New Tenth Anniversary edition of this classic text with a new preface by the author, compares myths about meat-eating with myths about manliness, and seeks to ...

: In this paper, I argue that stories about difference do not promote critical self and social understanding; rather, on the contrary, it is the way we understand ourselves that makes some stories relevantly different. I discuss the uncritical reception of a story about homosexuality in Cuba, urging attention to generalizations explaining judgments of importance. I suggest that some stories from the South will never be relevant to discussions about human flourishing until we critically examine ideas about freedom and democracy, (...) and their role in national identity, explaining the significance we give, or not, to such stories. (shrink)

I analyze how machi discourse and practice of gender and identity contribute to feminist debates about gendered indigenous Others, and the effects that Western notions of Self and Other and feminist rhetoric have on Mapuche women and machi: people who heal with herbal remedies and the help of spirits. Machi juggling of different worlds offers a particular understanding of the way identity and gender are constituted and of the relationship between Self and Other, theory and practice, subject and object, feminism (...) and Womanism. (shrink)

: The achievements of Anna Julia Cooper are extraordinary given her life circumstances. Driven by a desire Cooper called "a thumping within," she became a prominent educator, earned her Ph.D., and influenced the thought of W.E.B. DuBois and others. Cooper fought for her educational philosophy, but despite her contributions, her apparent elitism has shaped contemporary assessments of her work. I argue that her views must be considered in social and historical context.

: In this article, Brison extends the analysis of freedom developed in Nancy J Hirschmann's book, The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom, to an area of controversy among feminist theorists: that of sex work, including prostitution and participation in the production of pornography. This topic raises some of the same issues concerning choice and consent as the three topics Hirschmann discusses in her book—domestic violence, the current welfare system in the United States, and Islamic veiling—but it (...) also raises some distinct ones concerning the social construction of sexuality and possible conflicts between the freedom of some women (who may choose to engage in sex work) and the freedom of others (who may be harmed by the contribution of such work to the social construction of categories such as "women" and "sex"). (shrink)

This essay retells the stories of four exemplary women from Confucianism and Judaism, hoping that the tension these stories exhibit can teach us something about women’s lives within the boundaries of tradition, then and now. It refers to two ideal “family caretakers”: M eng Mu 孟母, who devoted her life to her son’s learning, and Rachel, who devoted her life to her husband, the famous Rabbi Akiva. Then it tells the stories of two almost completely opposing exemplary figures: The sages (...) B an Zhao 班昭 and Bruriah, who dedicated their lives to learning and self-cultivation. It stresses that there is more than one dichotomized resolution to inner conflicts within the traditional framework in both Confucianism and Judaism, and, moreover, the plurality of resolutions is inherent in the traditions. Through reading a story and appreciating the complexities in others’ lives, while reflecting on our own, we can attain a level of abstraction that enables better sensitivity and more responsibility for the life we live. (shrink)

Overview -- Why social workers earn less than accountants : pay equity -- Can you have a job and a life? -- Can a woman do a man's job? -- You want to see my what? : sexual harassment -- Nine to five : not just a movie--the right to organize -- Working other than nine to five : part-time and temporary jobs -- What this nation really thinks of motherhood : welfare reform -- Revaluing women's work outside of work (...) -- How you can help get there. (shrink)

This document presents a reconstruction of the arguments made in a paper by Marilyn Strathern. The paper is entitled 'An Awkward Relationship: the Case of Feminism and Anthropology'. In response to scholars who hoped that feminist research would produce a paradigm shift in social anthropology, Strathern argues that a revolution of this kind is impossible. In addition to reconstructing her arguments, I also identify objections to them.

Many influential Western feminists of diverse backgrounds have expressed concerns that multiculturalism, while strengthening the power of racial ethnic minorities vis-à-vis the majority, worsens the position of its most vulnerable members, women. Despite their good intentions, these feminists have been consistently dismissive of the voices of racial ethnic women, many of whom argue for the importance of sustaining their own “illiberal” cultures within the Western context. I offer a Third World feminist defense of multiculturalism by paying attention to these women (...) whose varying assessments of multiculturalism are less unequivocally negative, more ambivalent and complex, and even affirming and positive. (shrink)

: Noting that academic writing typically falls in the category of work, this piece considers the relationship such writing might have with love. Animated by its observation that love's affinity with wholeness distinguishes it from work's tendency to divide a subject from herself, the essay playfully develops this contrast by telling a story of writing and wholeness. This story attempts to embody the contrasts of which it speaks, and in the process, to discover a counterpoint to the work of writing.

