Draft for Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems, 9:2, Fall 1999.

Feminist Futures: Contesting the Political

Karena Shaw

Department of Political Science

University of Victoria

P.O. Box 3050, Stn. CNC

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3P5

Canada

Feminist Futures: Contesting the Political

Karena Shaw

There are many obvious ways in which one might claim that the recent surge of women=s movements and feminist theories is important for thinking about our collective futures. One might appeal to the scale and variety of movements that have challenged the political marginalization of one-half the world=s population. One might appeal to established principles of equity or rights, and insist that at this historical juncture some of the most pressing failures to achieve such principles universally impinge most heavily on the lives of women. More interestingly, one might appeal to the creative achievements of women=s movements and feminist theorists as indications of ways forward in many other realms, whether in matters of social justice or of political and legal judgement.

There are also many obvious ways of minimizing or even dismissing such claims. Some might argue that gender is not as important as, say, classes, nations, economies or militaries. Some seem to believe that the great universal principles of human conduct have already been discovered, so that while a few wrinkles may need to be ironed out, neither women nor feminist theorists have much of importance to say about the principles themselves. Some might simply and forthrightly admit their view that women=s situation is not problematic and theory is at any rate impracticable, so feminist theory must be just a fetish of the naive or politically correct.

In this paper, I argue a case for the crucial importance of feminist theory for thinking about our global futures. I do this through a critical intervention into debates about the future of feminism. These debates have often been criticized for their apparently rarified engagements with abstract principles of modern political life. Their significance, I argue, rests precisely in this engagement: the principles at stake in these debates are well-established and firmly entrenched in legal practice, despite their development in historical conditions in which the marginalization of women was taken more or less for granted. Feminist theory is its most effective and important when it reveals the implications of this historical embeddedness for not only women=s situation but for our broader understandings of political possibility and practices of politics. These critiques are especially important, I argue here, when they challenge assumptions embedded in claims about sovereignty, claims that feminists have only recently begun to confront directly.

Taking my cue from what I take to be the limits of forms of feminist theory that are content to take established principles, and not least principles of sovereignty, as both obvious and incontrovertible, I will suggest that far from being politically marginal, contemporary feminist theory forces us to come to terms with a profound crisis in our understanding of what it means to engage in political life at all. If, as Hobbes claimed, law is given by the sovereign, challenges to the principle of sovereignty which come from feminism, and from many other sites of political engagement, must have profound implications for how we engage with the most basic questions of legitimate authority. Contemporary feminist theories, I conclude, offer ways of thinking about our future possibilities that put the problematic character of our present understanding of politics right at the center of our struggles to reconceive our being in the world.

Many writers have been concerned to question the global future(s) of feminist politics, and the (possible) feminist futures of global politics. One especially influential, but instructively inadequate response to this question is exemplified in a recent text by Seyla Benhabib. Benhabib, a well-known American political theorist currently teaching at Harvard, has made influential interventions into critical theory and democratic politics as well as into debates about feminism. Like many others, she has recently begun to take an interest in how such problems might be taken on in the context of globalization. Benhabib argues that contemporary global politics constitute a "new constellation," characterized on the one hand by the "coming together of global integration" and on the other by "apparent cultural fragmentation" (1999: 336). This new constellation, she argues, provides the backdrop against which the project of contemporary feminism must be rethought. Her primary contribution to this effort is an argument for a narrativeCas opposed to performativeCmodel for conceptualizing identity, whether personal, gender or national. Such a model, she claims, is necessary to the future of radical democratic politics (1999: 337).

I am not concerned here to weigh in on the debate over how to conceptualize identity. Benhabib's argument provides a touchstone for my analysis for another reason: it is grounded in an understanding of politics that I think poses a larger and absolutely central problem for contemporary feminists, as well as for others concerned with "progressive" politics. Many of the theoretical debates that have absorbed usCproductive and important as they may have beenChave become stale, quite unlike the ferment generated by feminist politics around the globe. This staleness, as well as the difficulty that many theoristsCfeminist and nonCface in responding to the complexity of contemporary political struggles, are expressions of a need to reconceptualize our project. In particular, I argue here that it poses the need to rethink how we theorize politics.

Put succinctly, Benhabib simply assumes and then reproduces some very common but highly contestable accounts of what politics is. In reproducing this account, she forces an assumed geography upon "feminism." I see a different set of necessities and possibilities for the future of feminist theory and practice, a set that is in tension with Benhabib=s analysis. The global futures of feminist politics, I want to argue, depend on a willingness to insist that modern assumptions about the character and location of politics have become a serious problem. Against Benhabib's willingness to reify a familiar account of what politics is, therefore, I emphasize the necessity of reorienting feminist analysis towards a critical investigation of how practices of and possibilities for politics are changing. Moreover, against Benhabib=s attempt to invoke a Anew constellation@ as evidence for the need to work within a familiar account of politics, I want to emphasize a range of complementarities between feminism and emerging patterns of structural transformation that throw considerable doubt upon the assumptions Benhabib takes for granted. Benhabib=s analysis is interesting, I want to suggest, precisely because it renders invisible so many of the achievements that make feminism so crucial for thinking about our global futures.

Benhabib's article is yet another volley in an ongoing debate about the implications of "postmodernism" for feminism. In various permutations, this debate has absorbed much feminist energy, enabling some important conversations, leading to many frustrating dead ends, and attracting various complaints about the irrelevance of high theory to matters of concrete political practice. As Benhabib notes, some of the most contentious and important ground opened up by these debates involves the implications for feminist politics of "postmodern" critiques of the modern subject, specifically critiques of the modern ambition for a subjectivity that aspires to autonomy and integration as the hallmarks of individuality and personality. Benhabib contends that "postmodern" conceptions of subjectivity and identity in general, and Judith Butler's conception of identity as performative in particular, fail to articulate an adequate relationship between subjectivity and agency, leaving us stranded and ungrounded in a world where we need such grounding in order to achieve the status of autonomous and responsible agents, a status that she believes is the precondition for politics:

The need for such firm "identities," Benhabib argues, is re-emphasized by the character of the "new constellation" of global politics: a global integration on the one hand, and a resurgence of cultural, ethnic, linguistic and national particularities on the other. It is these latter movements that Benhabib reads as struggles for identity and belonging, signaling the need for a conception of identity that provides security and stability such that citizens can develop into autonomous subjects: "Furthering one's capacity for autonomous agency is only possible within a solidaristic community that sustains one's identity through listening to one, and allowing one to listen to others, with respect within the many webs of interlocution that constitute our lives" (1999: 350). For Benhabib, this requires that we all have access to a proper polis. Because of the exclusionary past of the polis, this in turn requires that the "rules" for admittance to a polis be rebrokered to enable those formerly excluded to take their proper places: "[W]e must have the right to become members of a polity, and the rules of entry into a polity must be fair and in accordance with human dignity. To achieve this, we must indeed renegotiate the normativity of the 'logocentric polis.' The feminist theorist at the present is one of the brokers in this complex renegotiation of sexual difference and new collective identities" (1999: 357).

