critical thinking and feminism

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Unit 2 – Part 2 – A Feminist Perspective on Critical Thinking

To confirm, before you begin reading…this article is written from an academic and feminist perspective and touches on political issues of oppression and dominant power structures. It is also a long article . I recommend that you take a “key points overview” approach at first (read the opening, the conclusions and highlights that you are drawn to, then read more deeply). Take breaks and come back to your reading. If it’s easier, or helpful for you, print the article and use a highlighter or the margins for some ideas. The purpose of assigning this article to you is to encourage you to be patient when reading, and to read through a well-crafted, discipline-informed perspective.

Warning: The author touches on the issue of abortion as one of her examples. This is an important issue in our time, and you may have strong feelings one way or the other about the issues and perspectives described. As part of this course, it is important practice to separate feelings, opinions, and personal beliefs from evidence-informed information and rational communication. I encourage you to comment and add dialogue through the use of the Hypothes.is tool respectfully. Consider that when you are feeling emotional, the possibility of communicating effectively and rationally can sometimes be reduced.

The purpose of assigning this article, and asking you to annotate it, is to demonstrate to you that you have the skills required to read academic articles and further your understanding and confirm for you that there are multiple perspectives on practices such as critical thinking. The feminist perspective is often not the dominant perspective when “facts” are the topic (as evidenced in the very male-dominant History of Thinking reading).

The proper reference for this article in APA format is as follows:

Warren, K. J. (1988). Critical thinking and feminism. Informal Logic , 1 , 31-44.

Critical Thinking and Feminism by Karen Warren

Introduction: critical thinking and feminism.

What does feminism have to do with critical thinking? What can a political movement, feminism, contribute to an understanding of a reflective activity, critical thinking? If critical thinking is a feminist issue, what makes it so?

In this paper I suggest answers to these questions by raising two sorts of worries about current conceptions of critical thinking from a feminist perspective. The first and primary worry concerns the nature of critical thinking and the critical thinker. The second concerns the learning/teaching of critical thinking. Underlying this twofold worry is the view that an adequate understanding of critical thinking–both what it is and how it is taught–must involve a recognition of the importance of conceptual frameworks . I argue that since critical thinking always occurs within a conceptual framework, what is needed is a contextual understanding of critical thinking, i.e. one which acknowledges the ways in which conceptual frameworks affect the sort of thinking we do. Furthermore, I argue that insofar as a given conceptual framework is biased, the critical thinking which grows out of and reflects it will inherit this bias. Just as patriarchy is the special interest of feminists, it is patriarchal conceptual frameworks and the bias they generate which is of special interest to a feminist critique of critical thinking.

The Nature of Critical Thinking

While there is no single definition of critical thinking which is accepted by all specialists 1 , it is sufficient for our purposes to use the term as it is frequently used in the literature and as it has been used by Robert Ennis: Critical thinking is reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do 2 .

Critical thinking so defined involves both abilities (or skills) and dispositions (or, tendencies). Setting aside taxonomical questions about classification, a typical list of critical thinking abilities and dispositions includes several of special interest in this paper: the abilities of deducing and assessing deductions, inducing and assessing inductions, identifying and assessing assumptions, observing and assessing observation reports, identifying and assessing the credibility of a source, detecting and avoiding unnecessary and avoidable bias, identifying and assessing generalizations, identifying and assessing causal claims; and, the dispositions of openmindedness and interpersonal sensitivity 3 .

Notice that this broad definition of critical thinking in terms of both abilities and dispositional aspects allows that creative thinking, passion, and empathy may play important roles in “reasonable reflection” about what to do or believe 4 . Critical thinkers are those who exercise such skills and display such dispositions. This broad definition also allows for the important role knowledge, especially background or prior knowledge, plays in one’s ability to think critically.

Feminism and Patriarchal Conceptual Frameworks

Although there are important differences among the variety of feminisms (e.g. liberal feminism, traditional Marxist feminism, radical feminism, socialist feminism, Black and Third World feminism, ecological feminism), all feminists agree that feminism is (at least) the movement to end sexist oppression 5 . All feminists agree that sexism exists, that it is wrong, and that it must be eliminated. As such, all feminists are opposed to patriarchy, i.e. the systematic domination of women by men.

Contemporary feminists claim that, whether we know it or not, each of us operates out of a historically and socially constructed “frame of reference,” “world view,” or what I am calling “ conceptual framework , ” i.e. a set of basic beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions which explain, shape, and reflect our view of ourselves and our world. Conceptual frameworks are influenced by such factors as sex-gender, class, race/ethnicity, age, affectional preference, and nationality. Although one’s conceptual framework can change, all individuals perceive and construct what they perceive, know, and value through some conceptual framework. At any given time, a conceptual framework functions for an individual as a finite lens, a “field of vision, ” in and through which information and experiences are filtered. As such, conceptual frameworks set boundaries on what one “sees.”

