Khader, Serene. Doing Non-Ideal Theory About Gender in the Global Context
2021, Metaphilosophy, 52 (1): 142-165
Added by: Tomasz Zyglewicz, Shannon Brick, Michael Greer
Abstract:
This paper elaborates and renders explicit some of the views about political philosophical methodology that underlie the author’s arguments in Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic. It shows how the author’s stances on autonomy, individualism, intersectionality, human rights, the coloniality of gender, and the oppression of genders besides man and woman grow out of a commitment to scrutinizing our normative views in light of transnational criticism and empirical information from the qualitative social sciences.
This paper elaborates and renders explicit some of the views about political philosophical methodology that underlie the author’s arguments in Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic. It shows how the author’s stances on autonomy, individualism, intersectionality, human rights, the coloniality of gender, and the oppression of genders besides man and woman grow out of a commitment to scrutinizing our normative views in light of transnational criticism and empirical information from the qualitative social sciences.
Comment (from this Blueprint): Serene Khader is a feminist and political philosopher whose work engages deeply with empirical work beyond philosophy. In this article, she responds to several replies to her 2018 book, "Decolonizing Universalism." Familiarity with the arguments of the book are not necessary to follow the arguments Khader makes in this piece, and to appreciate the way she recruits empirical work beyond philosophy in order to fruitfully inform her position on several key philosophical disputes. In this short excerpt, readers can gain a glimpse of one of the ways in which contemporary philosophers are opening up new pathways for theorizing precisely because of their interdisciplinarity.