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Longino, Helen. Circles of Reason: Some Feminist Reflections on Reason and Rationality
2005, Episteme, 2 (1): 79-88

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Added by: Franci Mangraviti and Viviane Fairbank
Abstract:
Rationality and reason are topics so fraught for feminists that any useful reflection on them requires some prior exploration of the difficulties they have caused. One of those difficulties for feminists and, I suspect, for others in the margins of modernity, is the rhetoric of reason - the ways reason is bandied about as a qualification differentially bestowed on different types of person. Rhetorically, it functions in different ways depending on whether it is being denied or affirmed. In this paper, I want to explore these rhetorics of reason as they are considered in the work of two feminist philosophers. I shall draw on their work for some suggestions about how to think about rationality, and begin to use those suggestions to develop a constructive account that withstands the rhetorical temptations.
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Lovibond, Sabina, Scheman, Naomi. Engenderings: Constructions of Knowledge, Authority and Privilege
1993, Routledge

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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa

Abstract: Naomi Scheman argues that the concerns of philosophy emerge not from the universal human condition but from conditions of privilege. Her books represents a powerful challenge to the notion that gender makes no difference in the construction of philosophical reasoning. At the same time, it criticizes the narrow focus of most feminist theorizing and calls for a more inclusive form of inquiry.
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Lugones, María. Playfulness, ‘World’-Travelling, and Loving Perception
2022, In McWeeny, J. and Maitra, K. (eds) Feminist Philosophy of Mind, New York: Oxford University Press, pp.105-122

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Abstract:
This paper considers the ontological implications of encountering varying levels of intelligibility when one traverses social structures, such as when one immigrates to a new culture or works in a place with people of a different economic class than one's own. This paper terms this phenomenon "world-travelling," which the paper understands as the shift in self-experience that occurs when an oppressed person moves from an environment where she is readily perceived as an active subject to one where she is perceived as a passive instrument of others' wills and desires. Such a situation opens on an ontological paradox because it seems that the same person is capable of possessing two contradictory attributes at the same time. The chapter explains how this paradoxical situation could obtain by arguing that attributes of consciousness are world-dependent. It concludes that the self is actually "a plurality of selves" and that the structure of subjectivity is neither unitary, universal, nor ahistorical.
Comment (from this Blueprint): Lugones' concept of world-travelling and playfulness compliments well the discussion in Jones' chapter on empathy. Both authors consider how identification can fail, but come to slightly different conclusions about how to facilitate empathy. These readings would thus work well when read together closely. Lugones' discussion on play also provides a springboard for not only discussing resistence to oppression, or arrogant perception, but also the embedded and problematic assumptions behind the notion of play that may be prescent in academic definitions. Indeed, if we understand play more along Lugones' lines, this may not only help us 'world travel' to meet other humans, but, perhaps, non-humans as well.
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Mackenzie, Catriona (ed.), Stoljar, Natalie (ed.). Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Automony, Agency, and the Social Self
2000, Oxford University Press.

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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa

Publisher's Note: This collection of original essays explores the social and relational dimensions of individual autonomy. Rejecting the feminist charge that autonomy is inherently masculinist, the contributors draw on feminist critiques of autonomy to challenge and enrich contemporary philosophical debates about agency, identity, and moral responsibility. The essays analyze the complex ways in which oppression can impair an agent's capacity for autonomy, and investigate connections, neglected by standard accounts, between autonomy and other aspects of the agent, including self-conception, self-worth, memory, and the imagination.
Comment : All but one of the papers in this volume are writtn by underrepresented authors.
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Mangraviti, Franci. The Liberation Argument for Inconsistent Mathematics
2023, The Australasian Journal of Logic, 20 (2): 278-317

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Added by: Franci Mangraviti and Viviane Fairbank
Abstract:
Val Plumwood charged classical logic not only with the invalidity of some of its laws, but also with the support of systemic oppression through naturalization of the logical structure of dualisms. In this paper I show that the latter charge - unlike the former - can be carried over to classical mathematics, and I propose a new conception of inconsistent mathematics - queer incomaths - as a liberatory activity meant to undermine said naturalization.
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Maracle, Lee. I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism
2002, Press Gang Publishers, Canada.

