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Women, Utopia, and Narrative: Toward a Postmodern Feminist Citizenship Author(s): Robin Silbergleid Source: Hypatia, Vol. 12, No. 4, Citizenship in Feminism: Identity, Action, and Locale (Autumn, 1997), pp. 156-177 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Hypatia, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810737 . Accessed: 15/09/2011 19:01
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Women,Utopia,andNarrative: Toward Postmodem a Feminist Citizenship

ROBIN SILBERGLEID

Feminist utopian novels reconstructcitizenshipby interrogating ideological at its assumptions theroot of civil rightstheory,particularly relianceon thesexual contractand thefamilyromancenarrative.Whilemanyfeministcitizenships still the on utopian fictionsdeconstruct logicof natural rights depend suchassumptions, on based traditional and with andreplace governments nation-states socialstructures the and awareness.They thereby underscore imporcommunity global-ecological and tanceof narrative feminist for theory. philosophy political

As Rachel Blau DuPlessisarguesin Writing BeyondtheEnding,the romance or that ends with either heterosexualunion in marriage the sexual plot-one failureof the heroine, markedby death-has servedas the predominantmode of narrativesince the eighteenth century.The contemporaneous emergenceof this narrativemodel with the rise of industrialcapitalismand the foundation of liberal citizenship is hardly coincidental. Rather, functioning as an ideor ologeme, "asymbolicresolutionto a concrete historicalsituation"(Jameson 1981, 117), the romancenarrativefostersthe newly defined bourgeoisfamily, with its necessaryemphasison sexual difference and a gendereddivision of labor.Followinga trajectoryof heterosexualdesire,these storiesserve both to shape and to perpetuatemiddle-classvalues, including a gendered vision of citizenship. By using courtship ritualsto propel its diachronic structure,the romance launches the readertoward the ideologically correct end: marriage and (re)production.In orderto ensure"the narrativeof familialproductivity," motives of bourgeoiscapitalism Judith Roof explains, "the self-perpetuating into the service of the family" (Roof 1996, 35). The elision rope sexuality between capitalistproductionand familial reproductionwithin this formulation providesthe foundationfor what Carole Patemandescribesas the sexual vol. Hypatia 12,no. 4 (Fall1997)? by RobinSilbergleid

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contract and, in so doing, secures the position of woman as a second-class citizen (Pateman 1988). While the discoursesof narrativeand citizenshipmay at first seem antagonistic, I contend that a reconsiderationof narrativeis imperativefor developing a feminist model of citizenship by interrogating the ideological assumptionsthat have supportedliberalcitizenshipsince the Enlightenment, and which continue to dominatefeminist debatesaboutcitizenship.The most significant assumption,as evidenced by the work of majorpolitical thinkers including Pufendorf,Montesquieu,and Rousseau,is that the preservationof civil society depends on "undisturbedpassage of property along family of lineages"(Vogel 1994, 77-83). Such masculinistdiscourses citizenshipclaim that liberal democracyrequiresvirtuous women to protect the social order, beginning in the home. The rise of the romance thus serves to protect the interests of capitalist democracyby selling citizens the story that everything will turnout okay if girl marries boy, and if girl stayshome and raiseslittle boys to be good capitalist workers,establishing a correlationbetween the family romance and mercantile success. As such, this narrativetrajectorybecomes inextricablefrom the assumptions liberalcitizenship. of To date, however,feminist revisionary workon citizenshiphas done little to move beyond such assumptions.While feminist revisions usefullypoint out the patriarchalinclinations of traditionalcitizenshipand proposealternative models, they ultimatelyremaintrappedwithin the sex-gendersystemenabled by romancenarrativesand the logic of the sexual contract. On the one hand, vision of citizenship,askingthat equalityfeminists strive for a gender-neutral women be given the same rights and responsibilitiesas male citizens. In her essay "Citizenshipand Feminist Theory,"Anne Phillips advocates this position, arguingthat because the concept of the citizen is inherentlypublic, it is universaland thus gender-neutral. "Beinga good citizen,"Phillipsexplains,"is not the same as being a good mother" (Phillips 1993, 86-87). On the other hand, difference feminists emphasizewomen's special needs as primarycaregivers and suggest that equal rights is not the same as identical treatment. Wendy Sarvasy,for example, explains that a central argument in feminist projects on citizenship is that "as caregivers,underpaidworkers,and unpaid domestic workers . . . women need a new gender-differentiated and equal of citizenship supported by a nonpatriarchal welfare state" conception (Sarvasy 1992, 332). Neither one of these visions, however, dissociates the needs of an embodied individualfrom the patriarchal-capitalist narrativesof and nation which constructthem. So long as these discussionsperpetfamily uate patriarchalassumptions,woman's story will necessarily be that of the second class citizen. In contrast, feminist utopian narrativeswritten duringthe era of secondwave feminism envisage a new relationshipbetween women and the nations of which they aremembers,calling into questionthe overdetermination the of

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bourgeoisfamilyand replacingtraditionalgovernmentsand nation-stateswith social structuresbased on community and harmony with the natural world. The Female Man and MargePiercy's Woman the Edgeof Time, on JoannaRuss's in particular, serve to further feminist critiques of liberal citizenship by forefronting the imbrication of patriarchy with industrial capitalism and technology. In their pursuitof a new epistemology of sexual difference, they elaborate a postmodern, ecological vision of citizenship, asking whether the term "citizen" is ultimately compatible with a feminist worldview. Their profound insights into feminist philosophy suggest that, as more than simply fantastical stories, utopias may offer a prescriptionfor social change, while, conversely, theoretical evaluations may be nothing more than utopian dreams.
PATRIARCHAL HETEROSEXUAL CITIZENS NARRATIVES,

The "sexualcontract"theorizedin Carole Pateman'slandmarkstudy provides the crucialhinge between narrativetheoryand feminist interventionsin citizenship by highlighting the inextricable binding of capitalism, as the the dominantmode of production,and a narrativeof reproduction, ideological union at the root of liberal citizenship (Pateman 1988). In short, the sexual contract arises to ensure that each male citizen has access to a wife who, in the turn,safeguards well-beingof the familyand the home; the sexualcontract therebyenables men to take advantageof the socialcontract that grantsthem status as citizens free to exchange property in the capitalist marketplace. Because the very conceptualizationof the "individual"(citizen) fundamentally depended upon one's ability to own propertyand head a family, the and of subsumption wives in coverture,asNancy Fraser LindaGordonsuggest, to define civil citizenship" (Fraserand Gordon 1994, 98). "actuallyhelped By denying women the traits of an individual, then, the sexual contract divides civil society into public and private spheres, allowing for both productive and reproductive prosperity;in this formulation, sexual difference is tautologically invoked to account for the genderednature of citizenship. According to UrsulaVogel, the liberal-bourgeoisproject of social progressand political emancipation (for men) was parasitic upon the traditional family to ensure stability against the potentially disruptive dynamic of a liberatedsociety. The complementarityof male and female nature,and the insistence on women'sspecial identity, had thus the function to providean enclave of stable roles and value orientations amidst a rapidlychanging world dominated by self-interest, competition and conflict-the very