Out of the Margin is the first book to consider feminist concerns across the whole domain of economics. In recent years there has been a tremendous increase in interest on the relation between gender and economics. Feminists have found much of concern in the way the economics has written women out of its history, built its theories around masculinist values, failed to take proper account of women and their work when measuring the economy and ignored most of the policy issues (...) that press most heavily upon women. This book is a firm rejection of this marginalized position. Including contributions from leading feminist economists from the US and Europe, the book offers a richness of new insights in addressing the absence of women, both as subject and object, in the history of economic thought. Out of the Margin also explores the philosophical roots of rational economic man, power relations and conflicts within the family, the limitations of relying on secondary data, the need for new data and research, the policy implications of neo-classical economic models and the need for fundamental research in policy making. With its range and depth of coverage, this is not only an excellent introduction to the field but also indispensible for anyone looking for an in-depth analysis of gender and economics. (shrink)

This was published in Cultural Critique (Winter 1991-92), pp. 5-32; revised and reprinted in Who Can Speak? Authority and Critical Identity edited by Judith Roof and Robyn Wiegman, University of Illinois Press, 1996; and in Feminist Nightmares: Women at Odds edited by Susan Weisser and Jennifer Fleischner, (New York: New York University Press, 1994); and also in Racism and Sexism: Differences and Connections eds. David Blumenfeld and Linda Bell, Rowman and Littlefield, 1995.

Apparently, Latinos are “taking over.” 1 With news that Latinos have become the largest minority group in the United States, the public airwaves are filled with concerned voices about the impact that a non-English dominant, Catholic, non-white, largely poor population will have on “American” identity. Aside from the hysteria, Latino identity poses some authentically new questions for the standard way in which minority identities are conceptualized. Are Latinos a race, an ethnicity, or some combination? What does it mean to have (...) hybridity as the foundation of an identity, as is the case for mestizos and most Latinos? The term “Latino” signifies people from an entire continent, sub-continent, and several large islands, with diverse racial, national, ethnic, religious, and linguistic aspects to their identity. Given all this internal diversity, is “Latino” a meaningful identity at all? Latino identity is, with few exceptions, a visible identity, for all its variability, and I will argue that unless we pay close attention to the way in which Latino identity operates as a visible identity in public, social spaces, our analyses of its social meanings and political effects will be compromised. In the following three chapters, I will address three issues that Latino identity raises, issues that have political ramifications but that also require us to think about the philosophical assumptions at work behind common ideas about race and ethnicity. First, what is the relationship between Latino identity and racial categories? Second, how do Latinos fit into, and challenge, the black/white binary thinking about race that has long dominated public discourse in the U.S.? And third, what does it mean to have a mixed identity, for Latinos or for other mixed race groups? Throughout, we will have to pay close attention to the especially significant heterogeneity of this particular population. Does such diversity threaten identity or does it reveal that identity has never presumed uniformity? Only recently has the concept of pan-Latino, or generic Hispanic, identity overtaken the older identity monikers of “Cuban,” “Mexican,” “Puerto Rican,” etc. in significant national discourses across the United States. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute toward coalitionbuilding by showing that, even if we try tobuild coalition around what might look like ourmost obvious common concern – reducing racism –the dominant discourse of racial politics inthe United States inhibits an understanding ofhow racism operates vis-à-vis Latino/as andAsian Americans, and thus proves more of anobstacle to coalition building than an aid. Theblack/white paradigm, which operates to governracial classifications and racial politics inthe U.S., takes race in the U.S. to consist ofonly two racial (...) groups, Black and White,with others understood in relation to one ofthese categories.I summarize and discuss the strongestcriticisms of the paradigm and then develop twofurther arguments. Together these argumentsshow that continuing to theorize race in theU.S. as operating exclusively through theblack/white paradigm is actuallydisadvantageous for all people of color in theU.S., and in many respects for whites as well(or at least for white union households and thewhite poor). (shrink)