It is this new constellation of global politics, then, that gives feminist theory its contemporary purposeCto broker the polis into a more inclusive unit. It also gives feminist theorists their identitiesC to be "cultural brokers." On her reading, this ideal can be achieved through rearticulating forms of identity as narrative, and rewriting the narratives to be more inclusive:

In this way, Benhabib asserts a particular reading of "global politics" as evidence for the necessity of (a particular theoretical form for conceptualizing) identity. By extension, hers is also an argument for the continuation of the modern ideal of political organization: sovereign states, or "polities," with firm insides and outsides and clear rules of entrance, where everyone can find his/her place. Her reading of global politicsCthe "new constellation"Cthus simultaneously provides the justification for and is informed by her theoretical commitments. This reading of "politics" remains uninterrogated in her article; it is presented as obvious. This enables her, in turn, to dismiss alternative conceptions of identity or political possibility, such as those presented by Judith Butler or Rosi Braidotti, as "unrealistic" (1999: 357). In this way, Benhabib's argument has the appearance -- but only the appearance-- of being grounded in "real" political concerns, to the extent that she can claim to be reorienting feminist theory to respond to the political demands of the 21st Century.

This familiar claim to political relevance in particular, and Benhabib's negotiation of the relationship between theoretical arguments and political "realities" more broadly, lead me to the problem I seek to explore here. For those concerned with the intricacies of global, transnational, or feminist politics, it might be tempting to dismiss Benhabib's argument specifically, the larger debate in which it intervenes, and even feminist political theory more broadly as at the least politically naive, and perhaps as irrelevant. It is especially difficult to imagineCeven if one accepts her reading of the "new constellation" on the most general levelCthat the solution to this challenge lies in either narrative or performative conceptions of identity. Surely, one might say, the resolution of such assertions of identity is at least as much bound up in such things as access to material resources, economic and environmental stability, political structures and processes, histories of violence and oppression, and so onCall things to which Benhabib's strategy has only tangential access. Benhabib=s focus on narrativeCas opposed to material, economic, legal, ecologicalCwebs illustrates this troubling narrowness. For while she might argue that material, economic, environmental and political forces are expressed in narrative webs, their expression in these webs cannot account for their participation in the construction of the conditions of possibility for narrative webs. Perhaps being a "cultural broker," helping to construct more "inclusive" narrative identities, is all theorists are good for, though, and the rest should be left to practitioners of "real" politics?

I wish to argue otherwise on both counts: Benhabib's argument has considerable political relevance insofar as it continues a practiceCrampant within most modern and contemporary political theoryCof obscuring the precise questions we most crucially need to engage in order to envision and enact effective futures for feminist or other forms of progressive politics. Benhabib assumes the framework of a modern and specifically liberal politics, and forces not only gender, but all of the diversity and complexity of contemporary global politics into it. While this frame for understanding politics remains very powerful, there is considerable evidence to suggest that it is increasingly inadequate not only as a frame for gender politics, but also much more broadly. Further, as long as we continue to assume this framework, we will remain unable to engage with the political questions that most require our attention. While it remains extremely difficult to avoid assuming this framework, I want to suggest a different way of approaching the question of the day for political and feminist theorists, one that provides much richer terrain for political analysis and intervention.

In the next section, I explicate what Benhabib's assumption of a specific account of the political involves; in the subsequent one I explore the danger of failing to challenge it; and in the remainder of the paper I suggest how we might more productively reorient our thinking.

Benhabib's argument rests on the assumption that we know what political struggles today are most centrally aboutCthe search for stable and coherent identitiesCand how we should respond to themCby adapting the framework of modern politics to render identity more "inclusive." As others have noted, this assumption expresses a belief in distinctly modern philosophical resolutions to the problems of social and political order. More precisely, it expresses a belief that discourses and practices of sovereignty should or must remain as the limit condition of social and political analysis: the world is and should be divided into sovereign units (individuals and polities), and these polities are the precondition for individuals to realize their full potential as autonomous agents. As Benhabib indicates, this architecture is framed on the one hand by sovereign individuals and on the other by sovereign polities or states. "Outside" this frame individuals face anarchy, violence, conflict, war; "inside" resides the possibility for politics. For Benhabib, the processes through which personal subjectivity (identity) and national sovereignty (identity) are achieved are isomorphic, and can be analyzed as essentially similar phenomena.

In one form or another, whether explicit or not, the assumption of this architecture is conventional both amongst contemporary political theorists and feminist theorists. The expression of this assumption varies, but most theorists assume that the problem of the proper location and character of political authority is settled, proceeding only to contest how it is legitimated or organized, how it is gendered or not, and so on. As Butler (1990) especially has argued, many feminist theorists have tended to assume sex even as they critique the gendered character of the modern subject. By illustrating how it is that the dualistic structures of sex/gender are produced by and thus always already embedded in our language and thus our conceptions of subjectivity, Butler has illustrated that we cannot assume sex and simultaneously Aungender@ the subject. In this way, she and others have opened crucial political ground, potentially rearticulating the terrain of gender as an axis of analysis. The analysis I want to develop here parallels Butler's, in that I seek to similarly disrupt what I argue is the other pole of the assumed architecture of modern politics: the assumption of the polity that provides the condition of possibility for the modern subject. It is only through a simultaneous disruption of this pole, I believe, that the political force of Butler's critique can come to be articulated beyond the relatively constrained confines of feminist political theory.

To be clear, to assume the architecture of sovereignty is not simply to assume the sovereign state, or the sovereignty of any particular state. It is to assume the ontological principles of sovereignty: the spatial and temporal preconditions for the establishment of legitimate authority. These principles are perhaps most clearly articulated by Thomas Hobbes, one of the first to capture the particular character of emerging forms of political order in the wake of the collapse of ecclesiastical order. In his Leviathan, Hobbes tells a story of the human condition in which the precondition for order, progress, indeed for the political, is the establishment of sovereignty, of a common power to "overawe us all." In his story, it is the establishment of the sovereign state that enables the sovereign individual to develop to his or her full potential. There are, however, several elements of the story Hobbes tells that areCquite extraordinarilyCusually overlooked or forgotten: not least, the self-consciously contingent foundation upon which he makes this claim, and the political stakes and implications of this foundation. Far from being obscure matters of theory, or history, or mere textuality, this story remains a vital site for thinking about the future.

Hobbes' story begins not with the sovereign state or the sovereign individual, but with the establishment of the ontological foundations that produce the precondition and necessity for sovereignty. His first section, "Of Man," is devoted to the production of the modern subject. What is most crucial about this modern subject is not only that it shares an ontology with all modern subjects, but the particular character of the ontology it shares. Beginning with "obvious" distinctions between sense and imagination, dreaming and waking, and so on (Chapters 1 and 2), moving through the resolution of space and time (Chapter 3), and into an analysis of the "passions" that drive us, in the first ten chapters of Leviathan Hobbes produces our apparently natural condition: a condition that throws us all into conflict. Because we are so similar in our needs and desires, and because we exist in a homogenous space of equality, we are thrown into constant conflict by our inability to secure these needs and desires. This conflict, and the misery that results from it, encourages us to submit to a common authority, to produce sovereignty: the condition of possibility for the stability and security to enable us to pursue our desires.

