Abstract

This article offers a feminist engagement with and evaluation of Rainer Forst’s concept of transnational justice, especially as he articulates it in his most recent book, Normativity and Power: Analyzing Social Orders of Justification. While focusing on this book, the analysis I offer also builds on his earlier writings on a critical theory of transnational justice and the concept of the right to justification. Feminist theoretical resources, including current transnational feminist theory, provide a series of lenses that bring into focus the strengths and weaknesses of Forst’s approach. This is particularly true with regard to the issue of whether he offers a theory of transnational justice sensitive to the gendered dimensions of global injustice, as well as to the realities of a non-ideal world. At key moments in the paper, I draw on examples of transnational gender-based and sexual violence as representative of a specific and prolific form of gendered global injustice to illustrate my argument. The argument advances in two main steps. First, I consider ways in which Forst’s work is feminist in nature and explore how he might reinforce feminist theoretical efforts. I then identify limitations of Forst’s theory from a transnational feminist perspective, exploring how feminist philosophers might challenge aspects of his approach. In this vein, I offer reflections relating to two main concepts: the tensions between ideal and non-ideal theory within Forst’s work and the idea of adaptive preferences.