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First published January 1999

Solidarity after identity politics: Hannah Arendt and the power of feminist theory

Amy AllenView all authors and affiliations
Volume 25, Issue 1
https://doi.org/10.1177/019145379902500105

Abstract

This paper argues that Hannah Arendt’s political theory offers key insights into the power that binds together the feminist movement - the power of solidarity. Second-wave feminist notions of solidarity were grounded in notions of shared identity; in recent years, as such conceptions of shared identity have come under attack for being exclusionary and repressive, feminists have been urged to give up the idea of solidarity altogether. However, the choice between (repressive) identity and (fragmented) non-identity is a false opposition, and the Arendtian account of solidarity developed here allows us to move beyond this opposition. Thus, Arendt provides us with a model of solidarity that can stand a post-identity politics feminist theory in good stead.

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I am grateful to James Bohman, Nancy Fraser, Johanna Meehan, and participants at the Colloquium on Philosophy and the Social Sciences in Prague, the Midwest Critical Theory Roundtable, and the Political Theory Colloquium at the New School for Social Research for their helpful comments on and criticisms of earlier versions of this paper.
1.
1 For some examples of the recent literature, see Benhabib (1996), Dietz (1994; 1995), Disch (1994; 1995), Honig (1995), and the last three essays in May and Kohn (1996).
2.
2 For an insightful commentary on this essay, see Bohman, ‘The Moral Costs of Political Pluralism: The Dilemmas of Difference and Equality in Arendt’s “Reflections on Little Rock” ’, in May and Kohn (1996).
3.
3 But see Kaplan (1995) for an attempt to tease out an Arendtian politics of sexuality.
4.
4 I have attempted to develop such a feminist analysis of power in Allen (forthcoming b). In this paper, I draw on and extend some of the ideas and formulations developed in Chapter 4 of that book.
5.
5 Let me emphasize that my focus here is not on Arendt’s own use of the term ‘solidarity’, but on the account of solidarity that we might construct from resources found in her analysis of power. Arendt’s own use of the term ‘solidarity’ is somewhat confused, and although my understanding of the term quite plausibly overlaps with some of her uses of it, it does not overlap with all of them. For a helpful delineation of the different concepts of solidarity (four in all) that can be found in Arendt’s work, see Reshaur (1992).
6.
6 On this point, see hooks (1984: 43-65).
7.
7 For two recent exceptions to this trend, see Weir (1996) and Dean (1996).
8.
8 I am drawing here on Dean’s insightful discussion of the phases of identity politics in Chapter 2 of Solidarity of Strangers. For a somewhat different account of the unfolding of identity politics, see Dietz (1995).
9.
9 I develop these criticisms of Butler in more detail in Allen (1998) and Chapter 3 of Allen (forthcoming). For criticisms of Butler along similar lines, see Weir (1996: 129 ff.) and Dean (1996: 15).
10.
10 On this point, see Fraser (1986).
11.
11 Mary Dietz offers a similar sort of account of feminist interpretations of Arendt; see Dietz (1995). However, my reading diverges from Dietz’s in that she claims that those who read Arendt as embracing the non-identity side of the dichotomy get her more or less right.
12.
12 On this point, see Dietz (1995: 23).
13.
13 For similar arguments regarding Arendt’s conception of natality, see Elshtain (1986) and Ruddick (1989).
14.
14 On this point, see Dietz (1994: 233).
15.
15 Although this dialectical side of Arendt has been missed by many of her feminist readers, it has been recognized by Seyla Benhabib, who writes, ‘Arendt repeatedly focused on the dialectic of equality and difference. In this sense, her political thought anticipates some of the major preoccupations of today’s identity politics’ (Benhabib, 1996: xxxiii). See also Bohman (May and Kohn, 1996).
16.
16 For an account which also draws on Arendt to discuss feminist solidarity, see Disch (1995). Disch, however, seems to equate Arendtian solidarity with the radical deconstruction of identity, and thus to position her on the nonidentity side of the identity politics debate.
17.
17 In drawing on Arendt’s writings about Jewish identity, I am not assuming that her analysis of the oppression of Jews is generalizable to all types of oppression; in fact, I think that it is very likely that it is not. Indeed, the assumption that the oppression of women and of African-Americans can be understood on the same model as the oppression of the Jews was one of Hannah Arendt’s own blind spots; it is this assumption that led her to some of her more perplexing and troubling political positions, including those voiced in Arendt (1959). My strategy is to use her discussions of Jewish identity as a way of getting at a mediated conception of group identity and of solidarity that I think can be helpful for feminist theory; I leave aside questions of whether or not her analysis of the Jewish question is generalizable (or even correct).
18.
18 On this point, see Disch (1995: 287). But Disch interprets this formulation as compatible with a radical deconstructive critique of identity, whereas I see it as incompatible with - indeed, as an implicit critique of - such a position.
19.
19 Quoted in Young-Bruehl (1982: 96).

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Published In

Volume 25, Issue 1
Pages: 97 - 118
Article first published: January 1999
Issue published: January 1999

Keywords

  1. Hannah Arendt
  2. feminist theory
  3. identity politics
  4. power
  5. solidarity

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Amy Allen
Dartmouth College, Department of Philosophy, Hanover, NH, USA
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