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Harding, Sandra. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?
1991, Ithaca: Cornell University Press
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Added by: Björn Freter

Publisher's Note: Sandra Harding here develops further the themes first addressed in her widely influential book, The Science Question in Feminism, and conducts a compelling analysis of feminist theories on the philosophical problem of how we know what we know. Following a strong narrative line, Harding sets out her arguments in highly readable prose. In Part 1, she discusses issues that will interest anyone concerned with the social bases of scientific knowledge. In Part 2, she modifies some of her views and then pursues the many issues raised by the feminist position which holds that women's social experience provides a unique vantage point for discovering masculine bias and and questioning conventional claims about nature and social life. In Part 3, Harding looks at the insights that people of color, male feminists, lesbians, and others can bring to these controversies, and concludes by outlining a feminist approach to science in which these insights are central. "Women and men cannot understand or explain the world we live in or the real choices we have," she writes, "as long as the sciences describe and explain the world primarily from the perspectives of the lives of the dominant groups." Harding's is a richly informed, radical voice that boldly confronts issues of crucial importance to the future of many academic disciplines. Her book will amply reward readers looking to achieve a more fruitful understanding of the relations between feminism, science, and social life.

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Harris, Leonard (ed.). The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke a Reader on Value Theory, Aesthetics, Community, Culture, Race, and Education
1999, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Lydia Patton
Publisher's Note: In its comprehensive overview of Alain Locke's pragmatist philosophy this book captures the radical implications of Locke's approach within pragmatism, the critical temper embedded in Locke's works, the central role of power and empowerment of the oppressed and the concept of broad democracy Locke employed

Comment: Alain Locke (1885-1954) founded the philosophy department at Howard University. (The department is still housed in Locke hall, named for Alain, not John!) He was a pragmatist philosopher, who wrote on cultural relativism, pragmatism, and values. He is best known for his role as an aesthetic scholar of the Harlem Renaissance, but this work has deep connections to his work on the theory of race, on value theory and cultural relativism, and on pragmatism. (See the introductions to the anthologies above for more details.) Locke is an under-appreciated scholar of historical and philosophical significance. His work would provide excellent readings for courses in value theory, ethics and meta-ethics, aesthetics, pragmatism, and the philosophy of race, but would also be interesting reading for courses in epistemology, for instance, given his original stance on relativism, and his pragmatism about truth.

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Hartley, Christie, Watson, Lori. Equal Citizenship and Public Reason. A Feminist Political Liberalism
2018, New York: Oxford University Press
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Added by: Björn Freter, Contributed by: Saranga Sudarshan

Publisher's Note: This book is a defense of political liberalism as a feminist liberalism. The first half of the book develops and defends a novel interpretation of political liberalism. It is argued that political liberals should accept a restrictive account of public reason and that political liberals' account of public justification is superior to the leading alternative, the convergence account of public justification. The view is defended from the charge that such a restrictive account of public reason will unduly threaten or undermine the integrity of some religiously oriented citizens and an account of when political liberals can recognize exemptions, including religious exemptions, from generally applicable laws is offered. In the second half of the book, it is argued that political liberalism's core commitments restrict all reasonable conceptions of justice to those that secure genuine, substantive equality for women and other marginalized groups. Here it is demonstrated how public reason arguments can be used to support law and policy needed to address historical sites of women's subordination in order to advance equality; prostitution, the gendered division of labor and marriage, in particular, are considered.

Comment: Defends Rawlisan Political Liberalism on feminist grounds, contrary to many longstanding critiques of Rawls's views.

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Hartman, Saidiya. Venus in Two Acts
2008, Small Axe, 12 (2): 1–14
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Added by: Tomasz Zyglewicz, Shannon Brick, Michael Greer
Abstract: This essay examines the ubiquitous presence of Venus in the archive of Atlantic slavery and wrestles with the impossibility of discovering anything about her that hasn't already been stated. As an emblematic figure of the enslaved woman in the Atlantic world, Venus makes plain the convergence of terror and pleasure in the libidinal economy of slavery and, as well, the intimacy of history with the scandal and excess of literature. In writing at the limit of the unspeakable and the unknown, the essay mimes the violence of the archive and attempts to redress it by describing as fully as possible the conditions that determine the appearance of Venus and that dictate her silence.

