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Laura Levitt,
"Shedding Liberalism, All Over Again"
(page 3 of 6)
As I explained then, liberalism offered "American Jews a new vision
of home, [it] opened up both a conceptual and a political terrain within
which Jews could participate in American culture."[7]
Given this depth
of feeling, my desire to look more closely at this promise demanded that
I explore some of the gaps in this almost sacred narrative. I did this
not simply to tear liberalism apart, but to find other resources—roads
not taken that could help me imagine other ways of figuring social
inclusion. I looked back at American history to draw connections
between liberalism and colonialism. This helped me in my efforts to use
postcolonial theory to challenge American liberalism: "Even as the
history of the American Revolution makes clear, this liberal
emancipatory project was never just a way of constructing political,
social, or cultural relationships in the West .... [L]iberalism and
colonialism are intertwined."[8]
We cannot look at one without the
other, especially in the American context.
To sum up, from the perspective of Jews in the United States, in that
first book I tried to reconsider the cultural legacy of liberalism for
Jews and for women, and for Jewish women in particular, as a way of
getting at these problems:
- I considered the relationship between liberalism and
colonialism, using Homi Bhabha's notion of the colonial subject as
almost but not quite European. I showed the similarities between this
dynamic at the heart of colonialism as a dynamic at work within Europe,,
as well as within the American liberal nation-state and its relationship
to various others living within its borders. I looked at women and Jews
as well as Jewish women.[9]
- I then explored the ways that liberal marriage was itself a part of
the negotiation for Jewish emancipation, which first occurred in France.
I discussed this by looking at the role of marriage in Napoleon's
questions to the Jewish Notables as he offered them citizenship. I
argued that fidelity was itself a crucial part of the bargain,
complicating the role of women in these negotiations, while also
clarifying that emancipation itself was contingent upon Jews giving up
various customs and social institutions, including traditional rules
about marriage, in order to show their loyalty to liberal nation-states.
I also clarified that this fidelity came with the promise of state
protection for Jews, including Jewish women, another unfulfilled
promise.
- I used the relationship between the sexual contract and the liberal
social contract to show how marriage is a sui generis contract.
As feminist political theorist Carole Pateman has argued, marriage
produces and reproduces an asymmetrical relationship of power that again
does not redress the absence of women within the original social
contract and, in fact, exacerbates the sexual asymmetry in even
normative heterosexuality through the institution of
marriage.[10]
- I then looked at how even liberal Jewish and Jewish feminist
theologies have understood the covenantal relationship between God and
the Jewish people as a kind of marital model. This model reproduces
precisely these asymmetrical power relationships, again making it
difficult to imagine Jewish women as empowered actors in both
metaphorical and material relationships. This was again a way of
unraveling the power dynamics that haunted my project.
- Finally, as I considered the normative heterosexual contract, in
each instance I also asked questions about its opposite, the case of
rape. I asked how promises of protection were linked to notions of
fidelity. At the same time, I also raised questions time and time again
about how vulnerable women remain in this system. I challenged the way
that sexual assault continues to be addressed in this nexus of
state-sanctioned heterosexual relations and false promises of
protection.
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