The latter part of Hobbes' story is familiar to most of us, but the relationship amongst the latter part, the ontological foundation it rests upon, and the structure and definition of politics that emerges from it are often overlooked. The ontology that leads to the necessity of sovereignty is enabled through a set of distinctions, a production of identity and difference. These distinctions are neither neutral nor natural, of course, however much they might seem to us now. They function to exclude and "other" a range of different cosmologies, peoples, behaviors, and so on.

More crucially, this ontologyCthe ontology of sovereigntyCeffectively naturalizes these exclusions, producing all of "us" as essentially the same, with "differences" located either spatiallyCin another sovereign communityC or temporallyCas savages, children, animals. Thus, his claim that what we all share requires not only political authority but a particular form of it: sovereignty, organized in homogenous space across territoryCis itself dependent on the ontological foundations he uses to ground his argument. Although Hobbes acknowledges the contingency of his foundation, he also insists that if we accept it then we are locked into a set of limit conditions for both analysis and practice:

The Atruth@ of something, in other words, is always determined by reference to its own conditions of possibility; Atruth@ can only be determined conditionally, rather than absolutely. Again, though, if one accepts the foundational conditions of possibility, then one must also accept the criteria for the judgement of truth or falsehood that logically follow from them, according to Hobbes.

In this way, Hobbes produces the (contingent) foundation that "proves" the necessity of sovereignty. It is this foundational (though contingent) ontology that brings into being simultaneously the modern subject and the modern state as interdependent mirror images. It is also this foundational ontology that has been subjected to criticism from a variety of quarters because of the particular violences it rests upon and has enabled.

What renders this particular architecture so effective, though, is how Hobbes goes on to define the "political"Cthe proper space and character of politicsCwithin sovereign discourse. For Hobbes, the political comes into being after sovereignty, and must be confined to the negotiation of relations of governance between subjects and sovereign. Because the shared ontology provides the basis for and legitimates the sovereign authority, this ontological foundation enabling sovereignty must itself be excluded from political consideration or negotiation. If it is opened to contestation, there will be no shared basis for the legitimation of authority. Put slightly differently, we can only have a polity (sovereignty), and thus politics, insofar as we agree upon the grounds for disagreement. Sovereignty is established through the naturalization of the prior boundaries that will contain our disagreements, to keep them civil. Sovereignty itselfCthe establishment of a common ontologyCis not political for Hobbes. Although contingent, it must be considered Anatural@ and given the force of Ascience.@ It is the precondition for the political. Whatever violences it may involve, sovereignty must be rendered natural and necessary rather than contingent.

One of the effects of this necessity is that the alternative to sovereignty must be rendered so awful that the necessity of sovereigntyCthe ontology of sovereigntyCremains unquestioned. Hence Hobbes= famous description of the state of nature: the absence of sovereignty, in which not only politics, but society, technology, progress, law, order, even an account of time, are impossible. Though presented as natural and inevitable, this description only achieves the status of "truth" if one has already accepted (or is subject to) the ontology of sovereignty. It is testament to the success of Hobbes' production of the political that so many attempts to use Hobbes as the key figure in the emergence of modern accounts of politics simply begin with that descriptionCwhether to contest it or not, it is assumed to be a description rather than a productionCrather than with the processes through which it has come to be the necessary description of life outside of sovereignty. However much they may dispute his analysis of relations of governance, most popular accounts of Hobbes assume that the spatial and temporal conditions for the establishment of legitimate authority are already resolved: the sovereign state is the precondition for politics. Crucially, however, this assumption naturalizes what is a particularCand for many particularly problematicContology, re-establishing this ontology as the necessary "ground" upon which conflicts must be mediated.

One of the implications of Hobbes' story that is too often overlooked is the relationship between political authority and the production of knowledge. Because political authority is guaranteed through a shared ontology, as expressed in the subjectivities of citizens, the production of knowledge and the legitimation of authority are also intimately connected. It is the ontology of sovereignty that guarantees and authorizes knowledge claims. In the absence of sovereignty, words have no meaning: covenants without swords are mere words. As it is the ontology of sovereignty that gives words their authorityCa political authority can only be considered sovereign if it can guarantee the meaning of its wordsCthis ontology necessarily provides the basis for authority and legitimacy throughout society. This ontology is expressed and enforced by, for example, the contemporary disciplining of knowledge, which follows the distinctions Hobbes lays out in the first few chapters of Leviathan, the spatial and temporal resolutions of sovereignty: politics happens inside states under state sovereignty; international relations happens outside states and state sovereignty; anthropology happens before state sovereignty; sociology "under" the structures of governance; "micro" and "macro" economics are separated by the same divide; and so on. This division of knowledge isn't a transparent division of the "real," of course; it produces and monitors what is "real," enforcing the legitimacy of certain kinds of inquiry and reinforcing silences or rendering nonsensical other questions.

In this way, the assumption of sovereignty cannot be reduced to an assumption of the state. The discourses and practices of sovereignty are deeply embedded in not only our political institutions, but our constructions of legitimate authority much more broadly. These discourses are constitutive of our very subjectivities: of who we think we are, what kinds of authority we accept or find persuasive, and so on. As Hobbes says, one must only look inside oneself to know that the epistemology he lays out is "true" (Hobbes: 82-83). One can dispute his epistemologyCand many haveCbut such an effort, insofar as it occurs without a challenge to the underlying structure of sovereignty discourse, only functions to strengthen the architecture Hobbes produced. To assume sovereignty is thus not simply to assume the state, but to assume a set of preconditions and necessities for the establishment of legitimate authority. To make the point that sovereignty is inscribed in complex ways at a complex of sites, rather than being obvious, natural or inevitable, is not to assert that sovereignty is not "real," or "true," or does not have a variety of effects, or that to take these questions seriously is Aunrealistic,@ as Benhabib claims. The discourses and practices of sovereignty are the mechanisms through which an evaluation of "truth" (or legitimate/illegitimate violence, justice, and so on) is made possible. As such, we cannot simply discard or do without sovereignty. However, as I argue below, neither can we simply assume it, or elements of it, as unchanging, necessary or natural.

Hobbes' account of the necessity and contingency enacted by sovereignty has, of course, been challenged and rewritten by many others, not least perhaps by Rousseau and Kant. His specific arguments about the character of the government that rests upon sovereignty have been even more contested, indeed have become the primary focus of contestation in modern political thought. Locke, rather than Hobbes, has thus provided the most familiar starting point for theories about the parameters and possibilities of modern political life. Nevertheless, Hobbes' simultaneous framing and erasure of the problem of sovereignty, his basic geography of where and what we are in the world, remains paradigmatic, the crucial expression of our almost unchallenged common sense. It is expressed not only in the contemporary disciplining of knowledge, but in sites as diverse as domestic and international law, at border crossings and in medical and mental health systems. Benhabib's assertion that identity is and must be a precondition for the political expresses not only a belief in the general architecture, but also in the particular ontology expressed by Hobbes: where "identity" (shared ontology) is a precondition for political possibility. By asserting this, Benhabib effectively reifies the ontology of sovereignty, reinscribing the sovereign state as the limit condition of politics, the modern ideal of identity as the precondition for political or personal subjectivity, and thus the modern architecture of politics.