his essay is a personal philosophical reflection on particular dilemma privilege-cognizant white feminists face in thinking through how to use privilege in liberatory ways. Privilege takes on a new dimension for whites who resist common defensive or guilt-ridden responses to privilege and struggle to understand the connections between ill-gotten advantages and the genuine injustices that deny humanity to peoples of color. The temptation to despise whiteness and its accompanying privilege is a common response to white privilege awareness and it is (...) this initial frustration with the perceived inescapability of white privilege that I explore here. -/- What I call the "dilemma of white privilege awareness," leaves privilege-cognizant whites trapped in the awkward position of knowing that privilege is at once impossible to dispose of, and impossible to use without perpetuating those systems of domination I wish to demolish. The dilemma works like this. On the one hand, if my racial appearance and mannerisms act as a magnet for special treatment, then I cannot simply arrange my life so as not to have benefits and immunities extended to me. There appears to be no way to divest myself completely of race privilege. On the other hand, if the focus on privilege divestment is misguided, then perhaps whites ought to find responsible ways of using race privilege that do not perpetuate structural inequalities (e.g. assisting persons of color in surmounting everyday obstacles). Yet, if the power accorded to privilege is made possible by structural inequalities, then the very act of using privilege will automatically reinforce those structural inequalities. If the claims made on both sides of the dilemma are true, then I am trapped: I can neither divest myself of unearned privileges nor can I use them without reinforcing the systems I wish to demolish. -/- I carefully unpack each side of the dilemma marking detours, diversions, and natural sticking points (e.g. cultural impersonation, retreats to white ethnicity, and the temptation to shift discussions away from race to other oppressions) that prevent me engaging critically in discussions of racism. I suggest two possible solutions to the dilemma: conceptual and pragmatic. -/- The conceptual solution argues that the dilemma of privilege awareness is a false dilemma that arises from an essentialist view of race. As a way of escaping the dilemma, I suggest a performative view of race based on Judith Butler and Marilyn Frye's accounts of whitely 'performatives.' I argue that thinking about what it means to be white (or any race) in terms of as performatives, attitudes, and behaviors, rather that in terms of essentialist classifications untangles the helplessness associated with the perceived inescapability of whiteness that generates the dilemma. This conceptual solution, however, does little to move us toward questions of responsibility. -/- A more pragmatic solution requires accepting as true the premise that privilege use does reinscribe the value of privilege. And, at the same time acknowledging that refusal to use privilege for this reason amounts to a waste of resources. -/- Yet the idea that white privilege is poisonous or problematic is, no doubt, laughable from the standpoint of peoples of color. Thus, I conclude by rejecting the dilemma on the grounds that it is a self-centered response to racism. The best response to white privilege awareness should not be, "how can I find a way out of this dilemma?" Rather it should be "how do I begin thinking of privilege as a resource for undoing institutional racism?" -/- Politically useful explorations of privilege must involve more than orchestrating conceptual end runs around racial essentialism for the sake of easing philosophical discomfort. Framing questions of privilege in terms of a dilemma that needs to be escaped is self-regarding: in the end it really amounts to is a more sophisticated way of wrestling with white guilt. It does not allow me to move in the direction of coalition building and creative political action. Privilege cannot be abandon completely. What must be given up, then, is not privilege per se, but harmful uses of privilege. If there is one lesson we carry away from the dilemma, it is that privilege is impossible to shake, and that using privilege reinscribes it. Rather than frustrating us, this phenomenon should alert us to the strengths of privilege as a resource. To use privilege as a resource for anti-racist activities is to give up its abusive power. (shrink)

: Even as feminist analyses have contributed in important ways to discussions of how gender is raced and race is gendered, there has been little in the way of comparative analysis of the specific mechanisms that are at work in the production of each. Feder argues that in Michel Foucault's analytics of power we find tools to understand the reproduction of whiteness as a complex interaction of distinctive expressions of power associated with these categories of difference.

Although the American Philosophical Association has more than 11,000 members, there are still fewer than 125 Black philosophers in the United States, including fewer than thirty Black women holding a PhD in philosophy and working in a philosophy department in the academy.1The following is a “musing” about how I became one of them and how I have sought to create a positive philosophical space for all of us.

Falguni A. Sheth: Toward a political philosophy of race Content Type Journal Article Pages 119-130 DOI 10.1007/s11007-011-9171-z Authors Lewis R. Gordon, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA USA Journal Continental Philosophy Review Online ISSN 1573-1103 Print ISSN 1387-2842 Journal Volume Volume 44 Journal Issue Volume 44, Number 1.