Some conceptual frameworks are oppressive . For our purposes, there are three typical features of oppressive conceptual frameworks, at least in Western societies, for an understanding of women’s oppression 6 . First, an oppressive conceptual framework typically is characterized by value-hierarchical thinking . As I am using the expression, value-hierarchical thinking (as distinguished from “hierarchial thinking”) is “a perception of diversity which is so organized by a spatial metaphor (Up-andDown) that greater value is always attributed to that which is higher.” 7 Value-hierarchical thinking has put men “up” and women “down,” culture “up” and nature “down,” minds “up” and bodies “down,” reason or intellect “up” and emotion “down.” 8 .

Second, an oppressive conceptual framework typically supports the sort of “either-or” thinking which posits inappropriate or misleading or harmful value dualisms , i.e. either-or pairs in which the disjunctive terms iue seen as exclusive (rather than inclusive) and oppositional (rather than complementary), and where higher value is attributed to one disjunct than the other. Value dualisms not only condition how one perceives and describes reality (viz. evaluatively dualistically); they also conceptually separate as opposite aspects of reality that may in fact be inseparable or complementary, e.g. reason and emotion 9 . As will be illustrated, such uses of value dualisms may be inappropriate, misleading, or harmful.

The third and most important feature of an oppressive conceptual framework is that it gives rise to a logic of domination , i.e. a structure of argumentation which explains, justifies, and maintains the subordination of an “inferior” group by a “superior” group  on the grounds of the (alleged) superiority and inferiority of the respective groups. Since it is the logic of domination which supplies the missing assumption that superiority justifies subordination , it is the logic of domination which gives the final moral stamp of approval to the “justified” subordination of that which is deemed lower or less valuable 10 .

Many contemporary feminists are interested in oppressive conceptual frameworks that are patriarchal , i.e. ones in which historically or traditionally male gender identified beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions are taken as the only, or the standard, or the more highly valued ones than female gender-identified ones. II Historically , a patriarchal conceptual framework has assigned greater value, status, or prestige to that which traditionally has been identified as “male” than to that which traditionally has been identified as “female,” or carves out different spheres (e.g. the “public” sphere of the polls and the· “private” sphere of the home) and gives value to what is female-identified only within that female-identified and relatively lower status sphere 12 . Conceptually,  a patriarchal conceptual framework functions to maintain the subordination of women 13 .

It is by understanding the nature and power of conceptual frameworks, particularly oppressive and patriarchal ones, that one can see the respects in which critical thinking is a feminist issue. It is to this topic that I now turn.

Critical Thinking as a Feminist Issue

Any issue is or could be a feminist issue. What makes any issue a feminist issue is that an understanding of it contributes in some way to an understanding of the oppression of women. Lack of comparable pay for comparable work is a feminist issue wherever and whenever an understanding of it bears on an understanding of the oppression of women. Carrying water is a feminist issue if, in a given culture, it is the women who spend several hours a day carrying water and that activity contributes to their unequal, inferior, or subordinate status.

Critical thinking is a feminist issue  because there are important ways in which an understanding of critical thinking bears on an understanding of the subordination of women. The basic link or connection provided in this paper between the two-critical thinking and feminism-is located in the nature of conceptual frameworks, especially oppressive patriarchal ones 14 .

Critical thinking does not occur in a vacuum; it always occurs within some conceptual framework . Stated differently, when one does the sorts of things critical thinkers do, e.g. observe, infer, generalize, predict, define, make assumptions, give causal explanations, there is always some point of view which is the point of view of the critical thinker. The so-called ideal of a “neutral observer, ” i.e. one who has no point of view is, at best, an ideal, and at worst, an ideological prejudice” 15 .

Recent feminist scholarship in two different areas-science and ethics-reveal the importance of conceptual frameworks. Consider ways in which feminist challenges in these two areas bears on an understanding of what makes critical thinking a feminist issue 16 .

Feminist Science . In her book Science and Gender , neurophysiologist Ruth Bleier argues that “science is not the neutral, dispassionate, value-free pursuit of Truth.” 17 According to Bleier, traditional or dominant science occurs within androcentric conceptual framework and inherits the androcentric bias of that framework 18 . Bleier and other feminist scientists have defended their charge that male gender-bias arises in two areas of scientific research in which important critical thinking skills are used: so-called “sex differences” research between men and women, and primatology.

“Sex Differences” Research . Suppose an assumption of a given conceptual framework is that there is a meaningful distinction between “pure biology” and “environment” (or “culture”). Within such a framework, the question “Are there genetic sex -based differences in men’s and women’s behaviors?” makes sense . Research projects and methodologies aimed at isolating sex-linked differences in brain structure, hemispheric lateralization, hormones, or genes to explain behavior differences between “the sexes” (e .g. in verbal fluency, mathematical skill, visual spatial information processing skills, or cognitive abilities) are countenanced, and conclusions about purely biological bases for male superiority in certain activities are offered as empirically verified or verifiable.