The power of this architecture is especially impressive especially given the extensive critical force that has been directed against it. The violences enabled by this ideal have been criticized in many different literatures, perhaps most powerfully within some strands of feminist theory. The legitimation of practices of colonization; the exclusion of women, children, the "mad" and the colonized from politics; even the violence of struggles for nationalist projectsCall have been criticized as necessary effects of the legitimation and domination of discourses and practices of sovereignty.

Benhabib's assumption of sovereignty thus enables a compelling but rather narrow program for feminism, and the narrowness of the program ultimately overwhelms the virtues of its important insights. It is compelling insofar as it appears to provide a response to past violences of identity production: violences identified particularly effectively by feminist movements. Given the historical violences effected by exclusionary practices, greater inclusiveness is surely a rallying cry few can oppose. However, there are also important limitations inherent in this project. Not least, as many others have argued, all identities are necessarily exclusionary: a strategy to render them differently so might effectively redraw the lines of exclusion, or render them with more clarity, but it also leaves the basic architecture intact, leaving the possibilities for feminist theory constrained to tampering with the boundaries and conditions of inclusion/exclusion, primarily at one particular site: the polis. This leaves feminist theorists toying with and redistributing the violences effected by the architecture of modern politics. The question seems clear: is working to make identities differently exclusionaryCregardless of the violences being done by insisting on the identity/difference architecture as the necessary limit of political possibilityCan adequate response to contemporary political situations?

If sovereignty is broadly constitutive of political possibility, why not simply assume it so that we can get on with our analyses and our progressive practices? As Benhabib notes, many contemporary movements articulate their demands in languages of sovereignty and identity, and thus lend themselves to being read as she does: as demands for identity production or recognition. After all, that these exclusions and violences have been resisted through the appropriation of the same discourses used to effect themCdiscourses of sovereignty expressed in identity politics, human rights discourses, humanismCis a testament to the power of sovereignty discourse, and to its domination of discursive spaces of power. So why not accept these demands at "face value" and work to facilitate these ideals, to "include" those previously excluded from the polis, to grant them sovereignty and thusCapparentlyCpolitical subjectivity? Why not, in other words, accept the ontology of sovereigntyCnot as perfect, but as what we have to work withCand turn it to the empowerment of its previous victims? Why not accept the modern state as the container for politics and work to facilitate adequate representation for each and all at the state level?

To be clear, this is a necessary strategy, under some conditions. But it is also both insufficient and potentially dangerous. The danger of assuming sovereignty is twofold. First, the assumption of sovereignty forecloses the questions that we most need to address, forcing us into a reading of politics that leaves us unable to respond to contemporary political challenges. In particular, the assumption of sovereignty prevents us from subjecting the discourses and practices of sovereignty themselves to the kind of critical scrutiny that is required given changing material conditions for the production of political authority. Second, if we continue to assume that sovereignty is the necessary precondition for political authority, and thus remain unable to engage the question of its character or appropriateness, we will continue to impose and enforceChowever violentlyCthe necessities of sovereignty onto material conditions that may be increasingly resistant to such an imposition. By maintaining the mythology that sovereignty is necessary and natural as a precondition for politics, we willChowever unintentionallyCcontinue to sanction the violences done in the name of sovereignty, considering them necessary and natural rather than contingent upon the particularity of the ontology of sovereignty. To open the discourses and practices of sovereignty to question, on the other hand, enables a range of questions about the conditions of possibility for political authority to be opened and engaged. I believe that the future of feminist politics depends upon an engagement with these questions.

The dangers of assuming sovereignty emerge from the ways in which the assumption of sovereigntyCthe assumption of the necessity of the particular ontological resolutions that have enabled modern political authorityCshapes and constrains our thinking about politics and our political action. As I have emphasized, one of the particularly powerful aspects of Hobbes' architecture of sovereignty is that it so convincingly persuades us that there is no alternative to sovereignty: it is the necessary precondition for all that is good; all else is war, conflict and violence. If we believe this particular mythology of sovereignty, of course, we will be compelledCas theorists and practitioners of politicsCto do everything we can to create, protect, strengthen the ontology of sovereignty: we certainly don't want to be responsible for leading our fellow beings into the alternative. It is this particular element of the architecture of sovereignty discourse that has led to perhaps its greatest violences: because the ontology of sovereignty is assumed to be not contingent, but necessary and natural, whatever violences go into its production are also rendered necessary and natural rather than political.

However, the ontology of sovereignty is neither natural nor neutral, of course. On the contrary, both the particularity of the ontology of sovereignty and the belief in its necessity have been responsible for incredible violences. It is not difficult to think of many examples of this: the extermination and colonization of indigenous peoples on the grounds that they lacked the social and political institutions to survive in the modern world; the exclusion of large numbers of peopleCnot least womenCfrom political authority because they were not adequately "sovereign individuals;" various forms of religious persecution; and so on. In each of these cases, it is the naturalization of the ontology of sovereignty that has produced the victims of sovereignty discourse; they are those who mark the edges of sovereignty: the non-rational, non-modern, and so on. This Aothering@ in turn enables campaigns to either convert or destroy them as non-sovereign, as dangerous or feeble. But the examples don't end there: many of the violences that have accompanied recent nationalist struggles are legitimated through the same logics. The necessity of producing a coherent, shared (ontologically homogeneous) identity has accounted for exclusions and violences in the name of the greater good: the achievement of sovereignty, the precondition for political subjectivity. Given the particularly violent past of sovereignty discourseCor at least its complicity in this pastCto continue to assume or even triumph its necessity, believing its own account of its necessary alternatives, is highly problematic. It certainly runs the risk of perpetuating further violences under its tattered banner.

Crucially, this is not to say that one can simply deny the geography of sovereignty and try to create alternatives: given that sovereignty is expressed through modern subjectivity, its account of its own alternatives has an astonishing capacity to be persuasive in action even if we deny it in theory. The question is not whether sovereignty is true or real, but what are the conditions under which we can make claims to such truth or reality (or legitimate authority, necessary force, and so on). It is this latter question that provides the crux of contemporary political possibility, as it opens the possibility for renegotiations of discourses and practices of sovereignty.

Political theorists tend not to recognize the violences of sovereignty: our job begins after the question of the proper space for politics is resolved, and we work as diligently as we can toCwithin that spaceCrender political authority as representative, legitimate, democratic, and just as possible. An example of this tendency is Benhabib's recent edited book, Democracy and Difference (1996). While the analyses and debates in the book about the character and possibilities of democracy today are rich and important, not one of the authors seriously questions the state or sovereignty as the necessary geography through which political possibility is constituted. For eachChowever pressed, conflicted, and limited the capacity of the state to respond to contemporary demands, the sovereign state remains the unquestioned container (and authorizing precondition) for democratic theory. Whatever violence has happened prior to that space is unfortunate and regrettable, but we work within that space to minimize violence.

What if, however, contemporary conditions are such that the distinction between "inside" and "outside" that space is increasingly problematic? What if the conditions under which the resolutions of sovereignty can define the exclusive space for politics are becoming increasingly rare? What if, in other words, contemporary material, ideological, economic and political conditions are increasingly resistant to the particularity of discourses and practices of sovereignty?