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world for which freedomwas thought to requirethe guarantee of equal rights. (Vogel 1988, 154) Vogel's explanation implies that, given the tenuous relationshipbetween the sexual contract and the social contract, ideology (ideally) stabilizesthe economic base. The tautologyof the sexual contract-that genderdifference is the cause of a gendered citizenship-obviously demands a great deal of ideological policing to connect the division of labor in the home with the division of labor in the public sphere.Towardthis end, the marriage contract to secure woman'ssubordinationin the bourgeoisfamily and civil emerges society, positioning her both inside and outside the logic of democracy.As Pateman usefully explains, only by separatingcivil society into public and privatespheres-with the latterincludedin civil society but subordinate-can "the originalcontract be upheld"and men "receiveacknowledgmentof their to patriarchal right"(Pateman1988, 180). Thus, underthe pressure reproduce (more workersand thereforemore capital) as well as to producegood citizens, a narrativeemerges to structurethe "proper" trajectoryof the family-from and ultimatelybirth. courtshipthroughmarriage Adopting the ideology which fostersthe sexual contract, the paradigmatic narrativeof Westernculture since the emergence of industrialcapitalismhas centered on the maintenance and reproduction of the bourgeois family Becausecourtship,as IgorWebb throughheterosexualcoupling and marriage. notes, "carriedan implicit progressivepromise of freedom and fulfillment within a reformedsociety" (Webb 1981, 175), the romance narrativehelps tighten the logical leap from heterosexual love to economic prosperityto democraticprogress.Indeed, as a "formof ideological coding specific to each mode of production"(Jameson1981, 89), narrative generally,and the romance specifically,yields one way that culturereproducesits ideology and transmits its dominant systemof values. The romancethus emergesas a "compensatory social and narrative practice" at the historical moment when capitalism demandsa restructuring the family and the genderingof citizenship (DuPof lessis 1985, 2), and narrativebecomes a guide to the civic rightsand responsibilities of the citizen, including woman'sduty to convey propervalues to her children. Although narrativeexists as a space in which to reproducethe cultural dominant, it also serves as a valuable mediumfor contesting that ideological program.Given the entrenchment of heterosexual union and the romance narrativein the foundationof liberalcitizenshipand the social contract, any reconsiderationof citizenship requiresa new narrative of family and civil society. As JoannaRussprofitablyoutlines in her essay"WhatCan a Heroine Do? Or Why Women Can't Write,"plots are "dramatic embodimentsof what a culturebelieves to be true-or what it would like to be true"(Russ 1972, 4): seen through this lens, the longstanding tradition of romance in Western

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culture suggests that we are only beginning to revise women's stories, to envision alternativeplots of women'slives. Towardthis end, feminist literary critics, including DuPlessis, Nina Auerbach, Judith Newton, and Marilyn traditionof narrative,suggestingwaysthat Farwell,interrogatethe patriarchal women's writing can subvert this paradigmand, in the words of DuPlessis, "writebeyond the ending"of heterosexualcoupling (Auerbach 1978;Newton 1981; Farwell1996). Such revisionarywork on narrativefurthersfeminist constructionsof citizenship because what is at stake for these theorists, as for Pateman, in the storiestold by Westerncultureis preciselythe position of woman as a secondclass citizen, the role constructedfor her by heterosexualromancenarratives. By redefiningthe storiesourcultureproducesaboutwomen, feminist interventions in narrativeadvance feminist philosophy and politics; if we accept that narrativeis our governing epistemology,the very mode of human consciousness, then any amount of social change or subversion necessitates a new narrativestructure,a new way of envisioning the world.This is not to suggest, quite reductively,that any new storieswritten aboutwomen'slives necessarily imply a correspondingsocial change. Rather, counterarratives are the prefor condition and possibilityfor imaginingpolitics differently, opening a site of ideologicalstruggle. Within late twentieth-centuryfeminism,one importantsite for such struggle is feminist utopianfiction. Emanatingfromthe political objectivesof their authors,these texts use imaginativeand futuristicsettings to test alternative relationshipsbetween women and civil society, working through dilemmas about embodimentthat feminist political theory has yet to resolve. "Theory," after all, derives from the verb "to view," making the visionary worlds of feminist narrativesome of the most theoretical texts around.1
REVISIONING CITIZENSHIP REWRITING NARRATIVE,

fromthe secondwave of the women'smovement,feministutopian Emerging novels of the twentieth-centuryprovide an alternativestoryfor women, one that opens a spaceforfeministconstructionsof citizenshipthroughits critiques of patriarchal capitalismand heterosexualcoupling. In additionto developing a world they would like to see achieved, or even representingthe struggle between patriarchaland feminist ideologies, utopian narrativesserve a vital political function by providinga prescriptionand approachfor social change. As what Rachel DuPlessis terms an apologue, utopian fiction invokes a discourse of didacticism,overtly calling attention to its political project. Therefore, while these texts may not always lay out a step-by-step programfor political intervention, they do makeclearwhat the outcome of such a program might be. In so doing, these narrativesoffer a useful theoretical apparatus: specifically,because of their contemporaneitywith the women'smovement,