However, what if the initial assumption about the dichotomy between pure biology and environment is false or conceptually flawed? Then the controversy about purely genetic, inherited, sex-based behavior traits itself, including the questions asked, the research projects undertaken, the methodologies employed, and the answers given, is also conceptually flawed.

This is what feminist scientists like Ruth Bleier argue. They claim that the question – Are there biological sex differences between men and women?” is conceptually flawed, since it is not possible to separate off any “pure” biology from culture in the requisite way 19 . Stated differently, in order for the question to be meaningfully raised at all, one must presuppose the legitimacy of the very biology/culture dualism that feminist scientists like Bleier deny. Furthermore, if the question “Are there biological sex differences between men and women?” is conceptually flawed, then so is any conceptual framework which countenances a debate over sex differences, since it will also mistakenly assume that it does make sense to talk of a “pure” biology separate from culture, that one can measure how much of human behavior can be attributed to pure biology and how much to environment and learning, and that any differences in behaviors between men and women-socially constructed gender categories-is based in pure biology. This is especially important to notice since, historically, assumptions about “sex differences” have functioned to explain and justify the alleged “natural” or “innate” inferiority of “the female sex” and the biological basis of women’s oppression in her childbearing and childrearing roles.

If the views of feminist scientists such as Ruth Bleier are correct (no attempt is made to defend them here) and “sex difference” research is conceptually flawed, then so is any conceptual framework which sanctions, maintains, or gives rise to the meaningfulness of such research. The point here is not whether the distinction between “pure biology” and “environment” is patriarchally motivated or causally linked to a patriarchal conceptual framework; establishing that would be a different task. The point here is that the sort of conceptual framework which sanctions, maintains, or gives rise to such value-laden “either-or” thinking is flawed. Since feminist scientists claim that “sex-differences research” is comfortably housed in dominant science, and that dominant science reflects a patriarchal conceptual framework, then, if they are correct, “sex-differences research” is comfortably housed within a patriarchal conceptual framework-one which has historicalIy functioned to value as inferior or lower-status whatever is genetically or biologically linked with’ ‘the female sex,” or has historically sanctioned “sex difference” conclusions about superior male abilities and behavior over female abilities and behavior.

Understood in this way, the feminist objection to “sex differences research” done from within an oppressive conceptual framework is that it takes as meaningful and tenable the either-or (and not both) distinction between “pure genetics” and “environment” and mistakenly assumes that information about genetics alone will explain human behavior. The feminist position that biology is both genetic and cultured, both determined and conditioned, is never entertained. For feminist scientists, it isn’t so-called “biological differences” (whatever they are) between males and females that is really at issue, but the values, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions  about biological differences and about the relevance of such differences for how men and women are viewed and treated that is at issue. And to get at that issue is to get at the nature and significance of conceptual frameworks .

Primatology . Feminist primatologists such as Donna Haraway and Sarah Hrdy 20 have challenged traditional androcentric observational and explanatory models for primate social organization. The assumption of such models was that primate social organization was structured around “male dominance hierarchies. ” If any attention was focused on observing female primate behavior, females were cast in passive and primarily nurturing roles, while males were cast in culturally stereotyped and sanctioned active, courting, and promiscious roles. Assumptions of “male dominance hierarchies” prevented primatologists from seeing’ ‘the full extent of female choice, initiative and aggressivity or its polyandrous expression,” and from seeing that dominance hierarchies are neither universal nor always male 21 . It prevented researchers from seeing, for example, that it is usually estrous females that select mating partners, that in some species (e.g. Japanese macaques, rhesus macaques, and vervets) species dominance is matrilineal, and that no evidence supports the view that dominant males have more frequent access to females than less dominant males in baboon troops 22 .

As Bleier writes,

In the absence of knowledge about female primates based on observations of their behaviors, primatologists then felt free to speculate (that is , to construct) female primates in ways that allowed their imagined behaviors and characteristics to fit existing male-centered theories of human cultural evolution and thus to embellish, naturalize, and reinforce the social construction of human female and male genders and of relations of domination and subordination 23 .

Again, if this view is correct (and I do not attempt here to defend the view that it is), then the basic beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions which describe a patriarchal conceptual framework blinded these researchers from raising and addressing crucially relevant issues about “male dominance hierarchies” and female primate behavior. The “point of view” of these researchers does not permit such issues to get raised at all. (More is said about this in connection with the discussion of assumptions, below.)

Feminist Ethics . One target of feminist criticisms of gender-bias in contemporary Western philosophy is the dominant “ rights/rules ethic ,” i.e. an ethical framework for assessing moral conduct in terms of alleged rights of relevant parties and/or in terms of governing rules or principles, appeal to which provides a decision procedure for resolving conflicts among rights. The ethical framework is essentially hierarchical or “pyramidal,” where the “authority” of a right or rule is given from the top of the hierarchy.