While part of the staying power of sovereignty may be its elegance, its ability to constrain possibilities for thinking otherwise or outside of them, surely the far more significant reason for the staying power of Hobbes' vision is that it has been consistent and symbiotic with the material, economic and political circumstances of the day: the development of capitalism, technologies of transportation, communication and movement; controls over population; accessible and exploitable environmental resources; patterns of education, and so on. In other words, part of the reason sovereignty has "worked" when and how it has is related to the presence of the material and economic conditions of possibility for it and to the ability of these discourses and practices to adapt as these conditions have changed. Given that these conditions haveCat the very leastCchanged significantly since Hobbes' time, and seem to be rapidly transforming yet again in our own times, it seems reasonable to pose the question of whether the conditions under which sovereignty on this model might make sense still pertain.

So, for example, over the past few centuries, the patterns of inclusion and exclusion expressed by sovereignty have been inscribed and reinforced through immigration policies, citizenship and voting policies, border patrols, nationalist struggles, the creation of new states, the divisions of others. It would be difficult to assert that these patterns of inclusion and exclusion simply "made sense," given the violences that have been effected to maintain them. However, the structures and functioning of mechanisms of communication, transportation, war, economy, and so on, were such that sovereignty "worked" in some cases to the benefit of citizens within particular states: to protect them from the vagrancies of capitalism, environmental disaster, particular kinds of violences, some forms of discrimination and injustice. It has never "worked" as effectively for others, which is no accident, of course, given the particularity, the historical, social and cultural specificity, of the ontology of sovereignty. However, as technologiesBparticularly technologies of capitalism, war, and communication--have changed, so have both the potential dangers to citizens and the ability of any given sovereign power to ameliorate them. Given this, it is important to pose the question of whether a territorially bounded, identity-grounded sovereignty is either possible or desirable. If it is not, the perpetuation of the mythology of sovereignty will provoke ever-increasing levels of violent resistance.

To pose this question is to open the problem of whether we should read the movements that Benhabib argues are struggles for identity as, rather, expressions of political conflicts that exceed the possibilities of an identity-based sovereignty to effectively address. What if theCaccording to sovereignty discourseC"non-politics" of what happens prior to relations of governance (the effects of the production of the ontological foundation that enables governance), is really where the action is these days? What if, for example, instead of only or primarily reading contemporary movements as demands for "inclusion" at the level of relations of governance, we read them as resistances and challenges to the violences of sovereignty-constitution and subjectivity constitution? In other words, what if we read them not only as calls for more inclusive identities, but as effects of the violence produced by and thus as critiques of the identity/difference architecture for the basis of legitimate political authority?

What is crucial here is that if we assume sovereignty, these questions are foreclosed, rendered unrealistic, irresponsible. If we simply refuse to consider sovereignty discourseCthe conditions under which the distinction between inside and outside, domestic and international, politics and war, legitimate and illegitimate violence, citizens and foreigners, men and women, sane and mad, modern and primitive, are madeCwe thus contribute to a continuation of the mythology that these distinctions (and their constitutive violences) are beyond the political, are necessary and natural rather than being both necessary and contingent, produced through violences that are both crippling and constitutive of personal and political possibility. What difference might it make to open these questions? Rather than making nicer identities, questions can asked about theCthemselves highly political and often intolerableCconditions under which we come to rely on identity as the basis for political authority: can we reconstitute these conditions?

To read these movements as pleas for solid identities thus potentially obscures the extent to which the material conditions of possibility for achieving political stability on the sovereignty model might not be present. To open up this possibility is to consider how these movements might require or be effecting rearticulations of sovereignty discourse, forging new forms of political authority that exceed the capacities and necessities of an identity-based-sovereignty. Such a reading might suggest a space and possibility for politics that is foreclosed by Benhabib's assumption that these struggles can be responded to by creating narrative forms of identity to accommodate them.

Again, though, the key question is why we should read these struggles one way rather than another: it is here that I think the most significant political stakes of contemporary theory reside. Crucially, this is not a question that can be answered by piling up empirical evidence, given that empirical evidence is always already framed by theoretical commitments. Nor is this to say that all readings are equally plausible. The question of how to read contemporary events and processes is essentially a political question. If we fail to open this question, a question that cannot be opened if we assume sovereignty, we will continue to impose sovereignty whether or not it is the appropriate response to contemporary circumstances. This, in turn, will leave us trapped within the mythology and logics of sovereignty, potentially facilitating further violences in its name.

To assert that identity is and must be what these struggles are about is to assume sovereignty, and thus also to presume the material preconditions for contemporary theory. Always a dangerous proposition, in our times it may be particularly so, especially insofar as it reproduces a mythology with a violent past and forces it upon a landscape for which it may be increasingly inappropriate. To assume sovereignty, and the reading of the political that flows from it, thus poses a twofold danger: on the one hand it leaves us unable to ask the questions we need to ask in order to respond to contemporary situations, and, on the other, insofar as it leaves us trapped within the logics of sovereignty, it leaves us trapped into sanctioning the violences of sovereignty: violences necessary to produce the shared identities that-- in Hobbes and Benhabib=s architecture-- remain the precondition for the political.

To illustrate this doubled danger, one need only look at how Benhabib's vision of politics disciplines contemporary feminist theory and practice. Benhabib's reorientation of feminist theory delineates a relatively narrow project for the feminist theorist: to be a "cultural broker," using a narrative conception of identity to broker entrance to the polis for those previously excluded from it. The focal point for feminist politics thus remains not only identity, but a particular conception of identity. The state/polis will provide the condition of possibility for this identity (whatever violences that go into the production of it are apparently not of concern to us); we must simply focus on making it as inclusive as possible.

Even the briefest glance at the plethora of recent analyses of feminist activism around the world reveals a landscape that is much more diverse, varied and complex than Benhabib's vision would seem able to accommodate. A range of recent work documents the complexity and variation of feminisms, the difference not only in the focus of their activities, but in their articulation of what gender is, how it functions as an axis of power in a variety of different locations, what it means or might look like to render it a visible axis of activism, and so on. While the concept of identity is loose enough, and so deeply embedded in our ways of thinking about politics, that one might be able to argue that in some way these struggles are all "about" rendering identities more inclusive (even then, not necessarily at the state level), but it remains unclear why one would want to do so.

However, there are many reasons why one would not want to. Such a move obscures much more than it reveals, convenient though it might be for those theorists who seek to render "feminism" coherent and compatible with other preferred forms of political action. In particular, it obscures two crucial things. First, it obscures the diversity in forms and foci of feminist activism. As recent literatures have made more than clear, it is not possible to assume that "women" all share the same interests, or even that "gender" functions as a cross-cultural or situational category. The extent to which gender is differently instantiated at different sites, is embedded and expressed through complex relations of history, culture, materiality, power, temporality, has become increasingly apparent as a necessary starting point for feminist analysis, rather than a difficulty that must be overcome or evaded. Put bluntly, all feminisms are not even about "gender" or "identity" in the same way, let alone do they share a primary aspiration for inclusiveness.

