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 |
Bibliographical note
Bob Brecher, Andrea Dworkin’s Pornography: men possessing women – a reassessment, 2015, Palgrave Macmillan UK, reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. This extract is taken from the author's original manuscript and has not been edited. The definitive, published, version of record is available here: http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137015112Fingerprint Dive into the research topics of 'Andrea Dworkin’s Pornography: men possessing women – a reassessment'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
Profiles
-
Bob Brecher
- School of Humanities - Professor of Moral Philosophy
- Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics
Person: Academic