From essentialism to another way of doing politics: resuming the transformative potential of the politics of difference

• Main Author: Léa Tosold
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Estadual de Londrina 2010-12-01
• Series: Mediações: Revista de Ciências Sociais
• Subjects: Políticas de diferença; Essencialismo; Desigualdades de gênero; Iris Marion Young; Anne Phillips.
• Online Access: http://www.uel.br/revistas/uel/index.php/mediacoes/article/view/8228

This article aims at resuming and critically scrutinizing the debate on the politics of difference taken among liberal feminist political theorists. Firstly, I shall provide an overview of theoretical attempts to legitimate the politicization of collective-based subjects taking into account the problem of essentialism. Then I will argue that an exclusive focus on the relationship between essentialism and the conceptualization of collective-based subjects tends to overshadow the relationship between the politicization of differences and a new way of doing politics. I will defend the view that the politicization of differences is transforming rather than undermining the functioning of the polity and the possibility of real social justice. I shall evaluate the works of Anne Phillips and Iris Marion Young as offering new ways of reshaping the political sphere in order to enable proper institutional action against structural inequalities.