Feminist Philosophy

Reading Butler Reading Beauvoir Reading Sade: On Ethics & Eros

by Lauren Guilmette

Translation of Angela Putino's" Discourse, Truth, Government"

by Elena Basile

FORGIVENESS or TRUTH: WHICH IS THE BEST REMEDY? by Carol P. Christ

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published in the Feminism and Religion project

What happened to you really was bad. This should not happen to any child. It should not have happened to you.
more What happened to you really was bad. This should not happen to any child. It should not have happened to you.

In our culture there is often a rush to forgiveness that precedes acknowledging the harm that has been done. When I was a child and my father yelled at me or withheld love, I was told by mother, “He really does love you. He just does not know how to show it.” She sometimes added, “Even though he will never say he is sorry, you should forgive your father, because he did not really mean what he said.”

Working for the Cure: Challenging Pink Ribbon Activism

by Maya Goldenberg

Published in Configuring Health Consumers: Health Work and the Imperative of Personal Responsibility. Eds. R. Harris, N. Wathen, S. Wyatt. Amsterdam: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010: 140-159.

Captured and branded in the highly recognizable image of the pink ribbon, the politics of breast cancer at the start... more Captured and branded in the highly recognizable image of the pink ribbon, the politics of breast cancer at the start of the 21st century is markedly hopeful (given the grim statistics) and surprisingly compliant with the medical establishment’s defined health goals and approaches to addressing the breast cancer epidemic.  In keeping with this volume’s theme of “Working to be Healthy”, this chapter examines and evaluates how the pink ribbon message has shaped and organized social response to breast cancer. The work in question is “healthwork”, a term found in the critical health literature denoting the active and purposeful work that people do to look after their health (Mykhalovskiy and McCoy, 2002). Healthwork analysis tends to focus on personal care practices—taking medicines, dealing with healthcare practitioners, informal care-giving, health information seeking, etc.—that are then subject to examination of how those individual actions invite extended relations of governance and ruling (Mykhalovskiy, McCoy and Bresalier, 2004).  In this examination of breast cancer campaigns, the same analytic concern with governance is taken, but the health-related work is extended beyond personal care and self-surveillance to also include the volunteer work done by many concerned citizens in their contributions of time, energy, and money to support campaigns for the cure.

In this chapter, I argue that while the appropriation of the language and themes of the early women’s health movement frames pink ribbon activism as a highly personal, emancipatory, and socially-responsible individual effort, this brand of breast cancer activism instead serves to fund a limited biomedical research agenda that is largely shielded from public scrutiny.  This agenda has been universalized through endearing “hero” narratives of personal struggle that inspire civic engagement by complicit consumers rather than critical activists. Pink ribbon activism problematically diverges from the women’s health movement’s demand for participation in setting the research agenda and determining treatment strategies. This neglect is troubling, given that breast cancer discourse is so fraught with contested knowledge claims regarding disease aetiology, prevention, and treatment. While the pink ribbon message offers hope and optimism, it does so by suppressing many counterclaims, disputes, and ambiguities surrounding the problem of breast cancer. Instead of soft “pink”, a more critical social response to breast cancer is needed in order to ensure women’s informed participation in addressing this serious challenge to women’s health.

Ethics and the non-human: the matterings of sentience in the meat industry

by Emma Roe

Published as chapter 14 in Taking-Place. Non-representational geographies and philosophies. Edited by Ben Anderson and Paul Harrison. Published in 2010 by Ashgate.

This chapter considers ethics and the non-human in the empirical context of animal production and meat processing. It... more This chapter considers ethics and the non-human in the empirical context of animal production and meat processing. It articulates an ethics of the nonhuman that works with a relational ontology between humans and nonhumans. It then goes on to develop work by Elizabeth Grosz and Karen Barad to discuss sentient materialities at work in the journey an animal body takes from farm to abattoir to becoming meat. This work concludes by arguing for the socio-historical contingencies of knowledge-making practices with sentient bodies in terms of the care now shown to the living animal's body. The modern meat industry 'reads' the feelings felt by the animal in the quality of its meat, after-death.