Judith Thomson’s discussion of abortion in her well-known article, “A Defense of Abortion” 24 is characteristic of a discucssion within a rights/rules framework . Thomson critiques the. argument that since a fetus’ right to life overrides a pregnant woman’s right to decide what shall happen in and to her body abortion is wrong. She does so not by challenging the rights/rules framework in which that argument occurs, but by challenging the truth of the claim that a fetus’ right to life overrides a pregnant woman’s right to decide.

Feminist philosophers like Kathryn Addelson raise several objections to “the Thomson tradition” approach to discussions of abortion 25 . First, it represents moral situations in a value-hierarchial way which conceals that “the point of view” from the top of the hierarchy is an invisible, unmarked, and hence privileged point of view of the dominant group (historically white males), while the point of view of the “other (women, blacks) functions as a value-laden biased, or marked point of view. A judge is a Judge unless she is female or black. A philosopher is a philosopher unless she is feminist; then she is a feminist philosopher. And the Western philosophical tradition is just that until it is critiqued by feminists who insist on marking it as “the white male dominant Western philosophical tradition.” It is not, as traditional philosophers have assumed, an ungendered, unraced, or unclassed point of view.

Addelson argues that the sort of bias that infects the Thomson approach to abortion “allows moral problems to be defined from the top of various hierarchies of authority in such a way that the existence of the authority is concealed. “ 26 By concealing the authority (e.g. of traditional academic philosophers), the point of view from the top of the hierarchy  appears to be impartial when it is not. Furthermore, according to Addelson, since the Thomson tradition systematically ignores discussions of hierarchy, dominance, and subordination, it does not provide an adequate conception of ethics from the point of the experiences of women (including poor, pregnant women) in subordinate positions.

Second, a rights/rules approach to abortion incorrectly assumes that talk of rights adequately captures all the morally relevant features of abortion. Other morally relevant data, e.g. what Jane Martin calls the “3 C’s of caring, concern, and connection,”  27  either do not get included at all, or, if they do, get included only insofar as they can be unpacked in terms of the relevant moral categories of property, rules, and rights of moral agents.

For these two sorts of reasons, feminists like Addelson object that a rights/rules approach to abortion incorrectly assumes that a rights/rules framework provides an objective, impartial, and universalizable decision procedure for resolving moral conflicts such abortion; what (they claim) it really provides is a decision-procedure which grows out of a value-hierarchical, historically well entrenched system of social relationships whlch assumes that “authority” (objectivity, impartiality, universalizability) is given from the top of the hierarchy–the dominant group 28 .

As with the preceding discussion of feminist science, the point here is neither to defend the feminist positions given by Addelson and others, nor to establish some sort of logical entailment relation between a “rights/rules ethic” and male-dominance value-hierarchies (even if such an entailment relationship could be shown to exist). Rather the point is to suggest that if the view of feminists like Addelson is correct, viz. that a rights/rules ethic within a hierarchical social system of male dominance, whatever else its virtues or strengths , has historically functioned as if it were an observer-neutral position when it is not and has not been, then use of a rights/rules ethic within a patriarchal conceptual framework serves to explain, maintain, and justify the point of view of those” on top” as an unmarked and unprivileged point of view (e.g. of the “rational,” or “objective,” or “detached and impartial,” or “neutral observer”) when it is not. Calling attention to the nature and power of historically constructed patriarchal conceptual frameworks is part of what makes this historical and contemporary feature of a rights/rules ethic visible.

Feminist Science, Feminist Ethics, and Critical Thinking

If what I have said so far is plausible, then critical thinking in and about science and critical thinking in and about ethics requires recognition of the ways in which the exercise of important critical thinking skills and dispositions is not always easy to do, and is sometimes impossible to do, within a patriarchal conceptual framework. A consideration of a few such selected skills and dispositions will show why this is so.

1. Recognizing and assessing an assumption . When an assumption is basic to a conceptual framework, it may not always be possible to challenge or revise the assumption and yet remain within that framework. It is impossible when the framework itself presupposes the truth of the claim one is denying. In such a case, the framework itself must be changed; no reformist moves from within the framework (e.g. changing the meanings of some terms or altering other-than- basic assumptions) will remedy the defect.

This issue, the “reform or revolution” issue-change from within or change from without-arises in all areas of contemporary feminist scholarship. For example, it arises in “feminist curricular transformation projects,” i.e. feminist discussions of ways to change the traditional or “mainstream” curriculum to make it more inclusive of women. There, the “reform or revolution” issue often arises in connection with the “add women and stir approach” to curriculum development. As one “adds” women-particularly feminist women-to traditional science or ethics courses, for instance, one soon realizes that the inclusion of women begins to challenge the way in which science and ethics are conceived, the way each is taught and practiced, and which issues get labeled as bona fide “scientific” or “ethical” issues. This is because, in the words of Elizabeth Minnick, one cannot simply add the idea that the world is round to the idea that the world is flat. Some ideas or assumptions simply don’t mix. When they do not, the result one gets is more like an explosion than a mixture.