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feminist utopian narrativesenvisage a public role for women and theorize a feminist view of the nation-state. Their critiquesof the existing sex-gender system further reconceptualizewoman's position as a citizen, since gender differenceis fundamentallyenmeshedwithin the projectof liberalcitizenship and democracy. Sally Gearhart's descriptionof a feminist utopia begins to account for the function of utopian writing,suggestingthat it: political a. contrasts the present world with an envisioned idealized society (separatedfrom the presentby time or space), b. offers a comprehensivecritique of present values/conditions,c. sees men or male institutionsas a majorcause of present social ills, and d. presentswomen not only as at least the equals of men but also as the sole arbitersof their reproductivefunctions. (Gearhart1984, 297) Novels as diverseas JoannaRuss'sThe FemaleMan, MargePiercy'sWoman on the Edge of Time, Monique Wittig's Les Guerilleres,and Suzy Charas's Motherlines thus exemplify the traitsGearhartascribesto utopian narratives. The unifying feature of these works is their development of a feminist worldview.As Russ argues,"utopiasare not embodimentsof universalvalues, but are reactive; that is, they supply in fiction what their authors believe society ... and/orwomen, lack in the here-and-now"(Russ 1981, 81). Chiefly in antipatriarchal their pursuitof a sexuallyegalitariansociety, these feminist theorize societies which derive from communal or tribal ties rather utopias than from the nuclear family;which emphasizeecological well-being more than technological advancement or economic gain; which eliminate racial and economic prejudice;which divide labor (in particular household chores) to skill and desire, not gender; which de-centralize the role of according large-scalegovernmentand repressivelaw; and which subvertthe sex-gender systemby disembroilingsexualityfrom reproduction,thus legitimating,if not endorsing,alternativesexual practices.2 While the explicit projectof utopianwritingis the creationof a gender-free (or at least antipatriarchal) society, it also providesan implicit critiqueof the founding assumptionsof liberalcitizenshipby undercuttingthe codependent systems of gender and industrialcapitalism,the systems that allow the constructof the citizen to come into being. In place of that construct,these novels posit an alternativemodel of civic duties, one dependent on neither gender nor the traditional nation-state. Russ's and Piercy'sworks are particularly instructive because they employ subversivenarrativestructuresto highlight the problemsof patriarchal cultureand advancean alternativeconstructionof civil society and feminist citizenship.Both texts augmentfeminist critiquesof citizenship by pointing out the inseparabilityof patriarchyand capitalism, imaginatively undoing the logic of the sexual contract and its role in the

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democraticnation-state. Moreover,because they take distinct approachesto the establishmentof a gender-free Man advocatesa world society-The Female of women, while Womanon the Edgeof Time rethinks the existing entirely sex-gendersystem-they offer insight into the on-going feminist debate over embodimentand equality. In The FemaleMan, Russ uses four versions of a "genetically"identical to protagonist(Janet-Jeannine-Joanna-Jael) providea sustainedcritiqueof her own culture and present visions of alternative feminist worlds. The most idealistic of these worlds is Whileaway, an all-female, futuristic Earth of approximately2600 A.D. Unrealistic as Whileawaymight be, it enables Russ to builda gender-free worldfromthe groundup and imaginewhat a citizenship not premisedon sexual differencemight look like. Having eliminated men as a resultof a "plague"(which turnsout to be a literal war between the sexes), citizens of Whileaway reproducethroughthe union of two ovum; each child and thus has a "body-mother" a second mother who contributesto parenting (Russ 1975, 49). The life story of a female citizen on Whileaway goes something like this: after being brought up in a "common nursery"with other children in the kin groupuntil the age of fouror five, these independent,blooming, pampered,extremelyintelligent girls are tor weeping and arguingfrom their thirty relatives and sent to the regionalschool where ... they are caredfor in groupsof five and taught in groupsof differingsizes according to the subjectunderdiscussion.Their educationat this point is heavily practical: how to run machines, how to get along without machines, law, transportation, physical theory,and so on. They learngymnasticsand mechanics.They learnpractical medicine. (Russ 1975, 50) Once they reach puberty(or "MiddleDignity"), they "have the right of food to and lodgingwhereverthey go"and arenot required returnto theirbiological families. By age twenty-two, a Whileaway citizen "achieve[s]Full Dignity," which enables her to become an apprenticefor variouspositions or to decide on marriage;at twenty-five, she chooses a family, which determines her home base"(Russ 1975, 52); and, when she reaches thirty,she "geographical has a child of her own. This descriptionof the Whileawayanlife cycle suggests of the rightsand responsibilities Russ'sidealcitizen. Having eliminatedsex and gender,Russ breaksthe sexual contract and commences with the assumption of equality;consequently,the economic systemno longer determinesa female citizen's civic duties and rights. Instead, as part of a largerkinship unit, the Whileawayanhas the responsibilityto carefor herselfand her communityand the right to health and individualprosperity. As such, Whileaway'scontributionto reconstructing citizenshiparisesfrom cultureand the sexual its elimination of the problemsof patriarchal-capitalist

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contract, a task Russaccomplishesby juxtaposingWhileawayagainsta satirical view of American culture during second-wavefeminism. The characters the Joanna (appropriately, author'sfirst name) and Jeannine exemplify the statusof woman underpatriarchy: either she fulfillsthe ideal of femininity,or she vies for independence and becomes a man. Jeannine'sonly ambition is to remain a librarian and get married,claiming "I wouldn't give up Cal for anything. I enjoy being a girl, don't you? I wouldn't be a man for anything" who insists "there is one and (Russ 1975, 86). Joanna is a literatureprofessor one way to possessthat in which we are defective, thereforethat which only we need, therefore that which we want. Become it" (Russ 1975, 139). By these charactersenable illustratingthe dual roles of women underpatriarchy, Russ to grapplewith the pertinence of sexual differencein models of citizenship, asking whether universal or gender-specifictreatment best promotes democracy.Russ thereby productively supplements the separatistvision of women. Whileaway with the pragmaticconcerns of contemporary By playing the four social visions of her charactersoff one another, Russ reveals that if Whileaway'sapparentsucccess arises from its lack of sexual culturederivesfromits insistenceon difference,the downfallof contemporary the sexual contract.Consider,for example,the following satireof the division of laborundercapitalism: HE: Darling,why must you workpart-timeas a rugsalesman? SHE: Because I wish to enter the marketplaceand prove that in spite of my sex I can take a fruitfulpart in the life of the communityand earn what our cultureproposesas the sign and symbolof adult independence-namely money. HE: But darling,by the time we deduct the cost of a baby-sitter and nurseryschool, a higher tax bracket,and yourbox lunches fromyourpay,it actuallycosts us money foryou to work.So you see, you aren't making money at all. You can't make money. Only I can make money. Stop working. SHE: I won't. And I hate you. HE: But darlingwhy be irrational? doesn't matter that you It can't make money because I can make money. And after I've made it, I give it to you, because I love you. So you don't have to make money. Aren't you glad? SHE:No. Why can't you stayhome and take care of the baby? Why can't we deduct all those things from your pay? (Russ 1975, 118)

