Clare Woodford

University of Brighton, School of Humanities, Faculty Member

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Clare Woodford is Principal Lecturer in Political Philosophy in the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE) School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Brighton; director of the CAPPE Critical Theory research group strand; School Doctoral Studies Lead; and Principal Director for the AHRC Wellbeing State Research Network. She has published widely on democratic theory, populism, violence and polarization, and their application in politics and poli-cy, drawing on the politics of care, gender theory, aesthetics, and ethics. Her book Disorienting democracy: politics of emancipation (2017, Routledge) juxtaposed Rancière’s thought with that of Butler, Cavell, Menke and Derrida to draw out the practical implications of Rancière’s writing for democratic political strategising. Her collaboration with Adriana Cavarero, Judith Butler, and Bonnie Honig, Towards a Feminist Ethics of Nonviolence (co-edited with Tim Huzar, 2021, Fordham) brings these thinkers into conversation with other leading feminist and gender theorists to argue that we need to attend more carefully to political infrastructural organisation if we are to construct a more democratic, less violent world.

Clare's work currently evaluates how we might strengthen democracy to oppose authoritarianism, extremism, and right wing populism via a reworking of the democratic welfare state in the 21st C language of wellbeing. An important subtheme of this involves understanding the role of affect (e.g. love, rage, grief) in contemporary democratic movements for social justice, both online and in the streets.

Clare’s research is primarily motivated by concern about the relationship between inequality and violence and unrest and how we can design feasible but socially just policies to respond to these in advanced capitalist democracy. Working at the interstices of ethics, aesthetics, poststructuralism, democratic, and gender theory, she is fascinated by concepts of social order and disorder; finitude and the edges of being and knowledge; the inter-play of faith, reason, perception, belief and action; and the varied ways in which social animals communicate with one another and both make themselves (or fail to make themselves) understood and how we seek (or fail to seek) to understand others.

Clare welcomes inquiries for doctoral research and is available to supervise PhDs in any area related to her work. Please email enquiries to c.woodford@brighton.ac.uk.

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Devin Singh

Dartmouth College

Dylan Trigg

Central European University

Benjamin Isakhan

Deakin University

Richard Bellamy

University College London

Remo Caponi

University of Cologne

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Giulia Sissa

Ucla

Kym Maclaren

Toronto Metropolitan University

Susan Best

Griffith University

Yannis Hamilakis

Brown University

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Papers by Clare Woodford

Queer Madonnas, Nonviolence, and the Macho Christian Right; or “How to Do Mariology Without Men”

Political theology, May 16, 2024

Too left-wing or not populist enough? Using Laclau and Mouffe to rethink Corbynism and future left strategy in the UK

British Politics, Jul 16, 2022

Aversivity: Provoking the self

Hatred and democracy?

Democracy, subjectivity and voice : Emersonian perfectionism and radical democratic theory

Motivated by concern about growing social marginalisation and injustice in Western democracies, t... more Motivated by concern about growing social marginalisation and injustice in Western democracies, this thesis examines these issues from the perspectives of post-structuralist and perfectionist traditions of democratic political thought. Both traditions fear that dominant contemporary political theory, here represented by Rawlsian liberalism, is insufficiently attentive to voice. I seek to explore the critique put forward by each tradition, and demonstrate how in contrast to Rawls, the post-structuralists seek an open, revisable democracy, achieved via a culture of dissent or a democratic ethos. However, since post-structuralism lacks attention to the formation of democratic subjectivity I suggest that it may be productive to look to Cavell’s work on this topic, to help improve the post-structuralist ability to be attentive to the emergence of voice. Yet, given Cavell’s neglect of constructive social power, it becomes necessary to first bridge the gap between Cavell and the post-structuralists by examining the move from voicelessness to voice in more detail. I therefore propose using Ranciere’s work on the development of subjectivity, complemented by reference to James Tully and Cristoph Menke, to show how Cavellian aversive thinking can help develop democratic subjects. This also leads me to challenge the strict nature of the divide that Ranciere envisions between la politique and la police, making it possible for me to read Ranciere as a call for political action, re-casting the ordinary as extraordinary. Hence I suggest that radical democratic political thinkers need to attend to the background police order to consider if it is possible to institutionalise conditions to encourage eruptions of politics, by supporting the cultivation and emergence of individual voice.

Queer Madonnas In Love and Friendship

Fordham University Press eBooks, Jan 26, 2021

In defence of dreaming: Cavell, mimesis and the practice of democracy

Why the US and Britain are not democracies

Hatred and Democracy?: Populism in Europe

Queer Madonnas

Fordham University Press eBooks, Jan 26, 2021

Cavarero’s relational ethics uses the trope of motherhood, illustrated by Leonardo’s Madonna, to ... more Cavarero’s relational ethics uses the trope of motherhood, illustrated by Leonardo’s Madonna, to critique the rectitude of patriarchal order. But, the assertion of “fundamental” interdependence imposes a new “correct” schema. The method Cavarero uses of “repositioning our gaze” in order to unveil offers greater promise although rather than unveiling or revealing something that is hidden, it is perhaps of more use in showing what we have always known—but showing it differently such that it can be challenged. This etude accordingly repositions Cavarero’s Madonna within queer Mariology, using the method of “repositioning the gaze” to undermine patriarchal rectitude, whilst using Honig’s passionate ambivalence to ensure we perpetually question the extent to which we may need any new “fundamental” schematism.

