Practising a-tonal ethics : a feminist ethics of alterity

Abstract

In this dissertation, the focus is on the formation of the contemporary feminist ethical subject; specifically, in relation to the way that women's agency is played out through new forms of reflexivity in the context of pluralizing late modernity. I suggest that agency is best conceptualized as a series of adaptations and accommodations, where innovative sources of authority vie with traditional narratives for a claim on the moral sensibility of the individual. While the 'loss of foundations' has become a common trope in debates around culture, ethics and politics, I work out of different perspective, arguing that many individuals in contemporary democratic societies are aware of the freedom to identify with a diverse range of social norms and multiple jurisdictions, a position which I refer to as a-tonality. The problem may be regarded as foundational overload, and it is capable of producing the experience of cognitive dissonance, akin to the Foucauldian idea of epistemological rupture. In the practice of a-tonal ethics, feminist subjectivity is honed dialogically, as individuals negotiate the existing multiplicity of norms (political, cultural, parochial and international) and multiple jurisdictions (religious laws, civil law and international human rights instruments). My argument is that, central to a-tonal ethics, what is required is a modulated epistemology which acknowledges the historicity and contingency of its premises, and the revisionary nature of its norm-setting agenda. This is decidedly not a relativist position. In practising a-tonal ethics, the feminist subject, even if reticent about her capability to say the final word, need not be at all reticent about the contribution which her values can make within the overlapping social fields in which she operates.