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This excerpt clearlydrawsattention to the structural connection between romantic love creates a (or economic prosperity)with patriarchy; capitalism situation in which women "don'thaveto make money."Or so goes the myth of the family narrative-its adamant refusalto question why he "can't stay home and take care of the baby."In contrast, by jettisoning men from the planet, Whileawayreplacesthe familyromanceof industrialcapitalismwith a new narrativeof kin, a substitutionvital to Russ'svision of society and her project of citizenship. In place of an urban-capitalistsociety with a central based government, the women of Whileaway have fosteredan agriculturally socialist society, one that Russ compareselsewhereto an Israelikibbutz(Russ 1981, 81). Arguingthat "thereis no one place fromwhich to control the entire activity of Whileaway,that is, the economy" (Russ 1975, 91), Russ reasserts the significanceof Whileaway'srejectionof capital and its concomitant dissolution of the nuclearfamily.In a move that anticipatespostmodernfeminism, Russ uses Whileaway to underline the inextricabilityof gender from other structures power.Thus, while discussionsaboutRusstend to concentrateon of her lesbian separatism,it is her critique of patriarchalcapitalismthat undergirdsher alternativevision of citizenship. By dismantling the sexual contract and the financially driven narrativeof familyromance,Russdisentanglessexualityfromreproductionand substitutes lesbian separatismand a choice of kin. Although all sexual relationshipson Whileaway are lesbian and monogamy is not requisite, the force of Russ's censure of heteronormativitybecomes even more clear when she offerslesbianism as the most successfulmode of relation on Earth;the most fully developed and productivesexual relationshipoccurs between WhileawayanJanet and contemporary Earthgirl LauraRose, a relationshipconsideredtaboo not Russ therebyreinforcesthe for its homosexualitybut its intergenerationality.3 extra-textual connection between her fictional project and a 1970s lesbian feminism that favored separatism(see Shugar 1995). Although Russ'sappeal to separatism might be criticizedon the groundsthat it fails to offera pragmatic for feminist citizenship, it does lend insight into feminist political program theory by underscoringthe need to separatesexual orientation, gender, and reproductionin analysesof citizenship.Thus, while Diane GriffinCrowderis correct in her critiqueof the separatisttendencies of much utopian fiction on the groundsthat "ourauthorschoose to eliminate men in fantasticways that do not satisfyour need for a concrete blueprintfor action" (Crowder 1993, 243), we should readRuss'sown eradicationof men as metaphorical,standing institutionsmore generally. in for an ideologicalrazingof patriarchal While the genetic exterminationof men pushesRuss'ssatire to the bounds of believability,she does offer a more realistic, though still fantastical,social programthrough a descriptionof a war between the sexes on Jael'sworld. In contrast to both Jeannine's insistence on heterosexual romance and Janet's idyllic separatismon Whileaway,Jael'ssexual aggressionand control repre-

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sents Russ'srethinking of traditionalgender roles. ThroughJael, Russ argues that angermayfunction strategicallyto providean "antidoteto every cultural situation that women experience: silence, voicelessness, invisibility, loss of identity, passivity,rape" (DuPlessis 1985, 184). Because sex, as an act and a her trait, providesthe outlet for Jael'saggression, narrativeilluminatesRuss's For instance, in one of the only developed sex scenes in post-genderpolitics. the novel, Jael dominates-physically and emotionally-her cyborgcompanion Davy, boastingafterward had him. Davy was mine" (Russ 1975, 198). "I'd in writingbeyond the ending of heterosexualcoupling, Russ presentsa Thus, radicalvision of a sex-freesociety, challengingtraditionalnarrativestructures as well. Though her critics might condemn the novel as a "shapelessbook" with "no characterization, plot" (Russ 1975, 141), as Russ confides in a no self-conscious metafictional moment, The FemaleMan suggests that even without recourse to heterosexual union as a method of closure, narrative can be productive,if not reproductive.4 Situating the book as an overt political project, Russ presents an altern(arr)ative for women's lives and uses narrativeto effect social change. Sending her treatiseout into the world like an adolescenton Whileaway,Russsaysin a joyfulmoment of didacticism, "Live merrily, little daughter-book, even if I can't and we can't; recite yourselfto all who will listen.... Do not complain when at last you become quaint and old-fashioned ... Rejoice little book! For on that day, we will be free" (Russ 1975, 213-14). For those who will listen, The FemaleMan presents a radical critique of the sex-gender system and offers multiple possibilities for political change through its thorough subversion of narrative form and content. In contrast to Russ'scall for a sex war in The FemaleMan, Marge Piercy's Woman theEdgeof Timepresentsan alternativeparadigm on throughwhich to underminethe romancenarrativeand to redefinecitizenshipby interrogating the self-interest and competition at the heart of industrialcapitalism and technological advancement. Ironically, the escape for Piercy's povertystricken Chicana protagonist Connie Ramos arises in her entrapment in a mental institution in New York.Committed againsther will for her supposed violence (in the first chaptershe breaksthe nose of her niece Dolly'spimp in self-defense),Connie envisions Luciente, a visitor from Mattapoisett,Massachusetts who escorts her back to the year 2173 A.D. Like Russ'sfuturistic vision of Whileaway, Mattapoisett represents an idealized world that has the surpassed institutionalproblemsof late capitalism.Similarto Whileaway's elimination of sexualdifference,Mattapoisettabolishesthe sex-gendersystem, used for reproducreplacingheterosexualunion with mechanical "brooders" tion. In this way, Piercy interrogatesthe relation between reproductionand sexualitynecessarywithin the sexualcontract.Birth,ratherthan providingthe ideal end of heterosexualunion, serves the communal good; for this reason, that birthtakeplace only Mattapoisettcarefullycontrolspopulation,requiring