Benhabib=s assumption thus homogenizes the wide variety of forms of feminist activism, thereby universalizing a particular conception of what all feminist struggles are "about." While Benhabib notes a renewed "respect for the moral and political legacies of universalism" in feminist theory (1999: 355), using this as support for her "universalized" take on feminist theory and practice, I would suggest such a renewed respect for the universal is unsustainable unless it takes a form of critical universalism rather than a return to a past tendency within some feminisms to universalize the particularity of North American feminism. To assume either that all, or most, or the most important North American feminist movements are concerned to struggle for more "inclusive" identities is already to tread tenuous ground. To assert this to be globally true is deeply problematic.

The second, and even more crucial, element this assumption obscures is the political significance of feminist movements themselves. It obscures the possibility that , rather than clamoring for "entrance" to relations of governance, feminist activists are participating in a broader rearticulation of political possibility, a rearticulation of the conditions of possibility for forms of political authority. Not only have feminisms aspired to diverse goals and effected diverse forms of action, the rise of feminism itself, in combination with a range of other social movements, has changed how politics happens. Whether through politicizing a range of sites that were formerly excluded from political concern, or through introducing and empowering a range of new political actors and institutions, or indeed, through introducing a range of new concerns to policy making, feminist social movements have changed what counts as political, how politics happens, and what constitutes legitimate political authority. Feminists have criticized not only their exclusion from politics, but the character, processes, and effects of political authority in ways that should not be underestimated or reduced to a phenomenon of "new wine in old bottles" or to an attempt to "add" women to existing political arrangements. It seems crucial to, at the very least, question the political significance of the diversity in both the focus and effects of feminist activism, rather than disciplining it into the modern liberal framework for politics, in which the sovereign state is the only and thus most crucial site for the negotiation of all political possibility.

The necessity of considering feminist activism seriously as a site of rearticulation of political possibility, rather than an enactment of modern political assertion of political subjectivity on a sovereignty model, can be illustrated with reference to any number of sites of contemporary feminist activism. Take, for example, the issue of the trafficking of women, an issue of increasing importance given the particular changes effected in the organization of labor markets by forms of globalization characteristic of late capitalism. As groups who are active on the issue clearly acknowledge, given the complexity of the material and political preconditions that enable, indeed require, the movement of women, this is not an issue that can be addressed either exclusively within any given state or at an international level. Concrete citizenship in any one country will not work to ameliorate the complex of difficulties these women face, not least because the option of remaining in one state is not necessarily open to them. What is required is a multi focal approach. This is happening through the constitution of complex alliances across and through national boundaries, amongst groups focused on different kinds of issues. These alliances themselves are creating new sites of political authority insofar as they function to name and define peoples, problems, responsibilities, rights and obligations: none of these in ways that are reducible to Hobbes' architecture of sovereign state-citizens.

To force this particular issue into the framework she has assumed, Benhabib would have to obscure or devalue what is potentially the most interesting aspect of this activism: how these groups are creating and defining new sites of political activism, sites that open possibilities for new ways of being. So, for example, these groups are seeking to extend forms of political protection to these women regardless of their membership in a particular polity, rather than leaving them doubly penalized for having no choice but to move to support their families and being criminalized for having to move. Rather than citizenship in a polity being the precondition for subjectivity, these groups are seeking to extend forms of political subjectivity to these women through their own recognition of and attempt to respond to their plight.

Any of a range of other sites of feminist activism express similar complexity, not surprisingly since they involve the concerns of half the world's population. Feminist activism, in other words, has been the site of the articulation of a range ofCoften contradictoryCnew political problems in relation to a range of different issues: from reproductive technologies to genetic engineering; scientific methodologies to media representations; glass ceilings to colonialism; forestry to racism; pesticides to childcare. Neither one movement nor in any way reducible to one set of concernsChowever large such a list might beCcontemporary feminisms express all of the complexity and contradictoriness as the political concerns and activities of any other half of the world's population, however divided. To discipline these concerns to ones narrowly focused on explicitly "women's" issues, or issues of Ainclusion@ in the polis, is not only impossible, it is radically undesirable.

Again, to emphasize, my point is not to assert that Benhabib's project is irrelevant. On the contrary: patterns of inclusion and exclusion in statist politics will continue to have relevance to feminist struggles. However, it neither is nor should be the exclusive or even primary focus of feminist theory or practice. To assert thisCparticularly through the assumption of what politics is, and the consequent dismissal of other articulations of political possibilityCis to discipline feminism in deeply problematic ways. It functions to retain a particular authority for the feminist theorist (as the one who knows the ropes and can argue for inclusion) but excludes as "unrealistic" a range of other political possible vocations for feminist theorists. Most disturbing, it suggests no necessity of allowing feminist practice to pose a challenge to the constitution of the political, or feminist political theory, thus erasing some of the most interesting and important elements of contemporary feminist activism. It also leaves nothing particularly distinctive about feminist activism: feminists are and should be doing a particular version of what all political theorists should be doing: brokering the state into a more inclusive unit. This does a massive disservice to feminism.

Feminist movements have long struggled against attempts to discipline them, both from within and without. My contention here is that the future(s) of feminisms rest not on their ability to function within and be disciplined by the architecture of modern politics, but on their ability to critically engage with and participate in a rearticulation of this architecture. What it might involve to reorient feminist analysis and practice to enable this is both deceptively simple and intensely complex. The simple version is that rather than assuming the conceptual framework for analyzing politics that we have inherited is sufficient and trying to force feminist politics into it, we must operate with the assumption that these categories themselves are part of what feminist activism must disrupt and rearticulate.

This realization, of course, is hardly novel; it has been an operative assumption of much feminist activism and analysis for a long time. Such a focus recalls some of the crucial texts of early Asecond wave@ feminism, which questioned the implications of our inherited accounts of the proper space for and character of politics. These texts argued that women's exclusion from political space was neither accidental nor incidental, but was crucial to the construction of the space for and character of politics. From very early on there has been an awareness that it was not enough to bring women, or women's issues, into the domain of the political, but that inherited ideas and practices of politics, the very distinctionsCbetween public and private, economy and politics, theory and practice, language and actionCthat constituted political space would have to be fundamentally challenged. This line of critique has developed into a now extensive engagement with the gendered character of political concepts and practices. These works have opened crucial ground, continuing to expand feminist critiques of key political concepts exploring how these are embedded in and reproduce assumptions that "gender" politics in problematic ways. Sustained engagement by feminists has forced the politicization of spaces and practices formerly ignored by the analysts of politics: the family, sexuality, care, domestic violence, and so on.

Other feminist theorists have struggled with the implications of not only the politicization of formerly "private" spaces, but also the de-naturalization of structures of gender and sex. They have worked to ferret out how deeply embedded these structures are not only in forms of politics, but in forms of authority, language, subjectivity, practices of representation, and so on. In this way, what began as a critical engagement with "politics" has developed into a "politics" of feminist theory as feminists have revealed, explored, and problematized the modern architecture of politics. The analysis of politics exploded, in other words, fracturing into a complex of different understandings, practices, modes of analysis and interpretation of the political. While this complexity has been one of the strengths of feminist theory, it has also contributed to some of its current stalemates; in particular, to at times counter-productive debates over what forms of theory or practice should count as properly political.

