ABSTRACT
GENDER, DIFFERENCE AND JUSTICE A central tenet of feminist theory is that gender has been and remains a historically variable and internally differentiated relation of domination. Gender connotes and reflects the persistence of asymmetric power relations rather than ‘natural’ (biological/anatomical) differences. In the modern (post-seventeenthcentury) west, gender has been constituted through a vicious, circular logic. A range of ‘differences’ (e.g. mind/body, reason/emotion, public/private) is identified as differences and as salient to and constituent of gender. These differences are also conceived as oppositional, asymmetric dualisms on a hierarchial, binary and absolute scale rather than as pluralisms in an indefinite and open-ended universe. ‘Woman’ is defined as and by the cohering of certain elements, always the lesser side of the dualistic pairs. Man, her superior opposite, ‘naturally’ incorporates and is constituted by the greater. Thus in the contemporary west, the recognition of differences seems inseparable from asymmetric dualisms and relations of domination. Within contemporary western culture, differences appear to generate and are certainly used to justify hierarchies and relations of domination including gender-based (or genderascribed) ones.
