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Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia FreeApproaches to FeminismFirst published Sun Oct 31, 2004Feminist philosophy emerged in the US in the 1970s following only adecade behind the rise of the US women's movement in the 1960s.AlthoughSimone de Beauvoir published her now highly influential The SecondSex in 1953, it would take at least a decade for women in the USto begin to organize around the injustices Beauvoir identified, andeven longer for feminist philosophers in the US to turn to her work forinspiration.Although I will focus in this introductory essay on the emergence ofcontemporary US feminist philosophies, it is important to stress thatthis is only one chapter in a larger history of feminist philosophy.Feminist philosophies have histories that date back historically atleast to the early modern period, and have different genealogies indifferent geographical regions. Both the history of and particularcharacter of feminist philosophy in other countries and in other timeperiods varies in important and interesting ways. It is crucial,therefore, to understand this essay only as an introduction tocontemporary feminist philosophies in the U.S.Understanding the emergence of feminist philosophy in the U.S.requires an overview of at least two contexts — the politicalcontext of what came to be called the “second wave of the woman'smovement” and the nature of philosophy in U.S. academies.1. The Political Context: The Rise of the U.S. Feminist Movement2. The Rise of Feminist Philosophical Scholarship in the U.S.3. The Inheritance from Philosophy4. Approaches to Feminist Philosophy: Overview of the Encyclopedia Sub-EntriesBibliographyOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries1. The Political Context: The Rise of the U.S. Feminist MovementThe 1950s are a complex decade in the U.S. The country is at theheight of the McCarthy era, yet it is the same decade that witnessesthe rise of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1953 Barrows Dunham, chair ofthe philosophy department at Temple University is subpoenaed by theHouse Committee on Un-American Activities. Although he is tried andacquitted for refusing to provide more than his name, address, and age,Temple University fires him.A number of philosophers are called upon totestify before the HUAC and others are fired from positions because oftheir membership in the Communist Party. In 1955 Rosa Parks is arrestedfor keeping her seat in the front of a bus in Montgomery Alabama justone year after the Supreme Court in Brown vs. the Board ofEducation bans segregation in public schools. In 1957 MartinLuther King is named president of the newly formed Southern ChristianLeadership Conference and begins his campaign to end racediscrimination.It is important to remember that 1950 is only five years into acampaign to encourage women to return to home and hearth, leaving thejobs they had taken on as part of the war effort.[1] As one telling example,consider Adlai Stevenson's 1955 address to the Smith College graduatingclass urging these educated women not to define themselves by aprofession but to participate in politics through the role of wife andmother. While McCarthyism rooted out political subversion, science andthe media worked to instill proper gender roles. A 1956 Lifemagazine published interviews with five male psychiatrists who arguedthat female ambition was the root of mental illness in wives, emotionalupsets in husbands, and homosexuality in boys.But the increasing involvement of women in freedom marches and,somewhat later, the protests of the Vietnam War give rise to a buddingawareness of gender injustices. Looking back in the 1975 edition to herlandmark study of the U.S. Women's Movement in 1959, Eleanor Flexnerexplains:First in the South and eventually everywhere in thiscountry, women were involved in these struggles. Some white womenlearned the degree to which black women were worse off than they were,or than black men. White and black women learned what the minority ofwomen active in the organized labor movement had learned much earlier:that women were typically excluded from policy-making leadership rolesof even the most radical movement, a lesson that would have to berelearned again and again in the political and peace campaigns of thelate sixties (1975, xxix).The National Organization for Women forms in 1966, petitioning tostop sex segregation of want ads and one year later to requestfederally funded childcare centers. By 1968 NOW begins to focus onlegalizing abortion. In 1967 Eugene McCarthy introduces the EqualRights Amendment in the Senate. In 1968 feminists in New York protestthe Miss America pageant and crown a live sheep as Miss America and setup a ‘freedom trashcan’ in which to dispose of oppressivesymbols, including bras, girdles, wigs, and false eyelashes. (Althoughthere was no fire, it was this symbolic protest that the mediatransformed into the infamous ‘bra burning’ incident.) TheStonewall riot in 1969 marks the beginning of the gay and lesbianrights movement. In 1970 the San Francisco Women's Liberation Frontinvades a CBS stockholders meeting to demand changes in how the networkportrays women, and a model affirmative action plan is