These debates have emerged through what should by now be a familiar architecture: the architecture of sovereignty. How these debates have come to be framed through this architecture is complex. Those working within traditions of political theory to challenge the "gendering" of these traditions, for example, have often tended to reproduce the tendency of contemporary political theorists to assume the ground of sovereigntyCthe basic architecture of politics as constructed by HobbesCas their enabling condition, thus necessarily stopping short of an engagement with the constitutive conditions of possibility for the political. This is expressed in the general assumption that although relations of governance might need to be critically expanded to recognize other political practices and sitesCthe family, sexuality, careCand although we may (or may not) need a feminist theory of "the state," the spatial and temporal resolutions of sovereignty remain an adequate ground for analysis and practice. Although we may need an "improved" state, or a proliferation of political spaces, the state as a container or frame for politics remains largely unquestioned. While this has led to rich conversations over the character and scope of relations of governance, whether in the form of debates over concepts or debates over public policy or legal strategies, these debates also rest upon and implicitly reinscribe governance as the proper space for politics, and thus the architecture of sovereignty.

The implications of this reinscription emerge when these conversations confront those feminist literatures concerned with expressions of the political that exceed relations of governance, such as those that delve into the power relations embedded in the constitution of modern subjectivity, or the practices through which forms of scientific authority are constituted. From within the perspective of theorists/practitioners of governance, and thus from within the architecture of sovereignty, these latter works often have the appearance of, and are accused of, floating untethered from "political realities," delving into "irresponsible" or "unrealistic" forms of critical inquiry. These works appear deeply problematic from within sovereignty discourse precisely because they seek to politicize the naturalized foundations of sovereignty discourse. Whether accused of being dangerous, improperly political, or simply irrelevant in their abstraction, in each case the architecture of sovereignty is deployed to discredit them. At the same time, though, these latter literatures do remain constrained in their ability to respond effectively to this dismissal, to articulate the political implications of their work, in part because the discourses of sovereignty continue to so dominate many analyses, sites and practices of politics.

Thus these two literatures are separated by a fundamental tension between their conceptions of the political. This is a tension that can neither be resolved nor overlooked: it expresses the problem of the political that constitutes our contemporary challenge. Each is fundamentally dangerous to the other, both conceptions of the political reveal and contest key structures through which relations of power are inscribed. This tension is an effect of the architecture of sovereignty: thus the necessity of turning our attention to how this architecture constructs and frames political possibility.

But the complexity doesn't end there. Although many figures cross boundaries, both of these sets of literatures float only tangentially attached to yet a third set: those literatures effecting analyses of the material conditions that constitute contemporary instantiations of feminist politics. Generally framed as micro analyses of activities "here" and "there," and concerned to detail the particularity of women's experience and activism, these literatures are also constrained by the logics of sovereignty discourse. Insofar as they begin with the geographicalBand thus spatial and temporalBlogics of sovereignty discourse, this architecture remains the necessary frame through which they are interpreted: the primary analytical and theoretical project that emerges from such analyses becomes one of ordering or linking these Adifferent@ instantiations of feminist politics, articulating and negotiating a further (sovereign) architecture of universal and particular, identity and difference, unity and diversity. Thus these literatures appear as efforts to document empirical realities, to inform and educate, yet the critical perspective they might offer on the broader problem of the political is foreclosed by the embeddedness of their analytical frames in the architecture of sovereignty. Because they focus on the apparent "particularity" of feminist activism, they remain isolated from broader analyses of political possibility, separated from other feminist conversations by their apparent difference in focus.

This leaves us with an ironic situation in which there are apparently separate conversations going on, occasionally linked but usually only by an apparent stand-off between the politics of various conceptions of politics. Each conversation is both internally constrained by its reliance on the architecture of sovereignty, and constrained in its political affect because of how this architecture locates it in relation to other modes of inquiry and thus conceptions of politics. By producing the particular frame for politics that legitimates a particular set of activities (those concerned with practices of governance) as properly political, and others as merely philosophical, abstract but nonetheless dangerous and problematic, the architecture of sovereignty in this way constrains feminist political possibilities. Thus, although the multiplicity of conversations about the political has been one of the strengths of feminist work, insofar as the interactions among these conversations have become focused around a defense of particular conceptions of the political, they remain unable to engage with the larger architecture that constrains their analysis. In this way, the architecture of sovereignty continues to discipline feminist analysis of the political, and its capacity to rearticulate political possibility.

Many people have attempted to combine these analyses, but such a combinationCalthough necessaryCis neither simple nor straightforward, as the architecture of sovereignty is not arbitrary but is constitutive of our ability to think and make ourselves understood. The questions that must be asked are quite literally unintelligible, inarticulable, within this geography. Work to integrate these fields of analysis such that we can move beyond stale debates about who is properly political must proceed through a critical interrogation of the categories through which we come to understand who we are and what we are about.

Consequently, politics today is at least as much about probing and rearticulating the limits of how we conceptualize the political as it is about mobilizing resources to include people in existing political arrangements. We cannot assume (and leave others to document) what is going on politically. Nor can we assume how we should come to understand what it going on, or consider it to be obvious, and only debate "what to do." In an important sense it is the obvious that is our greatest enemy. It is in the obvious that our most deeply held assumptions are lodged. Thus we must simultaneously pursue the questions of what is going on and how we should understand what is going on. We can only pursue these questions through a critical relation to our own categories and assumptions. More precisely, our work must come to grips with the spatial and temporal preconditions for the constitution of subjectivity, political authority, sovereignty: we must come to grips with the architecture articulated by Hobbes, as it is instantiated today. It is through seeing how the spatial and temporal preconditions for the ontology of sovereignty are already being reconstituted and rearticulated that we can come to develop a critical perspective on the categories through which we discipline the political.

Thus, for example, an analysis of the gendered nature of traditional concepts of western political theoryCsuch as autonomy, authority, power, democracy, freedomCneeds to be located within a serious investigation of contemporary political processes and institutions. Such analysis must be located not only within the context of domestic policy making, but within processes and institutions that themselves are disruptive of the categories that enable these concepts: the International Criminal Court, for example, or the European Community. By this I emphatically do not mean to encourage formulations such as: "What are the implications of globalization (or the E.C. or the I.C.C.) for concepts of citizenship?" On the contrary, such a formulationCas we saw in relation to Benhabib's workCalready assumes a whole political geography, not to mention a subject. Rather, the question must be posed of how both the concepts of globalization and of citizenship are always already embedded in a shared conception of space, time and the possibilities for politics, a conception that might frame our understandings of political possibilities in counter productive ways.

Again, this requires that we ask questions and pursue research that is simultaneously grounded in empirical and critical understandings of the categories and conditions through which these are articulated. As part of unpacking this mutual implication, the limits, closures, and blind spots of sovereignty discourse must become visible, enabling us to begin to articulate critical possibilities otherwise closed off. It is in the disruption of these limits that new possibilities for feminist politics and theory can be envisioned/enacted. On this front, we should not sell feminisms short: at their best, they have been part of a broader critique that has revealed the violences inherent in these limits, the mechanisms through which they are reinscribed, and the necessity of their disruption.

