"Inscrire la vulnérabilité au centre du pacte politique” : Towards a radical feminist reconceptualization of vulnerability through the critical juxtaposition of Judith Butler’s poststructuralist ethico-political theory and Martha Fineman’s legal philosoph

Sammanfattning: This Master Thesis focuses on the theoretical reconstruction of a positive feminist conceptualization of vulnerability via the thorough systematization and critical comparison of Martha Fineman’s socio-legal philosophy and Judith Butler’s poststructuralist ethico-political theory. In the introductory remarks, the reader becomes familiar with the turbulent receptions and numerous interdisciplinary re-artications of the term vulnerability within the realms of contemporary feminist theory. The second chapter mainly illustrates the core thematic axes of Fineman’s vulnerability approach. More specifically, the second chapter explores Fineman’s vulnerability perspective both in terms of an alternative ontological paradigm revolving around the recognition of our fundamentally vulnerable, shared, fragile and dependent universal condition, as well as in relation to its juridico-political normative implications apropos of the legitimate political organization of democratic societies and the just function of their central institutions. Furthermore, the third chapter systematizes the dual texture of the Butlerian radicalization of vulnerability in terms of both an existential condition of irreducible relationality, as well as in terms of a socio-politically contextualized and differentially allocated distribution of violence, deprivation, insecurity, injury and trauma to certain -gendered, racialized, sexualized and nationalized- social categories. To that end, the third chapter further elucidates the nuanced differentiations between the Butlerian conceptions of vulnerability, precariousness, precarity and dispossession, while further investigating Butler’s revolutionary constellation of vulnerability and resistance. Conclusively, this Master Thesis critically designates the similarities and divergences between the two above analysed feminist frameworks and supports that the twofold texture of the Butlerian vulnerability theory invests Butler’s ethico-political theory with more nuanced theoretical conceptions and more empowering political devices in comparison to Fineman’s universalistic postidentitarian vulnerability approach. In order to further enhance this core argument, I develop my own critical assessment of Fineman theory’s epistemological, political and conceptual limitations in regard of its self-declared ‘post-identitarian’ structure.