Comment (from this Blueprint): Content warning: very explicit details of cruelties of slavery, sexual assault. In this seminal black feminist theory text, the Foucauldian scholar Saidiya Hartman considers the “archive” which is what she terms the collection of historical evidence that one writes about the past with. She reckons with the difficulty and ethics of writing about past figures and people who were subject to immense violence, degradation and oppression, since often the only records left of their existence are those written or approved by their oppressors or people who were complict in their oppression, and those records are often at best only caricatures of the person they pretend to represent.

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Haslanger, Sally. Changing the Ideology and Culture of Philosophy: Not by Reason (Alone)
2007, Hypatia, 23 (2): 210–23.
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Added by: Rebecca Buxton
Abstract: There is a deep well of rage inside of me. Rage about how I as an individual have been treated in philosophy; rage about how others I know have been treated; and rage about the conditions that I'm sure affect many women and minorities in philosophy, and have caused many others to leave. Most of the time I suppress this rage and keep it sealed away. Until I came to MIT in 1998, I was in a constant dialogue with myself about whether to quit philosophy, even give up tenure, to do something else. In spite of my deep love for philosophy, it just didn't seem worth it. And I am one of the very lucky ones, one of the ones who has been successful by the dominant standards of the profession. Whatever the numbers say about women and minorities in philosophy, numbers don't begin to tell the story. Things may be getting better in some contexts, but they are far from acceptable.

Comment (from this Blueprint): In her 2007 paper, Haslanger sets out the situation of women in philosophy with a particular focus on instutional academic settings. This paper discusses how women are excluded from philosophy (both contemporary and historical) as well as thinking about disciplnary boundaries: why is it that feminist philosophy is not often thought of as 'real' philosophy?

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Haslanger, Sally. Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?
2000, Nous 34(1): 31-55.
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Added by: Carl Fox
Abstract: This paper proposes social constructionist accounts of gender and race. The focus of the inquiry--inquiry aiming to provide resources for feminist and antiracist projects--are the social positions of those marked for privilege or subordination by observed or imagined features assumed to be relevant to reproductive function, or geographical origins. I develop these ideas and propose that other gendered and racialized phenomena are usefully demarcated and explained by reference to these social positions. In doing so, I address the concern that attempts to define race or gender are misguided because they either assume a false commonality or marginalize some members of the group in question.

Comment: Seminal reading for modules on gender or race.

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Haslanger, Sally. Resisting reality: Social Construction and Social Critique
2012, OUP USA.
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Added by: Laura Jimenez
Publisher's Note: Contemporary theorists use the term "social construction" with the aim of exposing how what's purportedly "natural" is often at least partly social and, more specifically, how this masking of the social is politically significant. In these previously published essays, Sally Haslanger draws on insights from feminist and critical race theory to explore and develop the idea that gender and race are positions within a structure of social relations. On this interpretation, the point of saying that gender and race are socially constructed is not to make a causal claim about the origins of our concepts of gender and race, or to take a stand in the nature/nurture debate, but to locate these categories within a realist social ontology. This is politically important, for by theorizing how gender and race fit within different structures of social relations we are better able to identify and combat forms of systematic injustice. Although the central essays of the book focus on a critical social realism about gender and race, these accounts function as case studies for a broader critical social realism.

Comment: The book as a whole explores the interface between analytic philosophy and critical theory. As it is a collection of essays, particular chapters can easily be used separately, some serving as introductory, others as more advanced readings. It could be of interest for undergraduate or postgraduate courses in political philosophy, philosophy of language and philosophical methodology.

