Pragmatism and Feminist Theory

Abstract

Although pragmatism and feminism share a number of key features, pragmatist philosophy has had little influence on feminist thought. This article explores the reasons for this failed rendezvous. Focusing particularly on Rorty’s neo-pragmatism, it is argued that neo-pragmatism’s lack of an adequate political theory, particularly regarding key issues in current feminist theory such as the conceptualization of the relations between the public and private spheres and the understanding of subjectivity, is a particularly important factor here. Earlier versions of pragmatist thought, however, might make more useful contributions to current feminist debates, particularly on the issues of rationality and ethics of care.

Enterprise and Inequality: A Study of Avon in South Africa

“…Charlotte Haddock Seigfried (1998) has led an effort to reclaim from history the women scholars who studied under or influenced American Pragmatists, such as John Dewey, William James, and Charles Sanders Pierce, during the early twentieth century. Other feminist scholars are adapting the philosophy of the pragmatists, who were not always cognizant of gender issues, toward a distinctly twenty-first century pragmatist feminist theory (Duran, 1993;Mahowald, 1997;Miller, 1992;Mottier, 2004). The third stream works directly with questions of knowledge, research practice, and evidence (Nelson, 1990;Shuford, 2010).…”

The poverty of (moral) philosophy

“…Similarly to the more recent arguments for a pragmatic feminist ethics of care (Mottier, 2004), and unlike the belief of most traditional humanisms that unity could only be forged through the discovery of some shared essence (a belief that has historically led to bloody consequences through self-appointed groups determining what that essence might be and therefore where the boundaries of humanity might be set), Weeks sees the forms of solidarity, care, and moral recognition arising out of 'radical humanism' as instead things to be 'invented' by us, arguing that this task of 'inventing moralities' in a post-foundational world can draw sustenance from recognition of the quickness with which life can be taken away and so the consequential importance of valuing it while it is still here.…”

“…Like Jaspers’ ([1938] 1971) earlier argument concerning ‘boundary situations’, Weeks recognizes that an existential acknowledgement of the finitude of life through the prospect of looming death can hold the power to flood life with urgency, meaning, and value. This meaning can, he argues, become a basis for solidarities among the living, naming this project of bringing diverse people together in the face of premature death and illness ‘radical humanism’ and stating that: For the radical humanist, aware of the contingencies of existence but alert to the meanings of life, the key meaningfulness must lie in our ties to others … a crisis like the unleashing of AIDS forces us to remember that our life can have meaning only because of the human bond, our links with others (Weeks, 1995: 171). Similarly to the more recent arguments for a pragmatic feminist ethics of care (Mottier, 2004), and unlike the belief of most traditional humanisms that unity could only be forged through the discovery of some shared essence (a belief that has historically led to bloody consequences through self-appointed groups determining what that essence might be and therefore where the boundaries of humanity might be set), Weeks sees the forms of solidarity, care, and moral recognition arising out of ‘radical humanism’ as instead things to be ‘invented’ by us, arguing that this task of ‘inventing moralities’ in a post-foundational world can draw sustenance from recognition of the quickness with which life can be taken away and so the consequential importance of valuing it while it is still here.…”

“…Once solidarity has been established in small groups, the aspiration is one of outward spread: ‘a matter of being able to respond to the needs of ever more inclusive groups of people’ (Rorty, 1994: 14). With this spread, and because there is no terminal ‘truth’ to moral questions, inevitably comes a development in the content of morality, so that ‘ethics’ comes to be seen as a set of morphing agonistic conversations rather than the imperial expansion of one particular fixed set of local assertions, something Rorty himself, caught up in his unreflectively liberalistic and nationalistic concerns, certainly failed to stress (Mottier, 2004; Turner, 2004). Further, in its distinctive drive to give voice to what Foucault called ‘subjugated knowledges’ there is reason to believe that another of sociology’s tasks may be to help ensure that subordinate perspectives are made audible within this conversation (Back, 2007) – the criminal as well as the police officer, the Private as well as the General, the Afghani war widow as well as the British war widow.…”

“…It acknowledges, on the one hand, that the ethical catastrophes of the past century gradually unveiled the disingenuousness of any picture of humanity that started from an abstract account of our elevated, non-bestial virtues, and on the other, that philosophy itself appears to have deconstructed its own faith in pristine reason as the ultimate resource for our ethical saviour. Through a critique of Bauman's Levinasian conception of ethics, and building upon a recent revival of interest in both early and neopragmatism in sociology (Baert, 2004(Baert, , 2005Barbalet, 2004;Bernstein, 2010;Mottier, 2004;Silber, 2003;da Silva, 2013;Turner, 2004), the second section proposes 'pragmatic humanism' as a promising alternative model in building its 'ethics' upon the practical necessity to offer a response to empirical cases of the exploitation of human vulnerability. Independently of this specific proposal, however, ultimately the article puts forward a more general argument for transferring the responsibility of producing ethical knowledge in a post-genocide and so-called 'postmodern' world away from its traditional home within the conventionally abstract, deductive, and legalistic disciplines of philosophy and theology towards more empirical and inductive disciplines such as sociology.…”