published by NOWand submitted to the Labor Department. In this same year three keytexts of the U.S. feminist movement are published: ShulamithFirestone's The Dialectic of Sex; Kate Millett's SexualPolitics; and Robin Morgan's Sisterhood is Powerful. In1970 a press conference headed by women's movement leaders GloriaSteinem, Ti-Grace Atkinson, Flo Kennedy, Sally Kempton, SusanBrownmiller, Ivy Bottini, and Dolores Alexander expressed solidaritywith the struggles of gays and lesbians to attain liberation in asexist society. However, in 1971, at a Women's National Abortionconference, while adopting demands for repeal of all abortion laws, forno restrictions on contraceptives, and taking a stance against forcedsterilization, the group votes down a demand for freedom of sexualexpression, causing many in the audience to walk out in protest andseeding the development of a separatist movement within the feministmovement (See What is Feminism?).It is out of this powerful social and political cauldron thatfeminist philosophy emerges in the U.S. While few would now dispute theclaim that the development of ideas and theories in the sciences, aswell as the social science and humanities, reflect and are influencedby their social, historical, and intellectual contexts, philosophers inthe U.S. have, until recently, paid scant attention to the socialcontexts of twentieth century U.S. philosophy, particularly with howcultural and political factors have influenced the movements ofphilosophy within the academy (McCumber 2001). The emergence offeminist philosophy in the U.S. presents an excellent illustration ofthe close intersection between the development of philosophicalpositions and methods, and their social contexts.2. The Rise of Feminist Philosophical Scholarship in the U.S.Many of the early writings of U.S. feminist philosophers arose fromattempts to grapple with issues that emerged from the women's movement:the identification of the nature of sexism and the underlying causes ofthe oppression of women, questions of how to best obtain emancipationfor women — e.g., equal rights within the current political andsocial structure vs. revolutionary changes of that structure, the issueof ‘woman's nature,’ philosophical analyses of the moralityof abortion, and so on. In this first decade of writing, feministphilosophers in the U.S. also turned their attention to the past toinvestigate how canonical philosophers dealt with the question ofwomen, both to determine if their views might provide resources foraddressing contemporary issues or whether the sexism of their theoriescontinued to pervade contemporary philosophical and, perhaps, evensocial and political practices.A snapshot, albeit a limited image, of the emergence of feministphilosophical scholarship in the U.S. and beyond can be obtained bylooking at numbers of journal articles catalogued in ThePhilosophers Index.[2] The Philosopher's Index lists onlythree articles under the keyword ‘feminism’ until 1973 whenthe number leaps to eleven thanks in large part to a special issue ofThe Philosophical Forum edited by Carol Gould and MarxWartofsky that became the basis for an important first anthology onfeminist philosophy, Women and Philosophy: Toward a Theory ofLiberation. From 1974 to 1980 these numbers increased to 109entries for this seven year period, with the decade between 1981 to1990 witnessing an explosion of work in the area of feminist philosophywith 718 entries listed in the Philosopher's Index.In thefollowing 12 years 2,058 more articles are added to the Indexunder this heading.Clearly there are a number of reasons for the startling expansion offeminist philosophical work in the U.S. Although I cannot trace all ofthem, I would like to identify a few that are particularly significant.First is the fact that many philosophers in the U.S. were involved inthe social justice movements of the 60s. Most of the philosophers whocontributed to the emergence of feminist philosophy in the 70s in theU.S. were active in or influenced by the women's movement. As a resultof this participation, these philosophers were attentive to andconcerned about the injustices caused by unfair practices emerging fromthe complex phenomena of sexism. Since their professional skillsincluded the realm of philosophical scholarship and teaching, it comesas no surprise that they would turn the tools they knew best tofeminist ends. Second, by the 1970s many women in traditionally maleprofessions often experienced what Dorothy Smith called a‘fault-line’ in which the expectations of theconventionally ‘proper role of women’ and their ownprofessional experiences were in tension. As women moved through theprofession of philosophy in the U.S. in increasing numbers, they oftenfound themselves personally confronted by the sexism of the profession.Sexual harassment and other sexist practices contributed to creating achilly climate for women in philosophy. But thanks to the consciousnessraising of their involvement in the women's movement, these women wereless likely to internalize the message that women were, by nature, lesscapable of philosophical work or to give in to the sometimesunconscious efforts to exclude them from the profession.In response to the sexism of the profession, U.S. feministphilosophers organized the Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP) in 1972.