The idea that there is no clear conceptual distinction between biology and culture cannot simply be added to the idea that there is a clear conceptual distinction between biology and culture. The idea that animal dominance hierarchies are neither universal nor male cannot be added to the idea that they are. The ideas that there is androcentric bias in science and ethics (even if “only” a historical bias rather than one “in the nature of things”), and that there currently is no value-neutral, objective, and impartial view in science or in ethics, cannot  simply be added to the ideas that there is no such bias or that there is a value-neutral, objective, and impartial point of view in science and ethics. In each of these cases, to adopt a feminist-identified stance is to deny some of the main assumptions of traditional science and ethics, and thereby to abandon, at least on these issues, the conceptual framework which gives rise to them.

2. Observing and judging observation report s. As has been suggested already, what an author notices or fails to notice, what she takes as “given” in what she observes, or what she considers relevant or credible or a reason, is ultimately affected by the conceptual framework through which she does the observing and assessing. Feminist neurophysiologists looking at a cluster of cells under a microscope may take very different observations than traditional scientists engaged in observing cells. Feminist scientists like Ruth Bleier who assume that there is no “pure” biology separate from environment or “culture,” that cells are “cultured,” look for interconnections among cells when observing cells 29 . Any generalizations, predictions, correlations, or causal claims offered based on those observations will stress the complex interconnections among multiple (not single or “linear”) biological mechanisms and environmental factors 30 . Single-cause theories will be highly unlikely, if not impossible, to give. Similarly, feminist primatologists will reject as unwarranted extrapolations from observations about rodents and primates to generalizations, predictions, or causal explanations about purely biological explanations of human behaviors, because “rodent or monkey behavior is not basic behavior minus culture “ 31 . The basic assumption on which such extrapolations are based is flawed. And feminist ethicists will insist on including observations based on women’s felt experiences of abortion among the morally relevant data of ethical theory-building and conflict resolution regarding abortion.

3. Identifying and assessing causal claims . One helpful test for assessing causal claims is given by Mary Anne Wolff’s acronym “CPROOF:” To assess the adequacy of a causal claim, establish a correlation between events to be explained, precedence of some events relative to others, and then rule out other factors. How would one apply “CPROOF” to the “sex-difference research” on human and primate behaviors which is conducted from within a patriarchal conceptual framework? It is difficult, if not impossible, to apply the test since included among the crucial factors that need to be ruled out is the very assumption that is necessary to generate the research in the first place, viz. that it is possible to conduct biological sex based research “uncontaminated” by the culture. Unless that assumption gets challenged, any explanations or causal claims based on it will be highly suspect, if not simply wrongheaded and ill-conceived 32 . This is worth noticing because the CPROOF test is a perfectly good test. It is just that it is not a test one cannot effectively or adequately use  within a patriarchal conceptual framework by one who subscribes to that framework when that very conceptual framework is characterized by basic assumptions, the falsity of which would have to be challenged in order to adequately apply the CPROOF test. To do so one needs to challenge the patriarchal conceptual framework itsel f an activity which those who subscribe to it for as long as they subscribe to it cannot consistently undertake.

The influence of patriarchal conceptual frameworks is not limited to critical thinking skills. There are also conceptually-bound limits on one’s ability to exercise important critical thinking dispositions as well. Consider a mainstay disposition, “openmindedness.”

4. Openmindedness . It is difficult, if not impossible, to consider seriously other points of view than one’s own if one is not aware that there are other points of views. Suppose, for instance, that a fundamental and invisible assumption of one’s conceptual framework is that science is objective or value-neutral, or that there is a basic distinction between “innate” biology and learned culture. It then will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to take seriously the view that science is androcentric, that there are no innate biological differences between men and women (even if there are some between males and females), or that women’s childbearing and childrearing roles are not an inevitable consequence of her anatomy 33 .

One thing this shows is that the extent of one’s willingness and ability to be openminded about issues is significantly affected by the conceptual framework out of which one operates. Openmindedness is a disposition that persons do or do not exercise within a given conceptual framework . This is the  essentially contextual nature of openmindedness: it is always exercised from within a (some) conceptual framework . Notice that this view of openmindedness does not conflict with the view that openmindedness includes being receptive (“open”) to points of view different than one’s own on a given topic or issue. In some conceptual frameworks, the basic beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions of the framework might make being “open” to quite different points of view quite easy, e.g. a conceptual framework in which a basic belief is that one must always be open to differing points of view. Whether such a conceptual framework is a desirable one or not, of course, is a separate and, as I suggest shortly, a debatable issue.