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Hass, Marjorie. Can There Be a Feminist Logic?
1999, In Emanuela Bianchi (ed.), Is Feminist Philosophy Philosophy? Northwestern University Press. pp. 190--201
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Added by: Franci Mangraviti
Abstract:

Can there be a feminist logic? By most accounts the answer would be no. What l find remarkable is the great difference in the justifications provided for this conclusion. The impossibility of feminist logic is defended, on the one hand, on the grounds that logic itself is most fundamentally a form of domination and so is inimical to feminist aims. Other philosophers, while also defending the impossibility of feminist logic, do so from the conviction that it is feminist theory rather than logic that is the problem. For these thinkers, feminism cannot make any interesting or important contribution to logic because feminist theory is fundamentally shallow or misguided. In this paper I will argue that both positions are mistaken: Logic is neither as totalizing as the one side believes nor is feminist theory as inconsequential for logic as the other pole would have it. In the course of these arguments, I describe the work of several feminist logicians, showing the possibility and value of feminist approaches to logic.

Comment (from this Blueprint): Very accessible introduction to the (early) literature on feminist logic, adequate for both a general logic course and a general feminist philosophy course (preferably together with at least one specialized reading). Its presentation of various contrasting positions on the topic should provide fertile grounds for discussion.

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Hass, Marjorie. Feminist Readings of Aristotelian Logic
1998, In C.A. Freeland (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle. Pennsylvania State University Press: pp. 19-40
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Added by: Franci Mangraviti and Viviane Fairbank
Abstract:

Hass examines chapters devoted to Aristotle in a recent, prominent, and controversial feminist critique of logic, Andrea Nye's Words of Power: A Feminist Reading of the History of Logic. Hass shows that Nye's criticisms of logic in general and of Aristotle in particular are misplaced. What is crucial in Nye's attack are alleged problems caused by overzealous "abstraction." But Hass argues that abstraction is not problematic; instead, it is crucial (and empowering) for feminist political theory. Although she rejects Nye's form of feminist logic critique, Hass finds more that is worthwhile in the criticisms of logic advanced by Luce lrigaray and Val Plumwood. These thinkers call for feminist alternatives to what has come to be standard deductive logic - and interestingly enough, their call is echoed in other contemporary criticisms from within the field of logic itself, for example, from intuitionist or entailment logics. The logical schemes envisaged by lrigaray and Plumwood would encompass more situated and fluid ways of using formal systems to describe and analyse reality and diverse experiences. Hass argues that, in Aristotle's case, we can glimpse something of such an alternative by looking to his account of negation, which is richer and more complex than that allowed by most contemporary formal systems.

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Hass, Marjorie. Feminist Readings of Aristotelian Logic
1998, In C.A. Freeland (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle. Pennsylvania State University Press: pp. 19-40
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Added by: Franci Mangraviti and Viviane Fairbank
Abstract: Hass examines chapters devoted to Aristotle in a recent, prominent, and controversial feminist critique of logic, Andrea Nye's Words of Power: A Feminist Reading of the History of Logic. Hass shows that Nye's criticisms of logic in general and of Aristotle in particular are misplaced. What is crucial in Nye's attack are alleged problems caused by overzealous "abstraction." But Hass argues that abstraction is not problematic; instead, it is crucial (and empowering) for feminist political theory. Although she rejects Nye's form of feminist logic critique, Hass finds more that is worthwhile in the criticisms of logic advanced by Luce lrigaray and Val Plumwood. These thinkers call for feminist alternatives to what has come to be standard deductive logic - and interestingly enough, their call is echoed in other contemporary criticisms from within the field of logic itself, for example, from intuitionist or entailment logics. The logical schemes envisaged by lrigaray and Plumwood would encompass more situated and fluid ways of using formal systems to describe and analyse reality and diverse experiences. Hass argues that, in Aristotle's case, we can glimpse something of such an alternative by looking to his account of negation, which is richer and more complex than that allowed by most contemporary formal systems.

