The Difference of Feminist Philosophy: The Case of Shame

Abstract

This essay is written in two parts. The first is a commentary on the affective politics of philosophy as a discipline. The theme here is philosophy’s reverence problem, an affective bond to the teacher and the text, which is threatened or even injured by feminist philosophy. Feminist philosophy emerges as disruptive irreverence in the midst of the discipline, and injured reverence becomes a powerful prereflective motivation for resistance to feminist thought. The second part of the essay is an exploration of the field of inquiry called feminist phenomenology. Is feminist phenomenology simply phenomenology from another point of view, that of the embodied female subject? Is it conducted, in other words, in a space beyond politics and power where the difference of this subject discloses values and meanings that have not yet been thematized in phenomenological inquiry, but which phenomenology is already competent to pursue? Or does feminist phenomenology disrupt or transform phenomenological practice as we traditionally understand it? In this paper, I claim that phenomenology must be critical in order to be feminist, that it must disrupt phenomenological practice rather than simply “applying” it to a new object, “woman.” In the work of Simone de Beauvoir we find a different phenomenological practice that feminists can count as a positive inheritance. The real difference of feminist phenomenology, however, only emerges in the practice itself. In order to capture something about this difference I take the phenomenon of shame as a case study, and compare three recent phenomenological accounts of shame.

The Many, the Wise, and the Marginalized: The Endoxic Method andThe Second Sex

“…Given this link between Aristotle and phenomenology, my argument that we can read The Second Sex as an endoxic practice supports feminist scholarship that interprets Beauvoir as a phenomenologist (see, for example, Heinämaa 1999; Bergoffen 2000; Heinämaa 2003; Oksala 2006; Weiss 2012; Oksala 2016; Mann 2018). 5 It is important to note this support because Beauvoir is not always recognized or read as a phenomenologist (Heinämaa 1999, 114; Weiss 2012, 92).…”

“…Or does it initiate a new form of phenomenological practice? (Mann 2018, 41). As Silvia Stoller demonstrates in a recent overview of the tradition, feminist phenomenology is rich with difference (Stoller 2017).…”

“…In terms of my work, I sense that Beauvoir's endoxic method best complements the view that Beauvoir is developing a distinct mode of phenomenological inquiry. For examples of this view, see Oksala 2006; 2016; Mann 2018, 55.…”

“…Important to note is that feminist endoxic practice and feminist phenomenology are doing something similar, even if they differ in other important respects 6 . Bonnie Mann writes that feminist phenomenology “seeks not just to describe the world in other words, but to change it—particularly to intervene in those power relations that have sedimented into conditions of injustice” (Mann 2018, 55). As we will see, I propose that a feminist endoxic practice shares a similar goal of interweaving description with prescription.…”

Feminist Phenomenology and the Politics of Wonder

“…Unlike Oksala, who turns to Foucault, I find the sort of phenomenology I am calling for in Beauvoir. See my essays on Beauvoir's phenomenology (Mann, 2012(Mann, , 2017(Mann, , 2018. in short, in relation to history.…”