Abstract
I argue that Dworkin has much to teach us in today’s neo-liberal world. Her argument is not primarily a causal one, despite sometimes reading as if it were. The legal route she chose as the ground on which to fight may well be a dead end, but that does nothing to undermine the force of her underlying analysis. It may even be that pornography is less pivotal than she thought; but even then, the form of her analysis and the substance of her argument, far from being rhetorical and/or fallacious, are exactly what we need to counter the depredations of neo-liberal “common sense”. That she herself found it difficult to find a language beyond that of liberalism to express her argument is no excuse either for ignoring or misinterpreting it. In places her argument certainly remains within liberal constraints; in others, however, it is profoundly anti-liberal: but this internal tension does not detract from its pertinence.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Women and violence: the agency of victims and perpetrators |
Editors | H. Widdows, H. Marway |
Place of Publication | London |
Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
Pages | 145-161 |
Number of pages | 17 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781137015129 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781137015112 |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2015 |