Suppose this view of the contextual nature of openmindedness is correct. What, then, is required of persons in order for them properly to be said to be openminded? From within a given conceptual framework, certain positions, claims, or points of view may be viewed as undeserving of serious and equal consideration. Consider, for example a feminist conceptual framework , e.g. one that views women as equal to men, views the subordination of women as wrong, and rejects any claim to a biological “innateness” of gender differences. From within that framework, the claim that women are innately inferior to men not only will not get “equal treatment;” it  cannot really be raised at all. It cannot be raised for two related reasons: first, none of the assumptions necessary to give rise to the claim are included within the conceptual framework; second and more importantly, the assumptions necessary to give rise to the claim are logically incompatible with the basic and defining assumptions of the feminist conceptual framework, and so cannot consistently be added to it. It is a variation of the “add women and stir” problem again. Feminists who take the time to address such arguments may do so because such arguments are taken seriously in a patriarchal conceptual framework, or because they want to defeat such arguments. Since the successes of feminism involved the defeat or undermining of patriarchal conceptual frameworks, it is important that someone defeat or undermine such arguments. Still, given the sorts of beliefs, attitudes and value commitments that characterize his world view as “feminist,” and given the fact of finite time, resources, and energy, he may choose to pay them no heed.

Is a feminist who chooses not to take seriously arguments for the conclusion that women are innately inferior to men failing to be open minded? Or, is a feminist who chooses not to take seriously arguments for the genetic inferiority of Black people to Anglos failing to be openminded? The answer is “Yes” only if one assumes (as I do not) that openmindedness requires’ ‘considering seriously other points of view than one’s own” without regard for the truth, bias, or prejudice of those points of view. But the answer is “No” if one assumes otherwise and recognizes that openmindedness  always takes place within some conceptual framework. From a feminist point of view, some conceptual frameworks are better than others, and not all positions are worthy of equal consideration. From a feminist  point of view, being openminded does not necessarily require that all points of view be given equal consideration; some points of view simply may not warrant such consideration. From a feminist point of view, contemporary Western society is thoroughly structured by race, class, and sex/gender factors; as such, in contemporary Western society at least, there is no currently available value neutral conceptual framework within which the trait of openmindedness can be exercised. From a feminist point of view, then, a feminist who chooses not to take seriously arguments for the innate inferiority of women or people of color is not being “closeminded” 34 .

At this point a critic might object as follows : Feminists who choose not to take seriously non-feminist or anti-feminist viewpoints are “partial” or “biased. ” Since such bias or partiality is incompatible with openmindedness, feminists who take such a stand fail to be openminded. By extension, since openrnindedness is an important critical thinking disposition, feminists who take such a stand also fail to be critical thinkers (or good critical thinkers).

A feminist could respond to this objection in either of two ways. She could argue either that a feminist view is not biased, or that it  is biased, but a better bias than the alternatives. Which response is most appropriate depends on what counts as bias. In one sense of ‘bias,’ the charge of bias attaches to such items as assumptions, reasons, conclusions, or conceptual frameworks which are based on  false or faulty generalizations (a common conception of bias) 35 . In this sense of ‘bias,’ feminist bias arises in the same sort of way that bias arises in generalizations generally, viz. through stereotyping, too small a sample size, a skewed sample that is not representative of the total population, or a generalization from one case only. One determines bias by assessing the reasons or evidence offered.

A patriarchal conceptual framework is biased (in this sense) insofar as the sorts of reasons or evidence it offers or countenances, the assumptions on which it is based and the conclusions it warrants produce false or faulty generalizations, e.g. about biologically based sex-differences between men and women, or male dominance in primate societies. Is a feminist conceptual framework biased? Insofar as it rejects as false claims that are indeed false, or rejects as conceptually flawed distinctions that are indeed conceptually flawed, or does not seriously consider reasons, arguments, or data based on such false or flawed claims, it is not biased , or not biased in the way in which patriarchal conceptual frameworks are biased.

However, a feminist point of view may be “biased” or “partial” in a different sense, a sense in which all conceptual frameworks,  all points of view, are “biased” or “partial.” In this second sense of ‘bias’, a claim, position, or conceptual framework is biased if it is not value-neutral or objective. Since a conceptual framework is, by definition, based on certain basic beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions which permit certain sorts of reasons and omit others, it is biased (in this second sense). This sort of bias makes certain claims from within a given conceptual framework resistant to certain new evidence (especially logically incompatible evidence). Feminists who, from within a feminist conceptual framework, dismiss as unworthy of equal and serious consideration arguments for the biological inevitability of patriarchy would then be correctly described as “biased” in this second sense, i.e. as not offering a value neutral, ahistorical, or noncontextual objectivity. In this sense, bias is a matter of degree as well as kind.

Given this second sense of ‘bias’, the proper question is not whether a feminist view is biased, but whether a feminist bias is a better  bias than a patriarchal or androcentric bias. Feminists who argue that it is a better bias do so precisely because it is more inclusive and less partial . To be impartial on an issue is not to have no opinion or feelings about it. Nor is it to take some “value-neutral” stance outside  any given conceptual framework, since (I have claimed) no such stance is possible. Impartiality, like the critical thinking dispositions of openmindedness and interpersonal sensitivity, is always exercised from with  some conceptual framework.

