A feminist theory of refusal / Bonnie Honig.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Honig, Bonnie, author.

Series:

Mary Flexner Lectures of Bryn Mawr College

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Autonomy.

Feminist theory.

Political participation.

Justice, Administration of--Political aspects.

Justice, Administration of.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 194 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2021.

Summary:

An acclaimed political theorist offers a fresh, interdisciplinary analysis of the politics of refusal, highlighting the promise of a feminist politics that does not simply withdraw from the status quo but also transforms it. The Bacchae, Euripides’s fifth-century tragedy, famously depicts the wine god Dionysus and the women who follow him as indolent, drunken, mad. But Bonnie Honig sees the women differently. They reject work, not out of laziness, but because they have had enough of women’s routine obedience. Later they escape prison, leave the city of Thebes, explore alternative lifestyles, kill the king, and then return to claim the city. Their “arc of refusal,” Honig argues, can inspire a new feminist politics of refusal. Refusal, the withdrawal from unjust political and economic systems, is a key theme in political philosophy. Its best-known literary avatar is Herman Melville’s Bartleby, whose response to every request is, “I prefer not to.” A feminist politics of refusal, by contrast, cannot simply decline to participate in the machinations of power. Honig argues that a feminist refusal aims at transformation and, ultimately, self-governance. Withdrawal is a first step, not the end game. Rethinking the concepts of refusal in the work of Giorgio Agamben, Adriana Cavarero, and Saidiya Hartman, Honig places collective efforts toward self-governance at refusal’s core and, in doing so, invigorates discourse on civil and uncivil disobedience. She seeks new protagonists in film, art, and in historical and fictional figures including Sophocles’s Antigone, Ovid’s Procne, Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp, Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna, and Muhammad Ali. Rather than decline the corruptions of politics, these agents of refusal join the women of Thebes first in saying no and then in risking to undertake transformative action.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Introduction: The Bacchae’s Arc of Refusal and the Tragedy of the City

CHAPTER 1 Inoperativity and the Power of Assembly: Agamben with Butler

CHAPTER 2 Inclination and the Work of Dis/orientation: Cavarero with Ahmed

CHAPTER 3 Fabulation and the Right to the City: Hartman with Arendt

Conclusion: Sister Is an Anagram for Resist

Appendix

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780674259232

0674259238

9780674259249

0674259246

OCLC:

1244256255