Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

426Chapter 9---... _______ _fallible, essentially contestable character of this self-understanding.Therefore, competing views about the identity ofthe sexes andtheir relation to each other must be open to public discussion. Eventhe feminist avant-garde does not have a monopoly on definition.Like intellectuals in general, spokeswomen can be sure they do notprejudge anything and that they treat no one as an inferior onlywhen all those affected have an effective opportunity to voice theirdemands for rights on the basis of concrete experiences of violatedintegrity, discrimination, and oppression. The concrete relationsof recognition mirrored in the mutual attribution of rights alwaysemerge from a "struggle for recognition"; this struggle is motivatedby the suffering incurred by, and the indignation against, concretecases of disrespect. 55 As Axel Honneth has shown, experiences ofinsults to human dignity are what must be articulated in order toattest to those aspects under which equals should be treated equallyand unequals treated unequally in the given context. This contestover the interpretation of needs cannot be delegated to judges andofficials, nor even to political legislators.The important consequence of this for our purposes is thefollowing: no regulation, however sensitive to context, can adequatelyconcretize the equal right to an autonomous private lifeunless it simultaneously strengthens the position of women in thepolitical public sphere and thereby augments participation informs of political communication that provide the sole arenas inwhich citizens can clarify the relevant aspects that define equalstatus. The insight into this connection between private and publicautonomy underlies the reservations that contemporary feminismhas with regard to an instrumental model of politics orientedexclusively to results; it explains the importance that feminismplaces on "identity politics," that is, on the consciousness-raisingeffected in the political process itself. According to this proceduralistunderstanding, the realization of basic rights is a process that securesthe private autonomy of equally entitled citizens only in stefJ with theactivation oftheirpolitical autonomy. This legal paradigm is incompatiblewith projections of a universally binding "identity of the sexesin a just society," whether this be androgynous or, under the bannerof femininity or motherhood, stamped by a gender dualism understoodin essentialist terms. On the other hand, the proceduralist