[3] The emergence of SWIP is a third componentin the swift rise in contemporary feminist philosophical scholarship inthe U.S. SWIP was founded to promote and support women in philosophy.This goal took two forms: 1) working to overcome sexist practices inthe profession and 2) supporting feminist philosophical scholarship.While the efforts of SWIP to overcome sexism in the professioncertainly contributed to the inclusion and retention of more women inphilosophy, it was in the latter goal that SWIP made a significantimpact on scholarship. SWIP divisions were formed in a fashion parallelto the American Philosophical Association, with three divisions —Pacific SWIP, Midwest SWIP, and Eastern SWIP (plus a Canadian SWIP)— each of which held yearly or bi-yearly meetings that focused onfeminist philosophical scholarship. In addition, the InternationalAssociation of Feminist Philosophers (IAPh) was founded in 1974 inorder to support international exchange of feminist philosophies.After a decade of meetings, U.S. SWIP members decided to launch anacademic journal, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy.Hypatia was set up “to provide a forum for dialogue onthe philosophical issues raised by the women's liberationmovement” and published feminist philosophical work committed“to understanding and ending the sexist oppression of women, anda sense of the relevance of philosophy to the task.”[4] WhileHypatia was certainly not the only forum in which feministphilosophy was published, it contributed to the creation of a sustaineddialogue amongst feminist philosophers in the U.S. and beyond, and aforum for developing feminist philosophical methods and approaches.3. The Inheritance from PhilosophyThose who drafted the first wave of contemporary feministphilosophical scholarship in the U.S. were influenced by another veryimportant context, their philosophical training. Until very recentlyone could not go to graduate school to study ‘feministphilosophy.’ While students and scholars could turn to thewritings of Simone de Beauvoir or look back historically to thewritings of ‘first wave’ feminists like MaryWollstonecraft, most of the philosophers writing in the first decadesof the emergence of feminist philosophical scholarship both in the U.S.and in other countries brought their particular training and expertiseto bear on the development of this area of scholarship.Although many of the writings of the first decade of feministphilosophical scholarship in the U.S. were devoted to analyzing issuesraised by the women's liberation movement, such as abortion,affirmative action, equal opportunity, the institutions of marriage,sexuality, and love, feminist philosophical scholarship increasinglyfocused on the very same types of issues philosophers had been and weredealing with. And since these feminist philosophers employed thephilosophical tools they both knew best and found the most promising,U.S. feminist philosophy began to emerge from all the traditions ofphilosophy prevalent within the U.S. at the end of the twentiethcentury including analytic, Continental, and classical Americanphilosophy. It should come as no surprise, then that the thematic focusof their work was often influenced by the topics and questionshighlighted by these traditions.Feminist philosophical scholarship in the U.S. begins with attentionto women, to their roles and locations. What are women doing? Whatsocial/political locations are they part of or excluded from? How dotheir activities compare to those of men? Are the activities orexclusions of some groups of women different from those of other groupsand why? What do the various roles and locations of women allow orpreclude? How have their roles been valued or devalued? How do thecomplexities of a woman's situatedness, including her class, race,ability, and sexuality impact her locations? To this we add attentionto the experiences and concerns of women. Have any of women'sexperiences or problems been ignored or undervalued? How mightattention to these transform our current methods or values?And fromhere we move to the realm of the symbolic. How is the feminineinstantiated and constructed within the texts of philosophy? What roledoes the feminine play in forming, either through its absence or itspresence, the central concepts of philosophy? And so on.The ‘difference’ of feminist philosophical scholarshipas it has developed in the U.S. proceeds not from a unique method butfrom the premise that gender is an important lens for analysis.Feminist philosophers in the U.S. and beyond have shown that takinggender seriously provides new insights in all the areas ofphilosophical scholarship: history of philosophy, epistemology, ethics,philosophy of science, aesthetics, social and political philosophy,metaphysics, etc.4. Approaches to Feminist Philosophy: Overview of the Encyclopedia Sub-EntriesFeminist philosophical scholarship is not homogeneous either inmethods or in conclusions. Indeed, there has been significant debatewithin feminist philosophical circles concerning the effectiveness ofparticular methods within philosophy for feminist goals. Some, forexample, have found the methods of analytic philosophy to