In order to sustain and build upon this critical success, feminists will need to come to grips with the multiple sites at which these limits are being rearticulated, both specifically in response to feminist activism and in response to broader developments. Again, this necessitates engagements not only with the history of political thought, but with emerging political institutions and sites of discursive and interpretative struggle, such as international law and transnational political organizations, whether non-governmental, state-sponsored, or economic. It necessitates engagement with events which express and force such rearticulations, such as NATO's bombing of Kosovo; struggles over genetically modified foods; expansions of forms and kinds of communications networks; sites of conflict between different expressions of political and religious authority; mass movements of people, whether as refugees or workers; the Internet; Aglobal warming,@ and so on. Although not explicitly "women's issues," these are the sites at which future political possibilities are being negotiated for all peoples. The political stakes of these sites thus aren't either "out there" with the policy makers and diplomats, or in the hallowed forms of academic interpretation, but in the complex interactions between them. The connections amongst these sites and the effects of their apparent discontinuity must be unraveled and reposed.

If we continue to force feminist strugglesCtheoretically or practicallyCinto the containers for politics that sovereignty produces, we stand not only to miss opportunities for developing more effective or appropriate political institutions (ones that might enable us to address the past violences of sovereignty), we also potentially sustain the attempts to force old solutions onto material conditions that exceed these possibilities. There is no doubt that the discourses and practices of modern sovereignty will remain persuasive for a long while, and that they are crucial sites to work from in order to authorize political institutions and practices, but this will be true only insofar as we continue to accept their terms of reference and overlook their past violences. And one can only avert one's eyes from the latter by simultaneously rejecting a significant body of feminist literature; indeed, some of the best.

An engagement with contemporary feminist politics must thus proceed through an engagement with the discourses and practices of sovereignty, and this in turn must proceed through an imminent critique, given that there is no outside or alternative to which one can turn to effect a critique of sovereignty discourse. This critique must thus proceed not only through the traditions we work within, forcing us to simultaneously pursue work that is "theoretical" and "practical," "normative" and "empirical," querying, again, the categories that frame and enable our intellectual projects. They also require that we embed what I call a "critical interdisciplinarity" in our work. The "critical" is there to mark a distinction: given that sovereignty is constitutive of disciplines, and institutional and intellectual practices function in ways that consistently "discipline" work along these lines, to simply expand our repertoire of source material into "other" disciplines is insufficient. The constitution of these disciplines is neither arbitrary nor neutral: they work together to legitimate particular ways of being, knowing and acting. To ignore the constitution and replication of these categories is thus to ignore one of the crucial sites for the reproduction of particular ontologies of sovereignty as the limit condition of our thought: we know enough to know better than this. Our interdisciplinary work must simultaneously exceed and interrogate these boundaries, seeking to explore the conditions under which they come to be understood as boundaries, and seeking to render visible the silences and closures they effect. This requires not only critically situating our own work, but seeking to authorize it in ways that resist the closures such practices might otherwise effect.

The apparent complexity and difficulty of such work is counterbalanced by the fact that the resources to pursue it are plentiful. Not only is there symbiotic, though not necessarily explicitly feminist, work happening in many of the areas mentioned above, but feminist activism itself provides a crucial source for the development of such analyses. These resources are apparent in much of the literature cited above. The emerging literatures on international feminist politics, for example, are an excellent case in point. Although still constrained by the spatial and comparative logics of sovereignty, and thus still struggling with insoluble questions of articulation of political possibility within a hierarchical frame, precisely in their struggles they enable and provoke possibilities for critical work in relation to these logics. Another particularly rich site includes feminist critiques of science and social science, in which the logics and limits of the modern subject's obsession with epistemology have been exposed and rearticulated. These literatures are paralleled by literatures less concerned with gender as a primary axis of analysis but nonetheless engaged in complementary struggles with the limits of political possibility.

Because of this complementarity, a feminism that pursues and interrogates these questions has much to offer to the broader analysis of politics. Indeed, any effort to come to grips with contemporary politics without engaging the insights of feminists will necessarily remain limited: to analyze practices of politics without understanding how gender functions as an axis of power is to evade a crucial problematic. Further, it is in and through such analyses of gender that some of the limits of our understandings of politics, the limits constituted by sovereignty discourse, are perhaps most clearly expressed. Feminist efforts to analyze the interaction of gender in relation to other axes of differenceChistorical, religious, ethnic, cultural, geographical, economic, epistemological, ontologicalCfurther extend these insights. Feminism provides a double resource, however: not only does the analysis of gender reveal much about how differences can be constituted and function as axes of power, but an analysis of feminist activism is now crucial to understanding how institutional politics function at a variety of sites. Again, in the latter case, it is in the encounter between feminist activism and particular institutional expressions of politics (such as law) that the limits of the political we are working within are perhaps most clearly exposed.

Perhaps the key insight of feminism, in other words, is that political institutions and practicesBas constituted through discourses of sovereignty--are enabled by, dependent upon and reproduce axes of difference in order to constitute political authority, and to contest that authority without challenging the constitution of axes of difference functions as only a very partial remedy. The futures of politics hinge, rather, on the ways in which these limit conditions of the political might be rearticulated.

In considering possible futures for feminism, I would not go nearly so far as to assert "a" new constellation, or at least one that we already clearly understand: we are in a period of struggle over and rearticulation of the structures and possibilities of politics, human communities, institutions, selves. I don't think we even have the ability to see what is happening with any clarity. Rather than "cultural brokers," I would suggest that we need most to become critical students of politics, pursuing questions of how the limits of political possibility are constituted, what their effects are, how they are being challenged and rearticulated in light of the massive changes we seem to be living through. Keeping open the critical questions at this level is crucial for feminism, as it is for those concerned with progressive politics broadly speaking: not least because otherwise we sell short the important critiques that have been forwarded by feminists. In particular, we obscure the possibility that feminism is not about "us" participating in patching up and simultaneously perpetuating the violences of modernity; but about participating in reimaginings of the political, rearticulations of political possibility in the context of a dynamic, conflict ridden, difficult set of shifts expressed differently at different sites.

The future of feminism, in other words, cannot be framed by an analysis of "identity," but must proceed through a critical, multifaceted engagement with the problem of the political. Until we can understand how it is that identity becomes a crucial political trope, the effects of its reinscription as the focal point of politics, its conditions of possibility, constitutive violences and political effects, we will remain trapped within its logics. To develop a critical perspective on identity that opens the possibility of challenging these logics requires an engagement with the architecture through which discourses and practices of sovereignty constitute political possibility. The necessity of such an analysis is becoming increasingly clear as processes of globalization render the assumption of sovereignty less and less tenable, even as these processes open possibilities for and effect rearticulations of sovereignty discourse. The future of feminism, thus, resides in an engagement with the political as it is being rearticulated through processes of globalization, just as the future of politics will reside in part in feminist engagements with precisely those processes.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that Matter. New York and London: Routledge.

Haraway, Donna J. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women. New York and London: Routledge.