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following the death of a citizen. After gestation, the child is raisedby three a "mothers," term that includesboth male and female parents.Grantingmen the biologicalcapacityto breastfeed, Piercy's Mattapoisettfostersa completely method of childcare.Thus, unlike Russ,who does awaywith men egalitarian altogether,Piercydemonstratesthat patriarchyposes a social, not biological, problem, and she consequently breaks down the sex-gender system in its entirety.Parentingon Mattapoisettis a chosen profession,along with entering the armed forces or devoting one's life to science or art. Furthermore,by allowing men to mother,Piercymoves beyond the essentialismwhich underlies manyfeministconstructionsof citizenshipthat emphasizewoman'sspecial needs as reproducer.5 Insteadof drawingattention to the biological state of motherhood,Piercy wouldneed to careforhis or her child. This suggestswhat a citizen who mothers is evident in her descriptionof a Mattapoisettmother breastfeedinghis shift Not largeones. Smallbreasts,like a flat-chestedwoman child: "Hehad breasts. swollen with milk. Then with his red beard,his face of a sunburnt temporarily man, stem-visaged, long-nosed, thin-lipped, he began to forty-five-year-old nurse.... An expressionof serenesensualenjoymentspreadover Barbarossa's face" (Piercy 1976, 126). Seeing his bliss, Connie intellectual schoolmaster's remembersher own experience of nursing,hateful that he has "the peaceful joy to which he had no naturalright"(127; emphasis added). If they had "abandonedto men the last refuge of women" then what, Connie wants to know, "wasspecial about being a woman here?"(126). The answer Piercy's novel seems to provide is nothing, suggestinginstead how it is special to be human, to be a citizen and memberof a community.The insignificanceof the gendersex-gendersystem in Piercy'sutopia is also manifestin Mattapoisett's neutral language, which uses "per"in place of both "him" and "her."By breakingthe sexual contract, Mattapoisettthus opens up enormouspossibilities for social roles-for both men and women. As Luciente scolds Connie (who remainsstuck in the familynarrativeof the twentieth-century),"Birth! Birth! Birth! That's all you can dream about! . . . Romance, sex, birth, children-that's what you fasten on. Yet that isn't women'sbusinessanymore.It's (243). Luciente'sdidactic criticism shows that instead of being everybody's" the biological responsibilityof women, childcare is a choice offered to all citizens of Mattapoisett. In her feminist welfare state, Piercy holds up childrearingas a social good rather than a liability to encumber women's advancement. With the exception of sexuality and reproduction,however, Mattapoisett appears strikingly similar to Whileaway. Both novels provide analyses of industrialcapitalism and technology, including an emphasis on the nuclear family:as the familyprovidesthe foundationfor capital gain under the sexual contract, the socialist worldsof Mattapoisettand Whileaway hold open the In promiseof alternativefamily structuresfor its citizens' prosperity. place of

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nuclear families, Mattapoisettcitizens live in small kinship units with their chosen family members (called "mems").And as in Russ'stechnologically advancedsociety, Piercy'scivilization is ecologically minded and critical of all includingwaste, pollution, and disproblemsresultingfrom industrialization, ease. In Mattapoisett, everything can be either reused or recycled, from to biodegradable evening wear called "flimsies" diapersmade fromcornhusks and cobs which can be turned into compost. This emphasis on a citizen's environmentprovidesa crucialsupplementto feminist responsibilityto "per" work on citizenship by working against self-interest and by reinscribingan emphasison the public good. By juxtaposingher descriptionof the "environU.S. mentally correct"vision of Mattapoisettwith a critiqueof contemporary culture, Piercy uses her futuristic citizens to provide a programfor social change, examining the relationships between individuals, institutions of power, and environmental well-being. DescribingConnie's world, for examstates, "technology is imbalanced. Too few have too much ple, Barbarossa power"(Piercy 1976, 189) and thereby points out the inevitable connection and home of between industrialization hierarchiesof social power.Barbarossa's Mattapoisett,on the other hand, retainsa skepticalview of most technology, particularlyany that attempts to control human life, a view reinforcedby comparisonwith Connie's own situation. Confined in a New Yorkhospital, she is subjectedto scientific experimentsthat seek to modifybehaviorthrough electrodes planted in her brain. Despite her obvious trouble with capitalist institutions,however,Connie refusesto accept her futuristicfriends'explanation that the scientific communityis corrupted financialgreed.As one mem by tells her in frustration,"ButConnie, in yourday only huge corporationsand the Pentagon had enough money to pay for big science. Don't you think that had an effect on what people worked on? Sweet petunias! And what we do comes down on everybody.We use up a confounded lot of resources.Scarce materials.Energy. have to account.There'sonly one pool of airto breathe" We (Piercy 1976, 269). If Connie's powerlessnessseems to result fromher status as a single woman controlled by the whims of her elder-and wealthierbrother, she also demonstrates that the fruits of the Enlightenment-liberalism and technological advancement-cause many of the problems experiencedby its citizens. To furtherthis position, Piercyconnects her extended critique of technolto ogy and industrialization the class hierarchiesassociatedwith capitalism; she portrays Connie as a lower-classwoman on welfare,so poor she drinkshot water throughoutthe day to trick her stomach into believing it is full. While the myth of liberal citizenship is that one's rights are tied to one's social position and prospectsof capitalistgain, Mattapoisettshowsharmonywith the natural world to be a more productive social structure. Unlike what she describes to be "the age of waste and greed"in Connie's present, Luciente explains that Mattapoisettlimits luxuries:in their successfulwelfarestate, no

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one lacks necessities, although "there are things no one needs that people enjoy. We try to spread them around"(Piercy 1976, 240). Describing her community as "part of the web of nature," Luciente states "the gift is in growingto care, to connect, to cooperate.Everythingwe lear aims to make us strong in ourselves, connected to all living" (Piercy 1976, 269, 241). By shifting from capitalismto a utopian socialism, Mattapoisettappearsto have eliminatedmany of the problemsof liberalcitizenship.And becausethe sexual contract is linked at its root to capitalism, Piercy's alternative socialism advancesher feministprojectas well. Makingher utopiansociety workagainst the greed and self-interest associated with industrializationand capitalism, Piercydemonstratesthat social ills are a larger,systemicproblem-not simply the effect of male-biased institutions. She furthers this theory by linking Connie'ssecond-classstatuswith her race,class, and age, as well as her gender, an association made rather late in feminist philosophy.By providingsuch a large-scalecritique of American culture at the end of the twentieth-century, Womanon the Edgeof Timereveals that, in order to be successful,a feminist reconstruction of citizenship needs to consider the foundational union of institutionswith a capitalistmode of production;it needs to rewrite patriarchal its social narrative. In its resistance to the linear, teleological impulse of the heterosexual romance, Womanon the Edgeof Timesubvertsboth dominant understandings of citizenshipand narrative.Piercyemploysmetonymicor spatialconnections in place of linear narrative,using a memoryor image to send Connie into an alternative universe.6 Furthermore,by replacing the traditional narrative ending of death or marriagewith Connie's decision to murderthe psychiatrists controlling her, the novel avoids the patriarchal impetus of closure altogether. Because the reader learns of Connie's physical demise in the present through an omniscient narratorwho details her medical history, the reader is free to imagine her roaming in Mattapoisett forever-outside narrative, outside time.
UTOPIA:A POSTMODERN CITIZENSHIP THEORIZING FEMINIST

