Pragmatist Feminism
From: Whipps, Judy, "Pragmatist Feminism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/femapproach-pragmatism/>
Quotes:
"In addition to recovering the writings of women in the pragmatist tradition, contemporary feminists use and extend pragmatist philosophies as a foundation for feminist theory. These feminist philosophers who work in the pragmatist tradition point out that pragmatism offers a valuable, although often unrecognized, resource for feminist thinkers, especially as we come to see it developed in the work of women pragmatists and activists.
A historical examination of pragmatism shows a reverse ordering of the theory-action method sometimes assumed in philosophic thought, and often critiqued by feminist thinkers. In its privileging of theoretical thinking, some philosophic texts leave us with the impression that ideas normally originate from theoretical, often solitary, thinkers and are diffused into the general culture. However, in the case of many women activists, like Jane Addams, it is evident that public and political activism shaped the character of the philosophy. Such a method is consistent with pragmatism; as 20th century pragmatist Sidney Hook said, “social action is the mother of inspiration and not, as is usually imagined, its offspring” (1991 [1940], 3). Feminist theory also has grown out of the activism of the women's movement, and incorporates the understandings that have resulted from social activism. Pragmatist philosophers have often made these same points in their critiques of positivism. Both pragmatists and feminists have advocated for the practical use of philosophy in the realm of personal and public experience; pragmatism and feminism generally also share a social and/or political focus and advocate specific cultural changes. As Seigfried says, both pragmatism and feminism “reject philosophizing as an intellectual game that takes purely logical analysis as its special task. For both, philosophical techniques are means, not ends” (1996, 37). "
"Described below are four areas addressed by contemporary feminist pragmatists: epistemology, education, the active process of philosophizing, and the importance of pluralistic communities. Contemporary feminist epistemologists have pointed out how traditional philosophy's emphasis on rational, logical absolutes has devalued the ambiguities of the embodied life. For feminist pragmatists, pluralistic communities have epistemological value and provide the base for an inclusive problem-solving approach to social problems. The pragmatist understanding of education as a social and political force, as a major aspect of how society and individuals are shaped, has been echoed by contemporary feminists who analyze our educational curriculum and methods of teaching. Both pragmatism and feminism are more likely to bring social context to the forefront of philosophy, allowing for realities that are in flux and that are always being shaped and reconstructed by their context. Pragmatists emphasize that we must include particular and individual experiences in a pluralistic discussion of multiple realities, and that all parties involved in the issue be involved in any creation of a solution.[3]"
"In Pragmatism and Feminism, Seigfried lists some particular aspects of pragmatism that make it useful to feminist thinkers. Seigfried's first comparison between feminism and pragmatism concerns their mutual critique of dualism. She notes four dualistic aspects of rationalistic philosophy that Dewey critiques, and that some feminisms have also found oppressive in their support of invidious social/economic hierarchies:
(a)The depreciation of doing and making and the over-evaluation of pure thinking and reflection; (b) the contempt for bodies and matter and praise of spirit and immateriality, (c) the sharp division of practice and theory, and (d) the inferiority of changing things and events and the superiority of a fixed reality. (1996, 113)
Jane Duran, in “The Intersection of Pragmatism and Feminism” (1993), points out that feminist theorists have critiqued the preoccupation with universals “that seem to pervade much of analytic philosophy (indeed philosophy as a whole),” a desire for universals, she says, which leads all the way back to Plato. Plato's idealism carries with it a devaluation of the changing realm of the physical world. Duran points out that feminists, as well as pragmatists, are often less interested in universal generalities and notes that an emphasis on particulars as well as “relations and connections become almost more important than particulars themselves” (1993, 166). This pluralistic sense of refusing to constrict reality to that which is defined by logic or language, or to human conceptions, helps feminists as philosophers propose an alternative vision of philosophy.
Feminist pragmatists have relied on John Dewey's concept of experience as philosophical support for a position that holds together the subject and object in a nondualistic epistemology. Yet, as postcolonial feminists have pointed out, experience in itself is conditioned by one's cultural background. Ofelia Schutte (2000) points out that “the nature of knowledge is not culture-free but is determined by the methodologies and data legitimated by dominant cultures” (40). Feminist-pragmatist Celia T. Bardwell-Jones (2008) draws on Josiah Royce's theory of interpretation to address the problem of translation “at the borders of conflicting experience...where differences are translated instead of assimilated” (22). Such epistemological translation work is essential for feminists and pragmatists, given that in both fields theory is inherently about changing the world. Jane Addams embodied this intersection of pragmatism and feminism in her efforts to reconstruct the social order to increase justice for women and the underprivileged and to work as an interpreter across class and cultural boundaries (see Fischer 2005)."