The phrase “post-2016” has probably supplanted “after 9/11” as the marker of a moment. For political theorists this requires reckoning with what feels like a sudden lurch rightward amidst the rise of antidemocratic and antiliberal forces worldwide. The assault on liberal democratic institutions and ideals and the specific targeting of feminist politics from the Right has required a recalibration of our political compass and a reconsideration of the entangled fates and futures of the liberal and feminist projects. Judith Baer’s Feminist Post-Liberalism enters this debate with neither a radical overhaul nor a rejection of the liberal democratic project but with a suggestion that a robust feminist liberalism, animated by a spirit of pragmatism, offers a modest path forward not in spite of, but because of, some of its failures in the past. If Hillary Clinton’s apparent ascent to the presidency was critiqued in advance by many on the Left as the triumph of the marriage of neoliberalism and feminism’s worst tendencies, Baer pivots to consider how liberalism and feminism were responsible for her loss and can offer a way out (p. xi).
The separate chapters weave together ruminations on the larger principles of liberalism’s commitment to reason and common sense and feminism’s concrete desire for gender equality, suggesting that together they yield a general commitment to concrete problem solving—detangling specific political issues in the present by illuminating past failures. Individual chapters tackle examples of these failures as a means of both illustrating the postliberal component of her approach—specifically, the ways liberalism has upheld gender inequality and patriarchal power—and the value of feminist critique in laying bare the shortcomings of liberalism in achieving the ends of feminists. As her theoretical commitments suggest, Baer moves through these questions not in the abstract but in tackling a set of concrete problems.
Baer stakes out her theoretical position as one of “imperative theory”—a persistent question of “What can we not do without?” or “What is to be done?”—which is identified in her initial chapter but refined later in addressing the problem of “guilt” as a defining feature of liberalism (committed to a set of abstract principles) and feminism (often saddled with a gendered burden of responsibility). As political positions built on self-reflection and critique, she suggests that both have been hobbled by a tendency toward reason, reflection, and reflexivity that has not always been politically useful. Baer is not critical of the self-reflection but of its political consequences. She points to a liberal tendency toward accommodation of opponents—especially when liberals attain power—that has actually hampered the achievement of liberal ends. Similarly she is critical of feminist critiques of status privilege for women who have entered the labor force; she views them as a consequence of the exploitation of the labor of domestic workers that avoids a discussion of how economic structures have made this appear to be a women’s issue as opposed to a larger issue of justice, family structures, and economic distribution. Conservatives, in contrast, have been more than willing to take political advantage of liberal guilt, piling on to liberal and feminist self-critiques of elitism, hypocrisy, or exclusion without ever engaging in a similar self-analysis.
Baer’s imperative theory, therefore, suggests that a feminist post-liberalism, while imperfect, can help us navigate a concrete political terrain by continually drawing our attention to the ways that liberal principles fall short in practical terms of achieving feminist ends—requiring a deeper consideration of the complexity of the contexts that, in turn, may require a revision of liberal principles or commitments. The argument is strongest in chapter 3, in which Baer unfolds the logic of constitutional jurisprudence read as liberal democratic theory, revealing the ways that adherence to liberal principles can, in practice, be problematic for feminist politics. Reading Johnson Controls, VMI, and Casey, Baer makes a compelling argument that the rulings in these cases reflected liberal values of “reason over emotion, law over fiat, autonomy over paternalism” in advocating for the treatment of women as individuals capable of making their own choices about employment and reproduction. Yet, she argues, “They increased women’s freedom without ending male supremacy” (p. 44) by ignoring the ways women’s freedom is limited not only by capitalism but also by a system of male supremacy in which the capacity to bear children is a concrete limitation on the ability of some subjects to be free and substantively equal. Feminists will be familiar with the argument about the gendered nature of the liberal subject, and the analysis could have been supplemented by some engagement with feminist literature critiquing both capitalism and the nuclear family as sites of “freedom.” When Baer says she has become increasingly skeptical of capitalism as compatible with postliberal and feminist principles, she would find good company in a wide range of feminist texts past and present.
The danger of any timely text is, of course, its being overtaken by contemporary events. And Baer’s text feels like a response to 2016 in a way that already feels dated. This is clearest in chapter 4 on “Gentlemen’s Rights and Gender” equality that reflects on critiques of carceral feminism, suggesting that feminists have been too quick to seek legal remedies that criminalize behavior (or persons) in ways that have contributed to mass incarceration and its racialized components. Addressing problems of male dominance like domestic violence and sexual assault via the criminal law, these critiques suggest, has contributed to the veneration of “law and order” solutions and mass incarceration in ways that have weaponized state power against marginalized communities, especially Black men. Baer is resolutely critical of the carceral state but is quick to point out that women remain vulnerable to gendered violence, which is, she suggests, underpoliced. Pointing to cases like that of Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer who received a six-month sentence for rape, she suggests that gendered violence that upholds the “gentleman’s prerogative” is still not taken seriously. In this particular moment in which state violence, particularly racialized violence, has become painfully visible, this analysis falls short. In not engaging with the extensive feminist literature, particularly among Black feminists, about the carceral state and race, gender, and sexual violence, Baer does not go far enough in complicating the “gentlemen” in question or the women and femmes who are most vulnerable to both gender and state violence. In the shadow of the “Black Trans Lives Matter” march that drew attention to violent patriarchal, racial, and capitalist power on specific bodies that are subject to societal and state violence, calls for a more complex interrogation of incarceration make the subsequent chapter’s discussion of trans issues that spends more time on pronouns than material consequences feel inadequate. Although Baer is correct to worry about feminism’s political potential being hobbled by excessive self-critique—as she suggests in the discussion of cultural appropriation—her argument would be improved with greater attention to the often searing critiques from within feminism that have drawn attention to the complex and shifting dimensions of power that have yielded not just critique but also transformative political action.