As idealized visions of the world, the alter(arr)atives of Marge Piercy's The Man lend insight into on Woman theEdgeof TimeandJoannaRuss's Female currentconversationsamongfeministpolitical theoristsaboutthe masculinist underpinningsof citizenship. Reading their utopian narrativeswithin and against several dominant strainsof feminist thinking on the problemof the citizen reveals the necessity of recourseto a postmodernepistemologyfor the successof this political project (see Yeatman1994). As demonstratedin Russ's and Piercy'snovels, such a postmoder position entails several interrelated aims: problematizing essentialist-materalist assumptions;breaking down hierarchiescontained in all culturaldiscourses,not merelygender;undermin-

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ing capitalismand the logic of naturalrights;and theorizingcitizenshipon a global ecological level. Although postmoderncitizenshipshave been productively theorizedby Bryan Turnerand Bart van Steenbergen, among others, their discussionshave not yet been linked with existent feminist scholarship. of FollowingPiercyand Russ, the goal here is thereforeto unite the discourses of citizenship outside the postmodernismand feminism to forge a narrative of logic of the sexual contract.As feminist reconstructions the citizen demonstrate,however,this goal may be impossibleto attain. of Weighingthe desirability constructinga politics that recognizeswomen's of differencesfrom men, many feminist understandings citizenshipultimately remain trappedwithin the heterosexualnarrativeof family romance and its gendereddivision of labor.Thus, what appearsto be an impasseover the issue of sexual differencein feministwork-whether it factorsinto (or shouldfactor into) a theory of the citizen, and to what extent-is really a struggle to construct an alternativestoryof family and nation that recognizesthe particularity of the individual body. If the characterJoanna in The FemaleMan illustratesthe problem of merely adding women to a previouslypatriarchal notion of citizenship,askingher to "becomea man,"a largestrainof criticism advocateswhat KathleenJones describesas "maternalism." neither vision Yet moves outsidethe heteronormativeimpulseof the familyromance.Beginning with the assumptionlaid out by Carole Patemanthat the discourseof citizenship is already gendered, the maternalistsraise the concern that "women cannot be seen in public space as women citizens who act politically on their own ground" and thus seek to validate women's differences from men as legitimate in the public sphere (Jones 1990, 794).7 Insteadof makingwomen citizens within a male conceptualizationof citizenship (as the equalityfeminists advocate), these "difference" feminists,including Pateman,Jean Bethke SaraRuddick,and IrisYoung,worktowardachieving recognitionfor Elshtain, women's"special" in needs, particularly the areaof reproductiverights,asking that citizenship "be redefinedto accommodatewomen'sbodies in their concrete, historically changing forms"(Jones 1990, 794). Unlike Piercy,whose genderlessworld vision asks that certain life stages, such as motherhood or advancedage, be taken into considerationin conversationsabout citizenship, maternaliststend to rely on an essentialist logic which suggeststhat, socially and psychologically,women's participation in the public sphere necessarily takes a differentformfrom men's. FollowingCarol Gilligan'swork on the psychologicaldistinctions between women and men, the differencefeminists situate an "ethics of care"in opposition to the male "ethics of justice"and, accordingto Chantal Mouffe, thus "defenda set of values basedon the experience of women as women,"including the assumption that women are mothers who mother, acting as the biological and social agentsforfamilygrowthand care (Mouffe 1992,373-74). Despite the biological determinismof these models, their goal is commend-

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able. As Kathleen Jones explains, these projects disavow "the individualist, contractualmodel of citizenship"and replaceit with "the virtues rights-based, of commitmentto relationships,love, and caringfor others"(Jones1990, 810), virtues which work against the competition and conflict associated with naturalrights.In addition,these projectspresentnarrativesof communityand kin "as ideal bonds between citizens"(Jones 1990, 810), the same narratives the that emergein Russ'sand Piercy's fictions. Ratherthan interrogating logic that has retainedwomen'sdifferencesfrommen as a formof exclusion fromthe public sphereand fromdiscoursesof citizenship,however,these theoristsreify such differencesand, consequently,end up privilegingthe very characteristics cultures.As Jones herselfnotes, "ironically, assignedto women in patriarchal the feministcitizen model mayvalidate the idealizedimageof an all-nurturing, all loving woman even as it rejects the patriarchalsystem that created that image"(809). Patriarchal logic, it seems, still controls the storiestheoriststell about women and their position in culture. As we've seen, feminist utopias offer an alternative story, however. In contrastto the matemalists,JoannaRussavoids the equalityversusdifference argumentby insisting on separatismand even the extermination of men. A closer examination reveals, however, that a complete denial of sexual difference stuntsratherthan advancesher theoryof citizenship.Insteadof recognizing the importanceof embodimentin theories of citizenship,Russestablishes a situation in which everyone possessescivil rights because no pronounced cultural differences exist: in addition to a complete elimination of gender, Man, Whileaway appearsto avoid race and class stratification.In The Female. conflict centers on individuals, not discursive positions, and bodies have nothing to do with civil rightsand responsibilities.While Russ usefullyrepudiates the sexual contract by making the two primaryromantic relationships and (between Janetand Laura, betweenJael and Davy) fall outside the bounds of normative sexuality, she does not yet dramatizea world in which sexual difference can be pragmaticallyrethought. Moreover, although Russ recognizes the constructednatureof the individualthroughher fragmented protagher onist Janet-Jeannine-Joanna-Jael, model of citizenshipfails to account for on the inscriptionof social discourses the body;in other words,her constructed essence. Marge Piercy'sWomanon the Edgeof bodies have nothing but their Time,by contrast,offersa more pragmaticexaminationof gender and citizenship, not by avoiding the problemof embodiment but by breakingdown the sex-gender system that undergirdsthe classic model of the citizen and by and stressingthe imbricationof patriarchy capitalism.In abolishingthe family of liberalism,Piercymoves beyondthe equalityversus narrativeand the legacy difference debate and works toward a global-ecological model of feminist citizenship. Two significant features distinguish Piercy's Mattapoisett from Russ's Whileaway:a dismantlingof racial and class hierarchiesand an overt critique

