ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with a central issue in contemporary feminist theory, the question of how to re-think the liberal state. It will compare aspects of three feminist theories of democracy which attempt to go beyond liberalism and specifically beyond the exclusion of the feminine on which it was premised: the theories of Iris Marion Young, Anne Phillips and Chantal Mouffe. All three are concerned with how to displace what has been the dominant legitimation of justice in modernity: the universal principles of liberalism in which the abstract individuals for whom justice may be claimed are essentially identical and therefore subject to identical principles and procedures. The critique of abstract individualism is now well established in feminist theory; the apparently gender-neutral individual is seen as actually masculine and the universal principles of liberalism as particular, applying only to persons with male attributes (Phillips 1993a). The liberal state is, on this reading, intrinsically biased towards men, even if the question of whether it is necessarily and monolithically patriarchal remains open. However, it is also recognised by feminist theorists that there is a danger in this critique of reproducing a binary opposition between the sexes, of essentialising sexual difference, which Young, Phillips and Mouffe are all concerned to avoid. The problem is how to take differences between the sexes into account without freezing them in their current forms and without denying the importance of other differences which may cut across that of sex: class, race, sexuality and so on. While it seems to be necessary to identify a specifically feminine political subject in whose name the masculine bias of the state may be challenged, it is acknowledged that such a subject is problematic in theory and elusive in practice. One of the criteria, then, on which these theories will be compared is how well each one deals with the problem of representing women without essentialising a given identity.
