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And Universal Ism

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And Universal Ism Philosophy, feminism and universal ism Jean Grimshaw During the last ten years or so, when I have been asked fundamental aims of feminist philosophical work has what my particular 'interests' are, I have usually said that been to deconstruct the claims of much masculinist I have been working on 'feminism and philosophy', or philosophical theory to be 'universal' or 'objective' in 'philosophy and feminism' - or perhaps, though less the sense of being able to adopt a 'God's eye view' above often, 'feminist philosophy'. I have become increasingly the fray of things like social location and politics. interested in how to think about this conjunction: Elizabeth Grosz3 writes that three of the most important 'Feminism and ... ; Philosophy and ... ' things questioned by feminist philosophers have been the In Hipparchia's Choice, Michele Le Dceuffwrites: following: The desire to see philosophy continue: this is 1. The belief in any universal truth independent of the something that preoccupies us all. Yet have we particularities of history or social conditions. thought ill enough of this discipline that we love? 2. The belief in observer-neutral or context-free '" On occasion I have maintained that this knowledge. discourse which claims to understand everything 3. The belief in a transhistorical subject of knowledge better than any other is a mode of phantasmagorical who can in all ways 'distance' himself from the hegemony; all the same, in it I saw my road to objects of knowledge; in other words, a dIsembodied, freedom.) sexless, perspectiveless knower. My own experience was similar. My interest in These views are shared in many ways by postmodern philosophy began in my teenage years and became epistemologists. The distinctiveness of the feminist serious in my mid twenties. Among other things, it critique of philosophy, however, lies mainly in the symbolized to me independence of mind and rejection of demonstration that there are important ways in which the narrow rigidities of my childhood and adolescence. much of philosophy rests on typically or paradig­ And one of its great attractions was that it seemed to have matically male experience and concerns, even though nothing to do with the rest of my life. The 'I' who studied these may not be the same at all times. What preoccupies philosophy seemed almost Cartesian, and I thought of philosophers, what is seen as 'important', what is philosophy as dealing with 'universal' questions where I marginalized or even seen as 'not philosophy', what is might just possibly meet on equal terms, as it were, with absent and not thought worthy of mention, what is given other 'minds', and where the problems of the rest of my little value or treated with contempt - these are closely life could be bracketed out. (The American philosopher related to conceptions of masculinity, and to the projects Sara Ruddick writes, in similar vein, that her life was that are, in varying ways, seen as typifying the life of a shaped by a love affair with Reason; a desire to be in a man. Much feminist philosophical writing has aimed to 'world' that transcended the messy and fleshly concerns show that this 'false universalism' is, in fact, a type of of everyday life - and particularly, in her case, particularity . 2 motherhood. ) Now this might suggest that the aim of feminist When I first studied philosophy, the question of philosophy should be to transcend this false gender did not even enter my head, and when I first universalism, and develop philosophical theories which became aware of it, it was with a profound sense of are in some way more inclusive, and perhaps genuinely shock, since it seemed to undermine the foundations of 'universal'. This kind of view, when applied to other what I thought I had been doing. One of the most fields of enquiry such as science, has sometimes been Radical Philosophy 76 (March/April 1996) 19 called 'feminist empiricism'; it is a view of feminist write from certain positions, difficult though it may be to scholarship and enquiry as aiming simply to correct the acknowledge or formulate these, or to think clearly about errors and biases of older masculinist ways, whilst the impact they may have on one's own work. engaging nevertheless in a similar kind of enterprise. But if it is important to think about the position from This conception of feminist enquiry, however, has which one writes, it is equally important - and difficult­ been taken to task for its failure to be critical enough of to think about whom one imagines one is addressing and the paradigms with which much philosophical enquiry why. A symptom of this difficulty is the uneasiness has been conducted. In particular, it has been argued that commonly felt by many feminist writers about the term old-style 'objectivity', premissed on an implicit belief in 'we'. Who is included or excluded in this 'we'? How is the possibility of a 'God's eye view' which transcends one