ABSTRACT
In an article on politics and the body published in a special issue of differences on postmodern feminist politics, Joan Cocks outlines, via a reading of Nietzsche, what she calls the “degeneration of radical politics” ( 152). Toward the end of the piece she makes this observation: “We find in segments of the population hyper-alert to the sexual harassment and abuse of women and children (a real enough harassment and abuse, to be sure), a suspicion of all sociophysical entanglements, a distaste for the confused opaque jostling in life in which, barring the grave offense, people must fend for themselves” ( 154 ). Written before the Clarence Thomas hearings, this statement, notwithstanding its parenthetical qualifier, will from a post-Thomas perspective strike many feminists as itself symptomatic of a degeneration of radical feminist politics. Cocks joins up with men all across the land who have been deploring the fact that since Anita Hill's allegations, they don't know where to draw the line anymore, that the most innocent forms of affectionate display in the workplace are liable to be misconstrued, that the “confused opaque jostling in life” in which women ought to fend for themselves (rather than, I suppose, pressing charges against the jostler) would be interpreted as sexual harassment and men would find themselves constantly victimized by sexually hyper-alert women. As to the question of what constitutes the “grave offense,” Cocks gives no specifics; but we might note that one strategy in discrediting sexual harassment complaints is precisely to deny the gravity of almost any accusation. Definition is in fact precisely at issue: Who is authorized in a patriarchal society to make and enforce definitions of sexual abuse? And on what grounds and in whose interests are they made? These questions — precisely the questions, I would submit, that must be addressed by a feminist political theory — are entirely elided in the article.