From a feminist point of view, impartiality consists partly in listening to points of view of those in subordinate positions, of those without established authority within the dominant culture, of those at the bottom of the hierarchy. It involves being sure that the felt experiences of women, however diverse those experiences may be, are part of theory building. From a feminist point of view, impartiality requires inclusiveness . A patriarchal conceptual framework that supports or fails to challenge assumptions, beliefs, values and attitudes that serve to reinforce male domination and that omits the felt experiences, contributions, and perspectives of women, is  more partial because less inclusive than one (e.g. a feminist conceptual framework) that does not. A feminist conceptual framework thereby provides a better bias (‘bias’ in the second sense).

Furthermore, since a feminist conceptual framework which is more inclusive of the realities of more people provides a better data base from which to make generalizations, it helps to ensure that the generalizations one makes are not biased in the first sense. That is, the bias (‘bias’ in the second sense) of a feminist conceptual framework contributes to its being less biased (in the first sense).

From a feminist point of view, then, a commitment to feminism is a commitment to impartiality and openmindedness (properly understood), and a commitment to impartiality and openmindedness (properly understood)  is a commitment to feminism. Alison Jaggar expresses this viewpoint succinctly in her article “Teaching Sedition: Some Dilemmas of Feminist Pedagogy:”

Indeed. feminists believe that a genuinely impartial consideration of contemporary social life must generate inevitably a commitment to feminism… From the feminist point of view. it is not feminism that is irrational or biased. but rather positions that ignore or discount the specific interests of women. Far from constituting a disqualifying bias. feminist commitment is a defense against one very common and damaging form of bias. Impartiality is not undermined by feminism; instead, feminist commitment helps to safeguard impartiality 36 .

If what I have said is correct, a “proper understanding” of “openmindedness” requires an understanding of the nature and power of conceptual frameworks, particularly patriarchal ones.

Teaching/Learning Critical Thinking: Some Feminist Considerations

I have argued that critical thinking is always contextual in that it always occurs within a given conceptual framework. Current research on critical thinking suggests that critical thinking is extremely sensitive to context in other ways as well. According to Stephen Norris,

This is true for two reasons. First , the inferences and appraisals of inferences that a person can justify making depend on the background assumptions, level of sophistication, and concept of the task. Inferences that do not agree with those sanctioned by a test or with those a teacher might make do not necessarily indicate a critical thinking deficiency… Second, critical thinking is sensitive to context because context can dramatically affect the quality of one’s performance. This is a highly confirmed result in the area of deductive logical reasoning (Evans, 1982). Deductive logical reasoning is based on the form rather than on its content … Despite this, people reason better deductively when dealing with thematic contexts, with contexts that relate to their personal experience, and when they do not have presumptions about the truth of the conclusion. In addition, deductive reasoning performance is lowered in contexts involving threats or promises 37 .

According to Norris, both the inferences one can justify making and the quality of one’s ability to make inferences is sensitive to context, e.g. to the “background assumptions, level of sophistication, and concept of the task” as well as to whether the environment feels safe. Some inferences may be justified against one background set of assumptions but not others, or within one conceptual framework but not another. If, as Norris claims, “people reason better deductively when dealing with thematic contexts, with contexts that relate to their personal experience, and when they do not have presumptions about the truth of the conclusion,” then a person’s ability to reason well deductively is affected by conceptual frameworks.

The element of contextual sensitivity is also important to the effective teaching/learning of critical thinking 38 . It raises the problem of the “ transfer ” of critical thinking to domains other than those in which the skill was originally taught. A discussion of the problem of transfer must attend to various levels of transfer: transfer within a restricted field of study to new examples within that field, transfer across disciplinary boundaries, and transfer into the thinking practices in which we engage in our everyday lives 39 . An attention to the problems of transfer is an attention to context: the learner’s background knowledge , assumptions, and experiences, and the nature of her “everyday life.” One who manifests such contextual sensitivity  manifests an important critical thinking disposition.

According to Norris, this general need for contextual (including interpersonal ) sensitivity and for “teaching critical thinking for transfer” is confirmed, even if there is as yet little detailed knowledge about what specifically makes students who have had direct instruction in critical thinking better thinkers or how to accomplish the desired transfer 40 . To achieve this contextual sensitivity, teachers/learners must eventually come to recognize their own conceptual frameworks, see alternative conceptual frameworks, and, where possible, conduct discussions across conceptual frameworks.

It is because critical thinking is extremely sensitive to context that both the teaching and assessments of critical thinking abilities and performance must seek explicit indications of people’s reasons for their conclusions. Otherwise, one will be unable to “differentiate between deficiencies in thinking abilities and differences in background assumptions and beliefs between the examiner and examinee” 41 .