provideclarity of both form and argumentation not found in some schools ofContinental philosophy, while others have argued that such allegedclarity comes at the expense of rhetorical styles and methodologicalapproaches that provide insights into affective, psychic, or embodiedcomponents of human experience. Other feminists find approaches withinAmerican pragmatism to provide the clarity of form and argumentationsometimes missing in Continental approaches and the connection to realworld concerns sometimes missing in analytic approaches.While feminists have clearly embraced approaches from varioustraditions within philosophy, they have also argued for thereconfiguration of accepted structures and problematics of philosophy.For example, feminists have not only rejected the privileging ofepistemological concerns over ethical concerns common to much of U.S.philosophy, they have argued that these two areas of concern areinextricably intertwined. This has often led to feminists using methodsand approaches from more than one philosophical tradition.The essays in this section provide overviews of the dominantapproaches to feminist philosophy in the U.S. It is important to notethat U.S. feminist philosophy has been influenced by feministphilosophical work in other countries. For example, analytic feminismin the U.S. has benefited from the work of feminist philosophers in theUnited Kingdom and Canada; U.S. Continental feminist scholarship hasbeen richly influenced by the work of feminist philosophers in Europeand Australia. But it is also important to note that, with only a fewexceptions, the work of feminist philosophers in Asia, South America,Africa, and Russia have not been the focus of attention of most U.S.feminist philosophers.The following are links to essays in this section:Analytic FeminismContinental FeminismPragmatist FeminismFeminist Approaches to the Intersection of Pragmatism and Continental PhilosophyFeminist Approaches to the Intersection of Analytic and Continental PhilosophyBibliographyAtherton, Margaret, ed. 1994. Women Philosophers of the EarlyModern Period. Indianapolis: Hackett.Bell, Linda. 2003. Beyond the Margins: Reflections of aFeminist Philosopher. New York: SUNY Press.Bordo, Susan ed. 1999. Feminist Interpretations of RenéDescartes. University Park: Penn State Press.Code, Lorraine ed. 2002. Feminist Interpretations of HansGadamer. University Park: Penn State Press.-----. 1991.What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and theConstruction of Knowledge. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Deutscher, Penelope. 1997.Yielding Gender: Feminism,Deconstruction, and the History of Philosophy. London:Routledge.Dykeman, Therese Boos, ed. 1999. The Neglected Canon: NineWomen Philosophers First to the Twentieth Century.Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Falco, Maria J. ed. 1996. Feminist Interpretations of MaryWollstonecraft. University Park: Penn State Press.Firestone, Shulamith. 1970 The Dialectic of Sex: The Case forFeminist Revolution. New York: Bantam Books.Flexner, Eleanor. 1975. A Century of Struggle: The Woman'sRights Movement in the United States. Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press.Freeland, Cynthia ed. 1998. Feminist Interpretations ofAristotle. University Park: Penn State Press.Fricker, Miranda and Jennifer Hornsby. 2000. Feminism inPhilosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Frye, Marilyn. 1983. The Politics of Reality: Essays inFeminist Theory. Trumansburg, N.Y.: Crossing Press.Frye, Marilyn & Sarah Lucia Hoagland, eds. 2000. FeministInterpretations of Mary Daly. University Park: Penn StatePress.Fraser, Nancy. 1989. Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, andGender in Contemporary Social Theory. Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press.Gardner, Catherine Villanueva. 2000. Rediscovering WomenPhilosophers: Philosophical Genre and the Boundaries ofPhilosophy. Boulder: Westview Press.Gould, Carol and Marx Wartofsky. 1976. Women and Philosophy:Toward a Theory of Liberation University Park: Penn StatePress.Holland, Nancy ed. 1997. Feminist Interpretations of JacquesDerrida. University Park: Penn State Press.Holland, Nancy & Pat Huntington, eds. 2001 FeministInterpretations of Martin Heidegger. University Park: Penn StatePress.Honig, Bonnie, ed. 1995. Feminist Interpretations of HannahArendt. University Park: Penn State Press.Irigaray, Luce. 1985. Speculum of the Other Woman. Trans.Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Jacobson, Anne Jaap, ed. 2000. Feminist Interpretations ofDavid Hume. University Park: Penn State Press.Jaggar, Alison. 1983. Feminist Politics and Human Nature.Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld.Jantzen, Gail. 1998. Becoming Divine: Towards a FeministPhilosophy of Religion. Manchester: Manchester UniversityPress.Kittay, Eva. 1999. Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, andDependency. New York: Routledge.Kofman, Sarah. 1985. The Enigma of Woman: Women in Freud'sWritings. Trans. Catherine Porter. Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress-----. 1998. Socrates: Fictions of a Philosopher. Trans.Catherine Porter. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Lange, Lynda ed. 2002. Feminist Interpretations of Jean-JacquesRousseau. University Park: Penn State Press.Le Dœuff, Michèle. 1989. The PhilosophicalImaginary. Trans. C. Gordon. Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress.Léon Céline & Sylvia Walsh, eds. 1997.Feminist Interpretations of Soren Kierkegaard. UniversityPark: Penn State Press.Lloyd, Genevieve. 2001.Feminism and the History ofPhilosophy. New York: Oxford University Press-----. 1984. The Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and‘Female’ in Western Philosophy. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press.Longino, Helen. 1990. Science as Social Knowledge.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Lugones, María. 2003. Pilgrimages = Peregrinajes:Theorizing Coalition Against MultipleOoppressions. Lanham, MD:Rowman and Littlefield.Millett, Kate. 1970. Sexual Politics. Garden City:Doubleday.Mills, Patricia Jagentowicz ed., 1996. Feminist Interpretationsof G.W.F. Hegel. University Park: Penn State Press.Morgan, Robin. 1970. Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology ofWritings from the Woman's Liberation Movement. New York: VintageBooks.Murphy, Julien ed. 1999. Feminist Interpretations of Jean-PaulSartre. University Park: Penn State Press.Narayan, Uma and Sandra Harding. 2000. De-centering the Center:Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Nelson, Lynn Hankinson & Jack Nelson, eds. 2003. FeministInterpretations of W. Quine. University Park: Penn State PressNussbaum, Martha C. 1999. Sex and Social Justice. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.Oliver, Kelly & Marilyn Pearsall, eds. 1998. FeministInterpretations of Friedrich Nietzsche. University Park: Penn StatePress.O'Neill, Eileen. 1998. Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth andEighteenth Centuries: A Collection of Primary Sources. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.Pearsall, Marilyn, ed. 1999. Woman and Values: Readings in RecentFeminist Philosophy. Belmont: Wadsworth.Ruddick, Sara. 1989. Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics ofPeace. Boston: Beacon Press.Scheman, Naomi. 1993. Engenderings: Constructions of Knowledge,Authority, and Privilege New York :Routledge.Scheman, Naomi and Peg O'Connor, ed. 2002. FeministInterpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein. University Park: PennState Press.Schott, Robin May. 2003. Discovering Feminist Philosophy.Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield.Schott, Robin ed. 1997. Feminist Interpretations of ImmanuelKant. University Park: Penn State Press.Sciabarra, Chris & Mimi Gladstein, eds. 1999. FeministInterpretations of Ayn Rand. University Park: Penn StatePressSeigfried, Charlene Haddock ed. 2001. Feminist Interpretationsof John Dewey. University Park: Penn State Press.Simons, Margaret. 1986. Editorial. Hypatia: A Journal ofFeminist Philosophy 1,1: 1-2.Simons, Margaret A., ed. 1995. Feminist Interpretations ofSimone de Beauvoir. University Park: Penn State Press.Spelman, Elizabeth. 1988. Inessential Woman: Problems ofExclusion in Feminist Thought. Boston: Beacon Press.Tougas, Cecile T. and Sara Ebenrick, eds. 2000. PresentingWomen Philosophers Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Tuana, Nancy, ed. 1994. Feminist Interpretations ofPlato.University Park: Penn State Press.-----. 1992. Woman and the History of Philosophy. NewYork: Paragon Press.Waithe, Mary Ellen, ed. 1989. Medieval, Renaissance, andEnlightenment Women Philosophers, A.D. 500-1600.Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Ward, Julia. 1996. Feminism and Ancient Philosophy. NewYork: Routledge.Other Internet ResourcesThe Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP)Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST)Association for Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, Metaphysics, and Science Studies (FEMMSS)Feminist Theory WebsiteSociety for Analytical FeminismRelated Entries feminism, approaches to: continental philosophy | feminism, approaches to: intersections between analytic and continental philosophy | feminism, approaches to: intersections between pragmatist and continental philosophy | feminism, approaches to: pragmatism | feminist (interventions) | feminist (interventions): aesthetics | feminist (interventions): bioethics | feminist (interventions): environmental philosophy | feminist (interventions): epistemology and philosophy of science | feminist (interventions): ethics | feminist (interventions): history of philosophy | feminist (interventions): moral psychology | feminist (interventions): philosophy of biology | feminist (interventions): philosophy of language | feminist (interventions): philosophy of law | feminist (interventions): philosophy of religion | feminist (interventions): radical feminism | feminist (topics) | feminist (topics): perspectives on class and work | feminist (topics): perspectives on reproduction and the family | feminist (topics): perspectives on science | feminist (topics): perspectives on sex markets | feminist (topics): perspectives on sexuality | feminist (topics): perspectives on the body | feminist (topics): perspectives on the self Copyright © 2004 byNancy Tuana<ntuana@psu.edu> |
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