Comment: available in this Blueprint

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Hein, Hilde. Refining Feminist Theory: Lessons from Aesthetics
2010, In Hilde Hein and Carolyn Korsmeyer (eds.), Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective. Indiana University Press.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Christy Mag Uidhir
Abstract: Because it embraces a domain that is invincibly pluralistic and dynamic, aesthetic theory can serve as a model for feminist theory. Feminist theory, which takes gender as a constituted point of departure, pluralizes theory, thereby challenging its unicity. This anomalous approach to theory is also implicit in conventional aesthetics, which has for that reason been spurned by centrist philosophy. Whilst aesthetics therefore merits attention from feminists, there is reason to be wary of such classic aesthetic doctrines as the the thesis that art is "autonomous" and properly percevied "disinterestedly". That belief has roots in somatophobic dualism which ultimately leads to consequences as negative for art and the aesthetic as for women. Feminists rightly join with other critics of traditional dominative dualisms; yet they can learn from the expansive tendency in aesthetics toward openness and self-reflexive innovation.

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Hewitt Suchocki, Marjorie. The Idea of God in Feminist Philosophy
1994, Hypatia 9(4): 57-68.
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Added by: Emily Paul
Abstract: The marginal position of women within the Western tradition provides a critical vantage point for feminist redevelopment of the notion of God. Feminists tend to replace the classical categories of substance philosophies traditionally used for God with relational categories often drawn from organic philosophies. They also project the dynamic character of language itself into the discussion of God. This essay focuses on these issues as they are developed by Mary Daly and Rebecca Chopp

Comment: A good overview and development of some key feminist philosophies of religion that seek to redevelop the notion of God. If being used in a standard philosophy of religion course, it would be good to set this reading after covering the 'traditional' conceptions of God, and then to have a debate to find out the views of students regarding how we ought to conceive of God.

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Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought
2000, 2nd Edition. Routledge.
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Added by: Anne-Marie McCallion
Publisher’s Note:

In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, originally published in 1990, Patricia Hill Collins set out to explore the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals and writers, both within the academy and without. Here Collins provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. Drawing from fiction, poetry, music and oral history, the result is a book that provided the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought and its canon.

Comment: Patricia Hill Collins is an American academic specializing in race, class, and gender. She is a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology Emerita at the University of Maryland. She was the 100th president of the ASA and the first African-American woman to hold this position. Collins's work primarily concerns issues involving race, gender, and social inequality within the African-American community. In Black Feminist Thought, Collins sets out to explore the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals and writers, both within the academy and without. Here Collins provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. In this chapter, Collins outlines and illuminates the framework for a black feminist epistemology by juxtaposing it against Western epistemologies that have dominated and hindered thought. In doing so, Collins also underlines the necessity of alternative epistemologies to render the lives of black women intelligible.

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Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment
2008, Routledge
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Added by: Tomasz Zyglewicz, Shannon Brick, Michael Greer
Abstract: In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, originally published in 1990, Patricia Hill Collins set out to explore the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals and writers, both within the academy and without. Here Collins provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. Drawing from fiction, poetry, music and oral history, the result is a superbly crafted and revolutionary book that provided the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought and its canon.

Comment (from this Blueprint): An excerpt from her landmark 1991 text, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, this text sees Patricia Hill Collins outline four “controlling images” that contribute to black women’s oppression, appealing to cultural and literary devices, as well as social science literature. In the parts of this chapter not excerpted Hill Collins argues that stereotypical images and symbols of Black womanhood manipulate society’s perception and ideas about Black womanhood and, by extension, Black women which contributes to justifying their oppression.

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Holroyd, Jules. Feminist Metaethics
2013, International Encyclopedia of Ethics (ed. H. LaFollette).
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Added by: Emily Paul
Abstract: Metaethical questions concern the nature of morality: are there moral properties, and, if so, what kind of thing are they? How do they motivate us? How should we understand moral discourse, and how can we gain moral knowledge?

Comment: Great paper to use for either a metaethics or a feminist philosophy course. Would work well as a core reading, as it maps the terrain very well. It could be good to set students seminar prep work of picking one feminist meta-ethicist that Holroyd mentions, and to research some more into their view - to explain to the class briefly (a minute or so per person).

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