Table Of ContentLANGUAGE, DISCOURSE, SOCIETY
General Editors: Stephen Heath, Colin MacCabe and Denise Riley
Selected Titles
Stanley Aronowitz
THE CRISIS IN HISTORICAL MATERIALISM
SCIENCE AS POWER: Discourse and Ideology in Modern Society
John Barrell
THE BIRTH OF PANDORA AND THE DIVISION OF KNOWLEDGE
Norman Bryson
VISION AND PAINTING: The Logic of the Gaze
Teresa de Lauretis
ALICE DOESN'T: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema
TECHNOLOGIES OF GENDER: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction
FEMINIST STUDIES/CRITICAL STUDIES (editor)
Jane Gallop
FEMINISM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: The Daughter's Seduction
Peter Goodrich
LEGAL DISCOURSE: Studies in Linguistics, Rhetoric and Legal
Analysis
Piers Gray
MARGINAL MEN: Edward Thomas; Ivor Gurney; J. R. Ackerley
Paul Hirst
ON LAW AND IDEOLOGY
fan Hunter
CULTURE AND GOVERNMENT: The Emergence of Literary Education
fan Hunter, David Saunders and Dugald Williamson
ON PORNOGRAPHY: Literature, Sexuality and Obscenity Law
Colin MacCabe
JAMES JOYCE AND THE REVOLUTION OF THE WORD
THE TALKING CURE: Essays on Psychoanalysis and Language (editor)
Christian Metz
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND CINEMA: The Imaginary Signifier
Jean-Claude Milner
FOR THE LOVE OF LANGUAGE
Jeffrey Minson
GENEALOGIES OF MORALS: Nietzsche, Foucault, Donzelot and
tbe Eccentricity of Ethics
Angela Moorjani
THE AESTHETICS OF LOSS AND LESSNESS
Laura Mulvey
VISUAL AND OTHER PLEASURES
Douglas Oliver
POETRY AND NARRATIVE IN PERFORMANCE
Michel Pecheux
LANGUAGE SEMANTICS AND IDEOLOGY
Denise Riley
'AM I THAT NAME'?: Feminism and tbe Category of 'Women'
in History
POETS ON WRITING: Britain 1970-1991
Jacqueline Rose
THE CASE OF PETER PAN OR THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF
CHILDREN'S FICTION
Brian Rotman
SIGNIFYING NOTHING: The Semiotics of Zero
Michael Ryan
POLITICS AND CULTURE: Working Hypotheses for a Post
Revolutionary Society
Jean-Marie Vincent
translated by James Cohen
ABSTRACT LABOUR: A Critique
Cornel West
THE AMERICAN EVASION OF PHILOSOPHY
Questions of Conduct:
Sexual Harassment,
Citizenship, Government
Jeffrey Minson
Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities,
Griffith University, Queensland
150th YEAR
M
MACMILLAN
©Jeffrey Minson 1993
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1993 978-0-333-46597-4
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
Road, London W1P 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
First published 1993 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG2l 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-0-333-46598-1 ISBN 978-1-349-22882-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22882-9
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Copy-edited and typeset by Grahame & Grahame Editorial, Brighton
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements vi
PART I: INTRODUCING ETHICAL CULTURE I
I 'The White Elephant's Nightmare' 3
2 Kant, Rhetoric and Civility 16
PART II: TO GOVERN SEXUAL HARASSMENT 41
An Introduction to Part II: 'What Would He Know
About Sexual Harassment?' 43
3 Ungovernable Conduct? 46
4 Social Theory and Legal Argument 70
5 Second Principles of Social Justice 90
6 Managing Without a Politics of Subjectivity 123
PART III: SOCIALIST POLITICS, LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 155
7 The Architecture of Legitimate Inequality 157
8 The Participatory Imperative 190
9 The Associations of Socialism 220
Notes 236
Table of Cases 254
Bibliography 256
Index 273
Preface and
Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time in the making. Initially envisaged as a
collection of essays written during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the
new ground eventually covered by the book - notably the work on sexual
harassment - grew out of a commission from the editorial group of the
now defunct British feminist journal mlfto comment on Michel Foucault's
histories of sexual ethics (Minson, 1986 ).
I am especially grateful to Parveen Adams for kickstarting the project
and for stimulating my thinking on feminist matters generally. The essays
on sexual harassment are an attempt to carry on the m/ftradition; I do not
know how to thank it enough. Nor in this connection can I sufficiently
thank Sharmila Mercer, who, having done her best to discourage me
from straying onto this minefield, proved an endless source of technical
information, comment and criticism. Beverly Brown helped me to clarify
my views on Catharine MacKinnon's work. For advice and comment on
some of the legal aspects of the sexual harassment essays I am indebted to
Bill Lane; and for reminding me of the range of feminist argument which
I would need to take into account I would like to thank Chilla Bulbeck and
Gillian Swanson.
In turn, the expansion of the issues of progressive politics and liberal
government raised by the question of sexual harassment into the entire
block of essays that comprise Part II is due in no small part to exten
sive exchanges over the years with Mark Cousins, Paul Hirst, Barry
Hindess, Ian Hunter, Nikolas Rose, Colin Mercer, Wayne Hudson and
David Saunders. Hindess and Hunter have been particularly generous in
the matter of written comment and criticism whilst the application of
Saunders' formidable editing skills to one essay in particular has improved
it no end.
Thanks of a no less heartfelt order are also due to Karen Yarrow and
Lorraine Coutts for transforming the unsightly results of my archaic method
of composition into readable copy; to Louise Goebel for her assistance in
compiling the index; to Janice O'Brien's help with proof-reading; and
to the Division of Humanities, Griffith University for all their financial
support.
vi
Preface arui Acknowledgements vii
Several of these essays have been published elsewhere in modified
versions: 'Kant. Rhetoric and Civility' in Economy and Society (1989,
XVIII, 2), under the title 'Men and manners: Kantian humanism, rhetoric
and the history of ethics'; 'Social Theory and Legal Argument' appeared in
International Journal of the Sociology of Law (1991 b, XVII, 3); 'Second
Principles of Social Justice', in Law in Context (1992, forthcoming);
'Managing without a Politics of Subjectivity' under the title Bureau
cratic Culture arui the Management of Sexual Harassment (199la), in
the Occasional Papers series of the Institute for Cultural Policy Studies,
Griffith University; and, 'The Participatory Imperative' in Philosophy arui
Social Criticism (1992, forthcoming).
I am grateful to all of the above for permission to republish these
works.
Finally, I take this opportunity to express love and thanks for everything
to Emily Cox.
J. P.M.
Part I
Introducing Ethical Culture
1 'The White Elephant's
Nightmare'
Late in life, an ailing Henri Matisse, unable to use brush or pen, resorted
to 'drawing with scissors'. Cutting out shapes from sheets of paper painted
by an assistant, who then glued them onto paper under his direction,
Matisse composed a vivid series of images from the world of popular
entertainment, especially the circus. Together with some handwritten
testamentary statements on the painter's craft, these images - one of
which is entitled 'The White Elephant's Nightmare' - were published
in the form of a livre de peintre, entitled Jazz (Matisse, 1947).1 Over
and above the political, legal and social concerns registered in its title, this
is a book of ethics. To be more precise, it is about the conceptualisation
and improvement of ethical conduct. I would like if I may to invoke the
improvisatory skills and the serene confidence displayed in Jazz as a model
for the way of doing ethics which has evolved in the course of following
up the book's more specialised concerns.
Problems
What has sexual harassment got to do with citizenship? On the face of it,
two discrete sets of questions are posed. The first concerns the implications
of establishing sexual harassment as a distinct social problem in the field of
social policy. In particular, I examine s~me of the implications of represent
ing its ethical dimensions one way rather than another, in social theory, law,
personnel management policies, and personal confrontations. The second
set of questions have their origins in political theory. Here the focus is on
the place of the citizen status, liberal values and institutions, participatory
democracy and notions of community in attempts to rethink the ethical and
political bases of the socialist and advanced liberal-democratic traditions.
Let us say that one purpose of this book of essays is to suggest that sexual
harassment and citizenship have less to do with one another and more to
do with 'government' than is sometimes thought. To speak only a little less
enigmatically, its aim is to draw out the consequences of conceiving sexual
harassment and citizenship, both separately and together, as involving
questions of ethical conduct.
3
