defend the attempts of feminist theorists such as Rae Langton and Catharine MacKinnon to situate the concepts of rights, equality, and justice in the context of a critique of male power. Drawing on the work of Elizabeth Anderson and Susan Babbitt, I argue that "contextual values" inevitably play a role in abstract theories and must therefore be identified and analyzed, rather than ignored or eliminated. In the final section, I apply my analysis to recent debates concerning the legal regulation of racist and sexist hate speech, and I contrast my approach to the law with the position taken by both Wendy Brown and Judith Butler. Rather than concluding, as they do, that legal methods are inherently abstract and inevitably oppressive, I argue that liberal concepts and legal approaches are often only allegedly abstract. They do not inevitably reinforce social hierarchy but do so specifically when they are defined and applied in the absence of critical analyses of social power.*; *Originally published in DAI Vol. 61, No. 5. Reprinted here with corrected abstract. |