The practice of making and sustaining family life: a school of the virtues

by Kim Redgrave

Draft only, do not cite or circulate

In this paper I will develop the idea that the making and sustaining of family is an example of what Alasdair... more In this paper I will develop the idea that the making and sustaining of family is an example of what Alasdair MacIntyre calls a practice, which is any well-ordered and rational form of socially established cooperative human activity. MacIntyre includes the making and sustaining of family life in his list of practices in After Virtue but does not develop the point further. In his later work, Dependent Rational Animals MacIntyre argues that the end of family life is to initiate children into adult activities through various institutions outside of the family. Thus the family does not have its own specific internal good; rather the good of family life is realised through the pursuit of goods internal to the practices of the milieu of associations and institutions in which families participate. This paper will draw on MacIntyre’s theory whilst offering a critical response to his understanding of the internal goods of family life, suggesting that his argument ignores another important aspect of family life: the care of dependent adults.  Recognition of this is crucial to any theory of the family because it has a huge impact not only on family members but also on the wider society in which a family is located. This paper will therefore develop MacIntyre’s Aristotelian approach to identify the internal goods of family life and will examine whether the Western model of the institution of the family sustains or corrupts this end.

The Ethics of Care, Virtue Ethics and the Flourishing Family

by Kim Redgrave

Draft only, do not cite or circulate

Carol Gilligan’s psychological moral theory popularised the idea of a feminist ethics of care during the 1980s, around... more Carol Gilligan’s psychological moral theory popularised the idea of a feminist ethics of care during the 1980s, around the same time that a renewed interest in Aristotelian virtue ethics was sparked by Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue. Both care ethics and virtue ethics have been fiercely critical of contemporary liberal thinking, such as rights-based theory and the abstract universalism of Kantianism, and, in particular, the focus on the individual at the expense of relationships and community. Moreover, little attention has been paid to the family by mainstream liberal theory, with the exception of David Archard’s The Family: A Liberal Defence and to some extent John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. The key theoretical concern of this paper is how we can conceptualise a flourishing family life. This paper will argue that it is only by drawing on virtue ethics rather than contemporary liberal theory, as many care ethicists currently do, that we can properly give an account of flourishing family life. I will firstly discuss the importance of care ethics for discussion of the family. In doing so I will explore some of the tensions within care ethics on what is meant by care or care-giving and what the relevant values of care ethics are to thinking about the family. The paper will then go on to discuss how some virtue ethics can improve on the insights of care ethics to provide a philosophical account of the flourishing family.

Reassessing Feminist Care Ethics from the standpoint of Contemporary Aristotelian Virtue Ethics

by Kim Redgrave

draft only

Over the past couple of decades feminist care ethics has put forward a substantial critique of the liberal paradigm of... more Over the past couple of decades feminist care ethics has put forward a substantial critique of the liberal paradigm of the self-interested economic man. Care ethicists such as Eva Feder Kittay (2002) and Virginia Held (1995) have proposed that this paradigm be replaced with that of the relationship between mother and child which is essentially other-directed. In this paper I will identify the problems with the mother-child moral paradigm and suggest instead we look to Aristotle’s conception of philia or friendship for an alternative paradigm, of which the mother-child relationship is a particular example. If we look at the mother-child relationship in terms of character friendship, the best kind of philia, we lose the connotation that maternal care is based on irrational feelings of love. Care ethicists have drawn attention to the facts of dependency and the need for care in social relations, not just in the private sphere. However, they continue to debate how care fits with justice and which should take priority (Bubeck, 2002). Another related concern within this field is how we define care. Is it a labour, a feeling, a virtue or all of the above? I will argue that care should not be narrowly defined as labour, as it is by Bubeck, but more broadly conceived as a disposition or virtue which one employs when a particular other is in need. Finally I will argue, along with MacIntyre, that in order to respond to dependency we need a combination of the virtues of justice, generosity and the disposition of affectionate regard which we can only cultivate through practices and intimate social relations. According to MacIntyre’s Aristotelianism, it is through the pursuit of the good life, not an abstract sense of justice or care, that we train our desires and impulses to act for the good of others.

Christianity and the Rights of Women

by M. Christian Green

In John Witte, Jr., and Frank Alexander, eds., Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 302-319.

Christianity, like other religious traditions, has often had an ambivalent relationship to women’s rights. While some... more Christianity, like other religious traditions, has often had an ambivalent relationship to women’s rights. While some passages in the New Testament prescribe for women a posture of submission, subjection, silence, and subordination, others hold out the tantalizing prospect of equality. When it comes to the rights of women, Christianity is rife with dualities of subordination and liberation, equality and difference, sacrifice and virtue, creation and redemption. In this chapter, I provide a brief historical overview how Christian women, both comfortably ensconced and sometimes alienated from the tradition, have addressed, resisted, and reconciled these tensions. I relate these historical struggles to the ongoing evolution of women’s rights in the international human rights frameworks established in the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1981, the International Conference on Population and Development at Cairo in 1994, and the Fourth World Conference on Women at Beijing in 1995. From these historical and contemporary tensions between Christianity and the human rights of women, I distill some key tensions in the relationship between Christianity and women’s rights that continue to be present, even as Christian women around the world today are advocating both for women’s rights and wider frameworks of “third generation” human rights with the potential to benefit all humanity.