to think about these inclusions and exclusions? I social and historical location, is not recuperable for want now to explore some of these questions further by feminist purposes. Some kind of perspectivism must be looking at Michele Le D<xuff's discussion of feminism an essential presupposition of feminist enquiry, however and philosophy in Hipparchia 's Choice. difficult it may be to formulate this. Feminist 'standpoint' theory is an attempt to formulate a theory of this Le Dmuff's choice perspectivism which draws on Marxist views of Like other philosophers wntmg from a feminist knowledge. Such attempts to formulate a feminist perspective, Le D<xuff rejects the false universalism of perspectivism do not usually involve a total rejection of much philosophical writing. She links her feminist any notion of 'objectivity'. More commonly, they critique of this false universalism to her analysis in a attempt to redefine or reformulate it. Sandra Harding, for previous book, The Philosophical Imaginary, of myths instance, distinguishes between 'objectivism' (the belief and images in philosophy. 6 Historically, philosophy has ~n the God's eye view) and 'objectivity'.4 She argues that often seen itself as fully 'rational'; it has tried to establish objectivism is both too strong and too weak for feminist its own value by distinguishing itself from other forms of purposes, and that feminist enquiry should both reject discourse such as myth or poetry. If philosophers have the possibility of knowledge that transcends social used myths or images, they have seen these as mere location and reformulate the notion of 'objectivity' to embellishments, or as inessential heuristic or pedagogic allow for the critique, development and accountability of devices. But Le D<xuff argues that these images are knowledge claims from varying perspectives in ways that constitutive of philosophy. It could not function ~ithout are foreign to 'objectivism'. them; they are its unacknowledged support. And it is If 'objectivism' is rejected, it means that questions important to investigate them since they often indicate about the objects and the subjects of knowledge can no the points at which there is stress or tension in a longer be sharply held apart. Knowledge claims cannot philosophical theory, the points where it cannot come be considered in abstraction from consideration of who out into the open, or where there are things that it has to is claiming to know, since the 'what' cannot fail to be exclude. She analyses Thomas More's Utopia, for inflected by the 'who'. The discomfiting aspect of this, example, and in particular the way in which it is for one's own philosophical practice, arises from the dominated by imagery of theatre and islands. She argues recognition that the feminist philosopher needs to re­ that these images signal a blind spot in More's work; an evaluate not merely the masculinism of aspects of the excess where he says more than he means to, and where philosophical tradition, but also the location of her own he is not able to say other things overtly. Not all of the philosophical work. It is (once one has started) not so myths and images that Le D<xuff analyses are directly hard to see how philosophical traditions are often connected with gender. But nevertheless notions of the masculinist. It is much harder to think about 'masculine' and the 'feminine' commonly function, as perspectivism in relation to one's own work. But the myth or metaphor, to disguise or repress what cannot be critique of masculinist particularity disguised as acknowledged, what must be excluded. They also universalism has, in recent years, also intersected indicate the points at which a philosopher may 'exceed' powerfully with a growing awareness within feminist or contradict the premisses of his own theory. In theory and practice of the ways in which some feminist Hipparchia's Choice there is some very powerful writing has tended, sometimes unwittingly, to analysis of the way in which Sartre's analysis of 'bad 'universalize' the experiences and practices of a faith' in Being and Nothingness signals such blind spots. relatively small and privileged group of women. 5 A great So, philosophy's own self-image has been that of the deal has now been written about the importance of fully transparent and rational, that which can validate its feminist writers, too, recognizing that they speak and own foundations. But Le D<xuff argues that no discourse 20 can do this. Her strategy of analysing myths and images show that there is actually something to discuss, and you in philosophy aims not merely to expose what is hidden almost inevitably reach a kind of deadlock. within any particular philosophical system, but to work So it seems that the audience to whom philosophical towards a new conception of philosophy, one which is work is addressed must, if the work is to communicate at aware of its own necessary limitations and partial and all, share at least a sense of the basic worth and incomplete character.
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