THE JOURNAL OF POLITICAL STUDIES
VOL. 1
DECEMBER 2013
REVIEWS
RECEPTIVE AUTONOMY: POLITICAL AND LEGAL DISCOURSE
WITHIN THE SELF
Katie Glanz*
*Katie Glanz is a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department at Johns Hopkins University. She is working on a PhD in Political Theory with a concentration in the Program for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Her current research focuses on feminist and queer forms of psychoanalytic theory, postcolonial psychoanalytic theory, and feminist notions of relationality and autonomy.
Notions of autonomy, differing widely with respect to the treatment of the social and the historical, circulate through philosophical and political thought. Both the political Right and Left have deployed specific notions of autonomy to provide philosophical credence to ethical, political, and moral projects. Originally a concept with connotations of self-rule, radical isolationism, and unlimited individual agency, autonomy is being re-discovered in non-liberal and radical streams of thought. Recent feminist scholarship on autonomy has sought to resuscitate it from its liberal associations by positing a distinct notion of relational autonomy.i While much feminist
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