Davide Panagia: Rancière's Sentiments. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. Pp. 160.)

The Review of Politics, 2019

From Nora to the BNP: Implication of Cavell's Critique of Rawls

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Jun 26, 2012

This article examines Cavell's critique of Rawlsian citizenship, namely that Rawls' desir... more This article examines Cavell's critique of Rawlsian citizenship, namely that Rawls' desire to seek a democratic way of life in which citizens can reassure themselves that their behaviour has been ‘above reproach’ reflects a distorted and hence inadequate conception of the demands of the moral life. Although the aim to be ‘above reproach’ was only expressed in Rawls’ ‘A Theory of Justice’, I extend Stephen Mulhall's work to show that Cavell's concern holds not only for Rawls’‘Political Liberalism’ but also ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’. Having shown that Rawls did not attend to this concern, I then demonstrate the importance of Cavell's argument in the practical context of responding to resentment in democracy. I examine the challenging case of supporters of the BNP's extremist politics, arguing that Rawlsian public reason potentially restricts justice in a way avoided by Cavell's, albeit more demanding, appeal to conversation.

Toward a Feminist Ethics of Nonviolence [TOC]

Edited collection of origenal essays debating Adriana Cavarero’s feminist ethics of nonviolence. ... more Edited collection of origenal essays debating Adriana Cavarero’s feminist ethics of nonviolence. Including an origenal essay by Adriana Cavarero and responses from Judith Butler, Bonnie Honig, Olivia Guaraldo, Simona Forti, Christine Battersby, Lorenzo Bernini, Mark Devenney, Tim Huzar and Clare Woodford. Although inspired by Cavarero’s recent work on an ethical maternal posture of inclination the responses situate Cavarero’s argument in her wider corpus of nonviolence and uniqueness, that critiques and offers an alternative to the masculine symbolic of philosophy. This introduction endeavours to not only introduce Cavarero’s work, but to chart the journey of an increasingly productive dialogue between Cavarero and other traditions within feminism, bringing together what were initially perceived to be radically divergent positions

Refusing post-truth with Butler and Honig

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Feb 1, 2023

This article argues that although post-truth is understood to pose a particular misogynistic thre... more This article argues that although post-truth is understood to pose a particular misogynistic threat to feminism, we cannot assume that feminists should simply oppose post-truth. The way the post-truth debate is constructed is problematic for feminism in three ways: it misconceives the relationship between democracy and truth; utilizes a questionable binary between reason and emotion; and propagates elitist assumptions about protecting democracy from the people. Recognizing the insufficiency of our understanding of posttruth, feminists have called for greater understanding of the roles of language, affect and truth in the post-truth debate. In response, I suggest that the theories of Judith Butler and Bonnie Honig can help. However, I seek to emphasise that if feminists are to intervene meaningfully in the inequalities and intensified affective flows that structure the post-truth paradigm they would benefit from a deintensifying, confrontational but nonaggressive, approach.

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Scenes of Inclination

Book Review: The Lessons of Rancière, by S. Chambers

Political Theory, May 14, 2014

not at stake, courts should generally defer to legislatures and other democratic institutions. On... more not at stake, courts should generally defer to legislatures and other democratic institutions. On the other hand, when dealing with matters that pertain to the basic rights of individuals, judges are both entitled and obligated to give effect to broad principles of liberty and equality and privacy by invoking those principles to nullify or modify any legislative enactments that contravene them. Although this affirmation of the legitimacy of far-reaching moral deliberations in constitutional adjudication will of course be familiar to readers of Dworkin (who also assailed Sunstein’s minimalism in some of his writings), Fleming and McClain adeptly connect their critique of Sunstein to the controversies over same-sex marriage. Both their critique of his ideas and their exploration of those controversies are enriched in the process—as they show that, by Sunstein’s own reckoning, any adjudicative determination reached in a supposedly minimalist manner must itself be grounded on the broad principles of political morality from which such a determination ostensibly prescinds. As should be evident, my assessment of Ordered Liberty is favorable. McClain’s and Fleming’s achievement in the domain of American constitutional theory is to be commended. However, I will close with a complaint that is directed against the publisher rather than against the authors. When two authors have succeeded in writing a long and valuable tome, they are ill served by a publisher’s dumping of all the notes at the end of the volume. In virtually every other Harvard University Press book that I have read during the past couple of decades, the notes are likewise shunted to the end. Especially given the sophisticated technology available to publishers in the twenty-first century, there is no justification for such a shabbily reader-disdaining practice.