Call for Papers: Midwest Society for Women in Philosophy Fall 2012

by Summer Renault-Steele

Review of Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America by Ladelle McWhorter

by Anna Carastathis

Symposium, Journal of the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy / Société canadienne de philosophie continentale 16(1): 2012, 250-256.
Online publication January 29, 2012.

Unveiling to Know Avail: Revealing the Wariness of Womanhood

by Jacob Miller

The Invisibility of Privilege: A Critique of Intersectional Models of Identity

by Anna Carastathis

Published in Les Ateliers de l'Éthique 3(2), Autumn 2008.

Entre tourisme et engagement: autour de L'Amérique au jour le jour

by Yan Hamel

Dans KRISTEVA, Julia (dir.). (Re)découvrir l’œuvre de Simone de Beauvoir du Deuxième sexe à La cérémonie des adieux, Paris, Éditions Le bord de l’eau, 2008, p. 239-247.

Feminine Oppression and Empowerment in Historical and Contemporary Judeo-Christianity

by Joseph Langston

Class Paper

The argument is made that, while Judeo-Christianity was, by and large, historically oppressive of or for women, the... more The argument is made that, while Judeo-Christianity was, by and large, historically oppressive of or for women, the religion today serves more so as a vehicle and means to feminine empowerment, liberation, and self-determination, a fact not so much overlooked by modern feminists as it is one which is rather underappreciated.

More Feminists Thinking More: A review of Feminist Interpretations of Spinoza

by Ericka Tucker

What Hobbes and Locke Didn't Say about Women: Examining the implications of their philosophical discussions of equality

by Stacey Goguen

A version of this paper was presented on May 12, 2011 at Boston's WOGAP

Abstract:

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke presumably put a lot of thought into their lengthy works on... more Abstract:

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke presumably put a lot of thought into their lengthy works on political philosophy.  It is striking, then, that much of what they say about women and equality is not fully thought out or even always consistent. In this essay I will (I) introduce why it is somewhat peculiar that these two figures did not say more about women and equality in their respective works.

I will then in turn look at (II) Hobbes and (III) Locke in turn, examining what conceptual resources they had at their disposal and pointing out how they failed to fully use these resources to offer further arguments for the positions they presumably supported.  I conclude (IV) that seeing how these two figures mis-stepped in arguing for the equality they explicitly endorsed is important for the larger philosophical projects of examining how forms of social oppression and inequality are manifested in a culture.  Over the decades, studies of kyriarchy  and -isms (racism, sexism, classism, ableism, etc.) have brought to light that implicit bias and structures are as important--if not even more important in some facets--as conscious bigotry for supporting these social hierarchies.  It is important then, that as we assess a political philosopher s' stance towards social equality we look not only at what they explicitly claim to support, but what they end up supporting and arguing for in depth.

"There Are No True Knights": The Injustice of Chivalry

by Stacey Goguen

Game of Thrones and Philosophy: Logic Cuts Deeper Than Swords (2012) William Irwin (Series Editor), Henry Jacoby (Editor). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Stacey Goguen - Chapter 16 - "There Are No True Knights": The Injustice of Chivalry

Sansa interacts frequently with a bodyguard named the Hound, who hates knights and knighthood as much as Sansa loves... more Sansa interacts frequently with a bodyguard named the Hound, who hates knights and knighthood as much as Sansa loves them. He tells her, “There are no true knights, no more than there are gods. If you can’t protect yourself, die and get out of the way of those who can. Sharp steel and strong arms rule this world, don’t ever believe any different.” Sansa gives a standard teenage reply to this, shouting, “You’re awful!” The Hound merely retorts: “I’m honest. It’s the world that’s awful.” Unfortunately for Sansa, the world of A Song of Ice and Fire sides with the Hound.

The ethical Dilemma of lifestyle change: designing for sustainable schools and sustainable citizenship

by Andrea Wheeler

About being-two in an architectural perspective: interview with Luce Irigaray

by Andrea Wheeler