Abstract

In contemporary political rhetoric we observe a widespread appeal to responsibility. What “responsibilityµ does mean and what it does involve is much less clear, and it is the subject of a wide interdisciplinary debate. The paper aims at focusing on responsibility from the perspective of those who occupy a non-hegemonic position in society. Adopting a relational model of responsibility, critical feminist theory in particular has lent attention to the role that asymmetries of power, stereotypes, and structural injustice play in the social distribution of responsibility – as well as in the legitimation of the existing division of labour and duties in a community. If responsibility helps defining and delimiting the boundaries of the community, politicizing the way responsibility is conceived and distributed is an indispensable task for those who risk being socially crushed by its differential mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion.