Though I had some problems with Nancy J. Hirschmann’s “Difference as an Occasion for Rights: A Feminist Rethinking of Rights, Liberalism, and Difference” (most notably, its being unnecessarily repetitive and convoluted), I appreciated one of its critique of liberalism as it is similar to (one of) my own critique(s) of capitalism.

Hirschmann suggests that liberalism’s “individualism and rights were constructed specifically for propertied white men and are sustainable only through the subservience of white women, landless workers, and people of color” (28). She reiterates this later, and adds that liberalism’s “key concepts such as property and equality... depended upon [white women’s and people of colour’s] subservience and classified them as forms of property” (31).

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