Dialogue, Liminality, and a Spatial Ethic of Reciprocity in Difference

Abstract

Abstract This chapter demonstrates the cross-fertilization of feminist and pragmatist philosophies in Jane Addams by focusing on her social ethics and her work in the social settlement movement. The contours of a unique conceptual framework for dialogue in Addams is drawn up, which is called “dialogic reciprocity.” An associated concept, namely “liminal spatiality,” is also proposed as an integral aspect of Addamsian social ethics. Dialogic reciprocity emphasizes a certain responsive interplay between people across difference and calls for a framing of moral agency as interactive rather than individualistic. Liminal spatiality highlights the importance of blurred or in-between spaces within the framework of dialogic ethics. While dialogic reciprocity is proposed as a way of conceptualizing moral agency in our relationship to the Other, the concept of liminal spatiality contributes to the formulation of a spatial ethics across difference. The chapter not only enables the reader to develop a somewhat unifying framework for reading the feminist pragmatism of Jane Addams, but also develops readings of Addams’s social ethics in relation to work on liminality in Latin American feminist philosophy, on the one hand, and philosophical work on care ethics, space, and agency in feminist philosophy from India, on the other. Such engagements ultimately allow us to generate a non-white-stream reading of the feminist pragmatism of Jane Addams.