No More Like Pallas Athena: Displacing Patrilineal Accounts of Modern Feminist Political Theory

Abstract

The history of modern feminist political theories is often framed in terms of the already existing theories ofa number of radical nineteenth-century men philosophers such as James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Charles Fourier, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. My argument takes issue with this way of framing feminist political theory by demonstrating that it rests on a derivation that remains squarely within the logic of malestream political theory. Each of these philosophers made use of a particular discursive trope that linked the idea of women's emancipation with the idea of social progress. I argue that this trope reproduced the masculinist signification and symbolism inherent in their particular political philosophies. I argue for a more positive, less masculinist, account of the history of feminist political thought.

Feminist Political Theory without Apology: Anna Doyle Wheeler, William Thompson, and theAppeal of One Half the Human Race, Women

“…Dolores Dooley's path‐breaking Equality in Community in 1996 provided the first book‐length study of her thought. Some scholars discuss her feminist contributions directly (Pankhurst ; Galgano ; Groag and Offen ; McFadden ; Dooley ; McFadden ; Nyland and Heenan ; Cory ; Goldsworthy and Mulvey‐Roberts ; Moriarty ; Gardner ; Jose ; Kelly ; Jose ), and others mention her as part of discussions that have other concerns as their focus (Killham ; Malmgreen ; Ball ; Coole ; Pateman ; Waithe ; Ciolkowski ; Taylor ; Ferguson ; Jose ; Kilfeather ; Kaswan ; Jenkins ). With the exception of Dooley , Goldsworthy and Mulvey‐Roberts , and Gardner , when Wheeler's views are noted at all, it is Thompson who is named as the authority.…”

“…Despite the undoubted improvement in the social and political conditions for women in England and the Western world in the twenty‐first century, the masculinist mindset that the Appeal challenged does not seem to have diminished much in the intervening two centuries. Hence the Appeal is as relevant and cogent today as when it was first published: an original formulation of feminist political theory that was more than a hyphenated offspring of the masculinist cross‐currents of political thought in which it arose (Jose , 2–3).…”