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Added by: Sonja Dobroski and Quentin Pharr
Publisher’s Note:
I Am Woman represents my personal struggle with womanhood, culture, traditional spiritual beliefs and political sovereignty, written during a time when that struggle was not over. My original intention was to empower Native women to take to heart their own personal struggle for Native feminist being. The changes made in this second edition of the text do not alter my original intention. It remains my attempt to present a Native woman's sociological perspective on the impacts of colonialism on us, as women, and on my self personally.
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Mcweeny, Jennifer. Liberating Anger, Embodying Knowledge: A Comparative Study of Maria Lugones and Zen Master Hakuin
2010, Hypatia 25 (2):295 - 315.

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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Corbin Covington

Abstract: This paper strengthens the theoretical ground of feminist analyses of anger by explaining how the angers of the oppressed are ways of knowing. Relying on insights created through the juxtaposition of Latina feminism and Zen Buddhism, I argue that these angers are special kinds of embodied perceptions that surface when there is a profound lack of fit between a particular bodily orientation and its framing world of sense. As openings to alternative sensibilities, these angers are transformative, liberatory, and deeply epistemological.
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Merritt, Michele. Instituting impairment: Extended cognition and the construction of Female Sexual Dysfunction
2013, Cognitive Systems Research, 25-26, pp. 47-53

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Added by: Maria Jimena Clavel Vazquez
Abstract:
I further the argument for a socially extended mind by examining gender and the role it plays in cognition. My first claim is that gender is a social institution that often if not always subtends our cognitive processes, especially those that are maximally embodied. The social institution of gender often serves to inhibit female embodied cognitive processing, as a quick glance at the myriad of oppressive forces at play in gender dynamics illustrates. To combat the potential objection that gender is not a vehicle for extending cognitive processes, but rather plays a shaping role in embodied practice, I propose looking at the history of Female Sexual Dysfunction and its construction by the social institutions of the pharmaceutical companies and media. By doing so, I claim a case can be made that these institutions have actually invaded the minds of many women to the point that cognition pertaining to sex, sexual functioning, and health are wholly dependent upon and constituted by the interplay of these social systems.
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Nelson, Julie. Feminism and economics
1995, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9(2), 131-148.

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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Patricia Rich

Introduction: An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education of June 30, 1993, reported, “Two decades after it began redefining debates” in many other disciplines, “feminist thinking seems suddenly to have arrived in economics.” Many economists, of course, did not happen to be in the station when this train arrived, belated as it might be. Many who might have heard rumor of its coming have not yet learned just what arguments are involved or what it promises for the refinement of the profession. The purpose of this essay is to provide a low-cost way of gaining some familiarity.

Comment : This text provides a good overview, as well as an argument regarding how the field of economics reflects masculine values, and how the field could be improved by removing this bias. It makes sense to read the text with students who have some familiarity with economics itself. It should be noted that the field of economics actually has changed in some of the ways the author recommends, since the time of publication, but the article is still relevant and provokes plenty of discussion.
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Nussbaum, Martha. Twelve Feminists and Philosophy
2012, In Philosophical Interventions: Reviews 1986-2011. New York

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Added by: Franci Mangraviti and Viviane Fairbank
Abstract:
This chapter reviews the book A Mind of One's Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity (1993), by Louise B. Antony and Charlotte Witt. The appeal to reason and objectivity amounts to a request that the observer refuses to be intimidated by habit, and look for cogent arguments based on evidence that has been carefully sifted for bias. In our own society the arguments of feminists make such appeals to reason and objectivity all the time, and in a manner that closely resembles Platonic arguments. And yet today reason and objectivity are on the defensive in some feminist circles. We are frequently told that reason and objectivity are norms created by "patriarchy," and that to appeal to them is to succumb to the blandishments of the oppressor. We are told that systems of reasoning are systems of domination, and that to adopt the traditional one is thus to be co-opted. A Mind of One's Own is a collection of essays by women who are prominent in philosophy today and who wish to confront recent feminist criticisms of philosophy. Most of the contributors are under fifty and widely respected; most grew up with strong political ties to feminism.
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