It is always awkward when someone asks me informally what I’m working on and I answer that I’m trying to figure out what gender is. For outside a rather narrow segment of the academic world, the term ‘gender’ has come to function as the polite way to talk about the sexes. And one thing people feel pretty confident about is their knowledge of the difference between males and females. Males are those human beings with a range of familiar primary and (...) secondary sex characteristics, most important being the penis; females are those with a different set, most important being the vagina or, perhaps, the uterus. Enough said. Against this background, it isn’t clear what could be the point of an inquiry, especially a philosophical inquiry, into “what gender is”. (shrink)

Thanks in large part to the record of scholarship fostered by Hypatia, feminist philosophers are now positioned not just as critics of the canon, but as innovators advancing uniquely feminist perspectives for theorizing about the world. As relatively junior feminist scholars, the five of us were called upon to provide some reflections on emerging trends in feminist philosophy and to comment on its future. Despite the fact that we come from diverse subfields and philosophical traditions, four common aims emerged in (...) our collaboration as central to the future of feminist philosophies. We seek to: 1) challenge universalist and essentialist frameworks without ceding to relativism; 2) center coloniality and embodiment in our analyses of the intermeshed realities of race and gender by shifting from oppression in the abstract to concrete cosmologies and struggles, particularly those of women of color and women of colonized communities across the globe; 3) elaborate the materialities of thought, being, and community that must succeed atomistic conceptions of persons as disembodied, individually constituted, and autonomous; 4) demonstrate what is distinctive and valuable about feminist philosophy, while fighting persistent marginalization within the discipline. In our joint musings here, we attempt to articulate how future feminist philosophies might advance these aims, as well as some of the challenges we face. (shrink)

: The aim of this essay is to analyze the notion of "loving, knowing ignorance," a type of "arrogant perception" that produces ignorance about women of color and their work at the same time that it proclaims to have both knowledge about and loving perception toward them. The first part discusses Marilyn Frye's accounts of "arrogant" as well as of "loving" perception and presents an explanation of "loving, knowing ignorance." The second part discusses the work of Audre Lorde, Elizabeth Spelman, (...) and María Lugones in their attempts to deal with the issue of arrogant perception within feminism, and examines how Lugones's notion of "'world'-traveling" may help us deal with "loving, knowing ignorance." Ultimately, the author suggests that we need to become aware of instances of "loving, knowing ignorance," especially if we are to stay true to Third Wave feminism's commitment to diversity. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to carry out an analysis of the multi-voiced, multi-cultural self discussed by Latina feminists in light of a Heideggerian phenomenological account of persons or "Existential Analytic." In so doing, it (a) points out similarities as well as differences between the Heideggerian description of the self and Latina feminists' phenomenological accounts of self, and (b) critically assesses María Lugones's important notion of "world-traveling." In the end, the essay defends the view of a "multiplicitous" self which (...) takes insights from Lugones's view of the self that "travels 'worlds'" and from other Latina feminists' accounts of self as well as from Martin Heidegger's account of Dasein. (shrink)

: Pillow's aim is to demonstrate how representations of Sacajawea have shifted in writings about the Lewis and Clark expedition in ways that support manifest destiny and white colonial projects. This essay begins with a general account of Sacajawea. The next section uses two novels (one hundred years apart) to make the case that shifts in the representation of this important historical figure serve similar purposes. There is some attention to white suffragist representations, but the central contrast is between manifest (...) destiny and multiculturalism. The final section addresses the important question of whether it is possible for feminists to theorize Sacajawea in ways that are not co-opted by colonial projects. (shrink)

Many feminists have found inspiration in Donna Haraway's myth of the cyborg (1990). From the standpoint of feminist bisexual identity, however, I contend that this myth evades the very issues of race and sexuality which it seems to be addressing. I examine the uses of a bisexual standpoint for a more concrete, situated approach to theorizing sexuality, arguing that reflection on racial identities must be incorporated as well.

"This book does serve a very useful purpose in returning power to the centre of the feminist stage. . . . This book makes clear the ways in which the machinations of power are more subtle, widespread, and multiform than it sometimes appears. Further, the clarity of presentation means that it is also a text that can usefully be included on student bibliographies." --Women's Philosophy Review "The Gender of Power, which announces itself in the first line of its Preface as (...) a scholarly treatment of the 'battle of the sexes,' is a fine contribution to this promising dialogue of understanding." --The Journal of Men's Studies "This well-edited book addresses the problem of gender in theories of power directly, incisively, and succinctly. It is as joyfully free of jargon and prolixity, as it is of dogma and flag-waving.". (shrink)

