The various repertoires I have described must be understood as discourses that produce feminist whiteness— that is, a process of political subjectivation as white feminist— in each context. These discursive repertoires are not only words. They are in fact articulated with moral dispositions and layered with emotions. As Ruth Frankenberg and Gloria Wekker notice in their respective studies, whiteness is secured by a set of emotions, such as fear, anger, or in- difference. Similarly, feminist whiteness is not only a set of discourses: it also comes to exist through moral feminist dispositions and specific emotions. These emotions and moral dispositions are relational: they define simulta- neously the good feminist subject— and the bad ones. For example, anger toward or moral disapproval of Afro- feminists effectively polices the bound- aries of the “good” feminist subject, excludes some women from the feminist project, and secures the privileges attached to feminist whiteness.
I identify two types of moral dispositions associated with feminist white- ness. In the first one, the relationship between white feminists and nonwhite women is one of benevolent help and respect, but also ambivalence toward nonwhite women’s autonomy. Contrastingly, the second type of moral dispo- sition is marked by a severe criticism and harsh moral judgment from white feminists of the ability of, especially, nonwhite veiled women to embody the feminist subject and to be autonomous. While the repertoires of feminist whiteness differ between France and Quebec, the types of moral disposition displayed by white feminists do not differ depending on the historical and social context— Quebec or France— but rather depend on the status that is conferred to nonwhite women, and especially to veiled women; that is, either that of being an object of benevolent feminist attention, or that of being a pos- sible feminist subject.
This distinction between women as an object of feminist attention and as a potential feminist subject draws on Linda Zerilli’s contrast between feminism understood as a social question and feminism understood as a political question. Indeed, Zerilli follows Hannah Arendt’s idea that the political is too often assimilated to the social, that questions of freedom are too often transformed into social questions that should be solved by
Feminist Whiteness 105 politico- bureaucratic means, transforming citizens into passive recipients of state care and political life into an “instrumental, means- ends ac- tivity.”60 Applied to feminism, this tendency means that the movement’s
goal is reduced to “the social advancement of the group in whose name members . . . claim to speak.”61 It has meant, in the history of feminism, that
more often than not feminists have articulated their claims for freedom and participation in politics in the language of social utility.62 Zerilli underlines
that “the displacement of the political by the social is intrinsic to the his- tory of democratic politics” and a strategy used by many disenfranchised groups.63 Zerilli see this displacement as crippling feminist arguments
for freedom and crippling democratic politics in general. She opposes to this feminism confined to the social question a conception of feminism as a political relationship, a form of “political freedom in the sense of world- building . . . [that] must involve, from the start, relations with a plurality of other people in a public space created by action.”64 This conception of
feminism as a form of political freedom is deeply indebted to Hannah Arendt’s reflections on freedom in democratic politics.65 Applied to femi-
nism, it draws attention not so much to the collective subject of feminism as predetermined by a shared sociological identity, “women,” but, on the con- trary, to the collective subject as a political construction, the product of a world- building activity by which feminists enter into relation; but not any type of relation, for these relations must be, Zerilli insists, free relations.
I take up Zerilli’s distinction between feminism as a social question and feminism as a political practice of freedom because it captures the fact that both the individual and the collective subjects of feminism can be conceived in opposite ways. When feminism becomes a social question, all women can presumably be enrolled, as beneficiaries, in the project of the social advance- ment of this category (whether the category is conceived in sociological, bi- ological, or political terms in fact does not matter). Feminism then does not need to reflect on relationships between women. Rather, it is preoccupied with women as an object of care and political attention. Contrastingly, Zerilli’s in- sistence that feminism should be understood as a political practice opens up another conception of feminism. Zerilli promotes an understanding of femi- nism as a practice of freedom, which means that, for her, feminism’s political project is about creating free relations between women. While I do not want here to elaborate on how Zerilli, following Arendt, defines free relations and their relationship to democratic politics— which is her main concern— I do want to retain the idea that in this political conception of the feminist subject
what is at stake is not “women” as a social category to be advanced, but rather the creation of a collective subject: the feminists.
Hence, feminists themselves, rather than women, are the subject of this political claim, which implies the reciprocal recognition of other women as part of the collective feminist subject. These two conceptions of feminism are not mutually exclusive. Feminists may alternatively refer to one or the other depending on the type of political claim they want to make in the public space, the outcome they are looking for, the practical action they are engaged in, and, importantly, whom they are taking and recognizing as legit- imate interlocutors. Indeed, as I will show, what matters is who is considered a legitimate interlocutor in defining what is feminism and who can embody this political project. I argue that these two different conceptions of femi- nism elicit two types of moral dispositions that white feminists in France and Quebec display vis- à- vis racialized women. Hence, feminist whiteness is ar- ticulated in different ways when the political subjectivation as white feminist occurs through an interaction with racialized women who are the object of a feminist intervention, and when they are considered as possible feminist
subjects and interlocutors.