ABSTRACT
One of the contributions of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is a robust theory of citizenship. It contains both a normative conception of citizenship that rests on the rational, regular practice of duties to self and others, and a trenchant critique of the prevailing social norms of her time that limit an education of rigor and substance to men. Her remedy is to demand that women be given an education to cultivate their reason which will effect a revolution in the manners of both men and women. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that Wollstonecraft’s conception of citizenship has continued relevance for two current debates in contemporary citizenship studies: noncitizenship and affective citizenship. First, the chapter draws Wollstonecraft’s account of women’s particular vulnerabilities in the eighteenth century into current debates that use the category of the noncitizen to theorise relations of belonging and exclusion. Second, it uses Wollstonecraft’s critique of feminine sensibility to consider her contribution to current work that considers the role of affects, emotions and feelings for citizenship. The chapter argues that Wollstonecraft not only anticipates these debates but also contributes to them.