The dual aim of this article is to reveal and explain a certain phenomenon of epistemic injustice as manifested in testimonial practice, and to arrive at a characterisation of the anti–prejudicial intellectual virtue that is such as to counteract it. This sort of injustice occurs when prejudice on the part of the hearer leads to the speaker receiving less credibility than he or she deserves. It is suggested that where this phenomenon is systematic it constitutes an important form of oppression. (...) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

Imaginary Bodies is a collection of essays that offer a sustained challenge to traditional philosophical notions of the body, sex and gender. Moira Gatens explores alternative positions to dualism by exploring psychoanalytic, Foucaultian and Spinozist notions of embodiment. The book traces a largely neglected geneaology of philosophers from Spinoza, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault and Deleuze and sets this tradition against that of the Enlightenment. What emerges are new ways of thinking those aspects of life which Gatens calls "imaginary." Confining herself to (...) neither philosophy of "the subject" nor an ahistorical philosophy of "the body" at the expense of broader ethical and socio-political issues, Gatens shows the many connections between theories of bodies politic and the (sexed) individual. She compellingly, lucidly, and trenchantly engages with the ethical, legal and sexual relations between men and women which are placed in its proper historical and political context. (shrink)

From a feminist perspective, I am interested in 'women's ways of knowing' ( Belenky et al., 1997 ) and the relationship between knowledge, difference and power ( Goldberger et al., 1996 ). Here I trace the relevance of Gramsci to my own feminist consciousness, and the part he played in my journey to praxis. I also address feminism's intellectual debts, most particularly in relation to the concept of hegemony. The intellectual context has shifted in emphasis from macro- to micro-narratives which (...) reject Marxism as masculinist and dichotomous. The dilemma has been an overemphasis on the personal-cultural at the expense of the collective-political, distracting us from action for social justice at the same time as globalisation is creating escalating world crises of justice and sustainability. In conclusion, I advocate a re-reading of Gramsci in the light of key feminist critiques of class and patriarchy in order to develop i) analyses based on multiple sites of oppression and ii) action which reaches from local to global through alliances to achieve a more integrated feminist praxis. Throughout, I use 'dis'ability and 'race' to denote the socially constructed nature of these concepts. (shrink)

Recent debates in contemporary feminist theory have been dominated by the relation between identity and politics. Beyond Identity Politics examines the implications of recent theorizing on difference, identity and subjectivity for theories of patriarchy and feminist politics. Organised around the three central themes of subjectivity, power and politics, this book focuses on a question which feminists struggled with and were divided by throughout the last decade, that is: how to theorize the relation between the subject and politics. In this thoughtful (...) engagement with these debates Moya Lloyd argues that the turn to the subject in process does not entail the demise of feminist politics as many feminists have argued. She demonstrates how key ideas such as agency, power and domination take on a new shape as a consequence of this radical rethinking of the subject-politics relation and how the role of feminist political theory becomes centred upon critique. A resource for feminist theorists, women's and gender studies students, as well as political and social theorists, this is a carefully composed and wide-ranging text, which provides important insights into one of contemporary feminism's most central concerns. (shrink)

Arguing that a Foucauldian feminism is possible, Sawicki rejects the view that the power of the phallocentric is total. Instead, like Foucault, she sees discouse as ambiguous and a source of conflict.

This collection of essays analyzes relations of social inequality that appear to be logical extensions of a "natural order," and in the process demonstrates that a revitalized feminist anthropology of the 1990s has much to offer the field of feminist theory. Fashioned as a response to the lack of cultural analysis in feminist scholarship, the contributors question the category of gender within the inclusive context of the structural dynamics of inequality. They also examine how cultural identities, domains and institutions affect (...) our perception of gender in society. The first selection of essays addresses how ideas of family and kinship have fostered society's hierarchies and legitimized the status quo. In part two, the essays show how several dimensions of inequality are implicit in the construction of identities that are based upon ideas of social solidarity. Contributors: Susan McKinnon, University of Virginia; Kath Weston, Arizona State West; Rayna Rapp, New School for Social Research; Janet Dolgin, Hofstra University; Harriet Whitehead, Duke University; Carol Delaney, Stanford University; Brackette Williams, University of Arizona; Sylvia Yanagisako, Stanford University; Phyllis Chock, Catholic University; Sherry Ortner, University of Michigan; Anna Tsing, University of California, Santa Cruz. (shrink)