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of capitalism and the assumptions of liberal democracy. In short, on Mattapoisett, men can breastfeed, everyone has access to necessities, and almost every child is bor raciallymixed. Coupled with Connie's problematic status as a lower-classChicana, these traitssuggestthat, for Piercy,a feminist of capitalismand utopiacalls into questionthe largersocial structure industrial the philosophicalproject of liberalism.In so doing, Piercy'sutopia realizesa valuable theory of citizenship, a theory grounded in a gendered and racemarkedbody. Chantal Mouffe'sexplication of a radical democratic politics thus providesa theoretical discourseto clarifyPiercy's project. Workingagainstthe matemalismof the differencefeminists,Mouffelaysout a postmodernist constructionof citizenshipthat suggestsa new narrativeabout civil life, one based on articulation a community developed of political and While genderremainsan importantconcern for Mouffe,she highlights agents. the structural connections between genderand other culturaldiscourses, such as class and race, elaboratingPiercy'sculturalpluralism.Ratherthan ignoring or erasinggenderdifference,Mouffeadvocatesan embodiedsubjectivitycomposed of various discursive positions which may be articulated in a given moment for a specific political purpose. Thus, the issue for Mouffe is not disavowalof sexual difference-as Russ desires-but a disavowalof the logic of citizenshipitself. I am not arguing in favor of a total disappearanceof sexual differenceas a pertinentdistinction;I am not sayingeither that equality between men and women requires gender-neutral social relations,and it is clear that, in many cases, to treatmen and women equallyimpliestreatingthem differently. thesis My is that, in the domain of politics, and as far as citizenship is concerned, sexual differenceshould not be a pertinent distinction. I am at one with Patemanin criticizingthe liberal, male conception of modern citizenship but I believe that what a project of radical and plural democracy needs is not a sexually differentiated model of citizenship in which the specific tasks of men and women would be valued equally, but a truly different conception of what it is to be a citizen and to act as a member of a democratic political community. (Mouffe 1992, 377) Mouffe'sdescription of her position highlights the theoretical distinctions between a model of citizenshipthat may be taken to be postmodernand the models, both of which rely on a modernistepistemology. equality-difference As a postmoder project,Mouffe's democraticpolitics construesthe subjectas an articulation "of an ensemble of subject positions, correspondingto the multiplicity of social relations in which it is inscribed"(Mouffe 1992, 376). Instead of an essentializedmateralism which suggeststhat women should

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fight for citizenshipas womenunifiedby their corporealdifference,and instead of a gender-neutralconcept of citizenship that ignores the significance of social embodiment,Mouffeelaboratesa social vision which favors"egalitarian relations, practices, and institutions"(Mouffe 1992, 380), asking what each citizen, as an individualin a raced,classed, and genderedbody,needs for her or his welfare.In so doing, Mouffe recognizesboth the inherently communal project of citizenship and the inevitable particularityof its manifestations, askingwhat it means to be a citizen in a multiculturalworld. As divulged in Piercy'snovel and Mouffe'snotion of articulation,a reconceptualizationof citizenship that merely insertswomen into the systemwithout questioning the very structureof that system is bound to fail. Because women's role in the narrativeof classical citizenship is fundamentallyconnected both to capitalism as a mode of production and to other cultural discourses such as raceand class,a feministcitizenshipmustconsiderthe entire In of liberaldemocracyundercapitalism.8 essence, the shift in mode of system demands a narrative that moves beyond (re)producproduction necessarily tion, that understandssexual difference outside the family romance. Given our own shift toward a global (or at least multi-national) economy, a postmodern revision of citizenship provides such an alternative. In addition to problematizingessentialism and introducing the concept of articulation, the discourses of postmodernism interrogate the foundation of modernity and thus the underlying assumptions of liberal democracy. As BryanTurnerargues, the very concept of citizenship exists as "an essential component of the Enlightenment and hence a necessary feature of the project of modernity" (Turner 1994, 155), intimating that a successful reconsideration of citizenship necessarily entails a postmodern epistemology that discredits the assumptions of modernism and the capitalist economy that supportsit. Thus, in addition to uniting citizens through political action, as opposed to corporeal differences (as in Mouffe's concept of articulation), the shift to a postmodern citizenship entails a radical heterogeneity. This shift thereby calls into question the hierarchies at the root of natural rights theory, recognizing differences "not only among women and ethnic and racial minorities, but among all citizens-on the basis of class, gender, ethnicity and race, stage in the life cycle, sexuality, ability, and more," a recognition which, according to Nira Yuval-Davis, deconstructs the very concept of citizenship (Yuval-Davis1991, 65). Bryan Turnerlikewise calls into question the possibility of citizenship in his essay "Postmoder Culture/Modem Citizens," suggestingthat the "celebrationof difference"associatedwith postmodernism"mayin the long term signify the eventual demise of the concept of citizenshipas relevantto a periodin history in which nation-state came to dominance" (Turner1994, 166). Considering Turner's caveat, it is significantthat the utopianworldsof Piercyand Russboth ask what it means to be a citizen in something other than a traditional

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nation-state-and the answerwill very possiblybe a concept altogetherdifferent from liberalcitizenship. If traditionalcitizenshipcorresponds with modernismand the advent of the a postmodern citizenship derives from global human rights nation-state, which, according to Turner, "are not tied to any specific nation-state framework" (Turner1994, 166), and which transcendmulti-nationalor transnational conceptions of citizenship as well.9 Bart van Steenbergen'sessay "Towards Global EcologicalCitizen"details a new model of citizenshipthat a well beyond industrialcapitalism, the nuclear family, and the nationgoes state, and that pushes the very notion of democraticpolitics to its limit (see also Falk 1994). As both Russ's Female The Man and Piercy's Woman theEdge on Timereveal, such an ecologically and globally oriented view of citizenship of combatsthe foundationalassumptions liberalhumanismand the philosophy of of naturalrights.Furthermore, linking their economic and environmentalby ist critiqueswith their critiquesof patriarchy, novelists show a global-ecothe logical vision to be instrumentalin constructionsof citizenship.10 Noting that "capitalism has definitely promoted certain aspects of citizenship," van Steenbergenpits the modernist"valuesystemsof the classiccitizen"againsta postmodernist dismantlingof the hierarchiesof naturalrightsand, in so doing, points out the necessity of interrogatingthe entire system that undergirds citizenship(van Steenbergen 1994, 148, 143). Thus, againstthe philosophyof natural rights, which privileges the property-owning, colonizing male as the only person deemed an "individual" free to rule his household, van Steenbergenpresentsan ecological paradigmthat recognizesthe necessity of restraining"humanactions and interventions"(van Steenbergen 1994, 143). In orderto detach the concept of the citizen fromthe largersystemicproblems of industrialcapitalismand the colonizingnation-state,van Steenbergencalls for a global ecological citizenship. Although van Steenbergen'sproject is not explicitly feminist, it productively deconstructsthe philosophyof naturalrights,a critical maneuverwithout which any feminist project would remain trappedin the patriarchallogic of the sexual contract. Basedon this deconstruction,he offersthree overlapping views of ecological citizenship.First,ecological citizenshipchallengesthe assumptionthat "only existing maturehuman beings can be citizens,"calling for increasedinclusion based primarilyon animal rights.Second, it demands not only "responsibility society but also for nature,"askingcitizens to take for for their actions in the naturalworld.Finally,it is alsofundamenresponsibility becauseecological well-beingrepresents worldwideconcern (van a tallyglobal, Steenbergen 1994, 143-44). As a group,these theoriesof ecological citizenship challenge the assumptionsthat citizenship is something only for white, middle-class men, problematizing"the primacy of society over nature" (van Steenbergen 1994, 146) and working to be globally inclusive. In so doing, ecological citizenship delegitimates the hierarchies implicit in citizenship's

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moderist, liberalconception-a conception which values men over women, slaves, and the "natural"-and calls into question the dominant position of humans in the world.l1To take up a Mouffianvocabulary,van Steenbergen's theories ask us to recognizethe articulationof humanswith nature,a recognition literalized in the fictional successes of Piercy'sMattapoisettand Russ's Whileaway. In its emphasison globalism,this vision of citizenshipradicallysubvertsthe concept of nation which undergirdseven many postmodem conceptualizations of citizenship,such as the neonational and postnationalversionsMiriam Feldblumoffers in her recent essay "Reconfiguring Citizenship in Europe." This antinationalisttendency is significantbecause,as van Steenbergennotes, merelyexpandingthe notion of the nation-state will not remove the concept environmentalawareof citizenshipfromthe hierarchicalnatureof capitalism; ness, however, seeks to provide one way of accomplishing this task. The view for a feminist revisionof citizenshipcan be necessityof a global ecological citizens seen most clearly in van Steenbergen'sassessmentof global capitalist who constitute "ade-nationalizedglobal elite that at the same time lacks any (van Steenbergen 1994, 149). Lookingto global civic sense of responsibility" Whileawayand Mattapoisettas examplesof a global ecological citizenship,it appearsthat, on a pragmaticlevel, what is necessaryto sustainsuch retheorizing is a firmly grounded understanding of a "per's"responsibility to the community as a whole. While my goal here is not to lay out a specific list of for dutiesrequired citizenship,I wouldsuggestthat, as in Mattapoisett, a sense of individual responsibility works to combat the self-centered tendency of capitalist citizenship, asking each citizen to do his or her part for the communal good. Rather than a reductive utopianism, this move recalls the interdependency at the root of civil society-a groupof embodied individuals joined together for a specific political goal. Severed from its economic ties, this shift entails an emphasis on the responsibility of citizens toward each other and toward "the earth as breeding ground" (van Steenbergen 1994, 151), asking for his/her/per active participation in the creation of a radical democratic politics on the global level-a politics more feminist than woman-friendly. As the utopian worlds of Marge Piercy and Joanna Russ reveal, a global furthersfeministvisions of citizenshipby moving beyond ecological awareness a requestfor woman-centeredtreatment, because such treatment invariably perpetuatesa family narrativethat strives to subordinatewomen. Instead,by underminingthe logic of natural rights and by offering a new narrativeof kinship and community,these utopias posit an alternativeepisteme through which to perceive the world and provide a directive for social change. Thus, while critical theory heretoforehas been the privilegedlocation from which on to advance a feminist model of citizenship,Woman theEdgeof Timeand The FemaleMan reveal that political change is ultimatelydependent upon telling

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the story of our lives differently,exposing many theoretical projects to be wishful thinking. If we are to reach Mattapoisett,it seems, we must consider individualism,citizenship,and social structurethroughnew narrativeeyes.

NOTES 1. The Oxford Dictionary English explainsthat the modemusageof the term derives froma Medieval Latinappropriation the Greek"theoria," of whose "theory" root "theor" means"to look at,""to view," "to contemplate." etymology or The of thus a "theory" emphasizesvisual metaphor. 2. Fora thorough discussion the characteristics feminist of of narratives, utopian see Friebert (1983); Sargent(1983); Russ (1981); Pearson(1981); and Gearhart (1994). 3. The terms"heteronormative" "heteronarrative" fromJudith and come Roof (1996). how women's 4. SusanLanser(1986) describes been writinghas traditionally if understood plotless it goesagainst masculinist as the norm. alsoRuss(1972). See 5. Kathleen or Jones(1990) offersa usefulsurveyof the workon essentialist matemalist of constructions citizenship. 6. AlthoughPiercy's of structures a topic that falls is interrogation narrative outside scopeof the present the her of timethrough analysis, subversion linear spatial connections interesting is of of that apropos theories narrative emphasize temporality. Scholes(1980).Fora thorough discussion timein Piercy's of See, forexample, work, see Kress (1981). 7. Fora helpful introduction the equality to versus difference in argument citizensee shipdebates, Jones(1990). 8. Forinstance, AnneMcClintock Cohen(1996)bothdescribe (1996)andPhilip the complicity gender racism nationalist of and in discourse. so doing,theyreveal In the necessityof lookingat the articulation genderto other cultural of discourses, race including andclass. 9. See Feldblum of and (n.d.)fora discussion neonational postnational concepts of citizenship, both of which, I wouldsuggest, fundamentally are in grounded the traditional nation-state. 10.Despite theirenvironmental and do awareness, Piercy Russ not seemto perpetuatethe problematic association between womenandnature manyearlier in feminist projects. 11.Although findvaluein dismantling hierarchy I the between nature culture and in the conceptof a globalecologicalcitizenship, van Steenbergen, do not like I advocate inclusion animals civilsociety citizens, the of in as because cannot they uphold the dutiesrequired an activecitizen-subject. he states, of As therearegood "although for as it whether suchan extension arguments the ideaof animals citizens, is doubtful wouldbe fruitful, in of as particularly the interpretation citizenship an office,with entitlements obligations" Steenbergen and (van 1994,151).

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