Feminism and the Human: Remarks on a Singular Universal

Feminism has always been concerned with what it saw as a particular conundrum present in the concept of the universal. Man poses as the universal subject, but nevertheless constructs a gaze of desire that parcelizes women into a precarious dialectic. For feminists the human becomes, at that moment, an imposter for man. As bearers of the task of both physical and cultural reproduction, women have access to the universal only through motherhood. By contrast, women who do not give birth are hazardous and uncertain, and thereby confined to the particular. This initial critique of the universal will nevertheless lead to ambivalence within feminist thought. Must it be abandoned definitively or is it possible to reclaim it in feminist terms? Is it possible to impose a rigorous discussion of the body on the universal imposter that tries so hard to ignore it? This paper engages the question of who speaks for the human in contemporary feminism by examining the call for a return to the universal by scholars like Naomi Schor, Julia Kristeva, Lucy Irigaray, and others.