Robert Swartz may be correct that, as a rule of inference, “Modus ponens is the same in science as in history. “ 42 But, if Norris’ research conclusions are correct, then a person’s ability to learn and use modus ponens may be very different in different contexts, including the contexts provided by science and history. One implication of Norris’ view is that the ability to recognize, use, and assess inferences based on modus ponens will be affected by both the “safety” of the environment and the inferer’s own prior knowledge. A learner’s critical thinking performance and abilities may be significantly affected if the examples used and conclusions drawn are given from a very different conceptual framework. Failure to take seriously one’s own conceptual framework (‘ ‘point of view’ ‘) as well as the learner’s could also incline an evaluator to conclude, prematurely if not incorrectly, that the learner is not very good at deductive reasoning.

In this paper I have argued that an adequate conception of critical thinking must involve the recognition that critical thinking always takes place within some conceptual framework. In this respect, critical thinking must be understood as essentially contextual , i.e. sensitive to the conceptual framework in which it is conceived, practiced and learned or taught. What makes this contribution distinctively feminist is that it makes visible the ways in which patriarchal conceptual frameworks are relevant to the theory and practice of critical thinking.

Feminism changes the agenda of critical thinking by problematizing old issues in new ways. If what I have said in this paper is correct or even plausible, then the link between critical thinking and feminism is much deeper and potentially more liberating than the current scholarship on critical thinking would suggest. The aims of each are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. It may be, then, that critical thinking is not simply a feminist issue. It may be that critical thinking must be feminist if it is truly to be what it purports to be, viz. reasonable and reflective activity aimed at deciding what to do or believe.

I I do not take up directly the debate over the proper definition of critical thinking in this paper. Nor do I debate the related issues of the proper taxonomy of’ ‘critical thinking skills, ” whether critical thinking is ” subject-area specific, ” or the most effective ways of teaching critical thinking. For a discussion of various views on critical thinking, see Barry K. Beyer’s “Critical Thinking: What Is It?” Social Education (April, 1985): 270-276.

2 Robert H. Ennis, “Rational Thinking and Educational Practice,” in Philosophy of Education (80th yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Vol. 1), ed. by J. F. Soltis (Chicago: The National Society for the Study of Education, 1981), and more recently, “A Logical Basis for Measuring Critical Thinking Skills,” Educational Leadership, 43 (October, 1985): 44-48, and “A Taxonomy of Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities,” in Teaching Thinking Skills: Theory and Practice, ed. by Joan B. Baron and Robert J. Sternberg (New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1987), pp. 9-26. This definition is “sufficient for our purposes” because the position advanced in this paper would not change substantially even if some other definition of critical thinking currently in use is preferable.

3 For a more complete listing of critical thinking abilities and dispositions, see Ennis, “A Taxonomy of Critical Thinking Abilities and Dispositions,” ibid. It is worth noting that according to current research, having a “critical spirit” (or “critical disposition “) is as important in critical thinking as having certain skills (Stephen P. Norris, “Synthesis of Research on Critical Thinking,” Educational Leadership, 42 (May, 1985): 44.

4 Richard Paul, for instance, argues that since “emotions and beliefs are always inseparably wedded together,” empathy and passions are important in critical thinking. See Paul, “Dialogical Thinking: Critical Thinking Essential to the Acquisition of Rational Knowledge and Passions,” in Teaching Thinking Skills, ibid., 127-148. This broad definiton seems to have two distinct advantages: it accommodates narrower definitions in terms of skills, while also being attractive from a feminist point of view. The latter is so because, as I argue in the paper, exclusive and oppositional dualisms (e.g. critical vs. creative thinking, reason vs. emotion) are viewed with extreme suspicion by many feminists.

5 Alison Jaggar provides a thorough analysis of the first four leading conceptions of feminism in her book, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983), and a discussion of Black and Third World Feminism in Feminist Frameworks: 2nd Edition, eds. Alison M. Jaggar and Paula S. Rothenberg (New York: McGraw Hills, 1984). A discussion of ecological feminism vis-a-vis the other feminisms can be found in Karen J. Warren, “Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections,” Environmental Ethics (Spring, 1987): 3-20.

6 This discussion of oppressive conceptual frameworks is a revised version of what I offered in my “Feminism and Ecology: Making Connections,” ibid.

7 Elizabeth Dodson Gray, Green Paradise Lost (Wellesley Mass.: Roundtable Press, 1981), p. 20.

8 Although I do not argue for these claims here, arguments for ways in which Western culture, particularly Western philosophy, has sanctioned such value hierarchical thinking can be found, e.g., in: Susan Bordo, The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture (Albany: Suny Press, 1987); Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in VVestern Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984); Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: VVomen, Ecology, and The Scientific RevoItuion (San Fransisco: Harper & Row, 1980).

9 See Jaggar, ibid., p. 96.

10 I discuss this point with regard to ecological feminism in my piece “The Power and Promise of Ecological Feminism,” read at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meetings, Dec. 27-30, 1987.

II Although many feminists argue that all the dominant cultures of Western history have been patriarchal, whether enlightened, reformed, feudal, capitalist, or socialist, I leave open here the question whether that is true.

12 In Western culture at least, women are presumed to be the ones to do so-called “women’s work” (e.g. raising children, attending to domestic responsibilities, caregiving), i.e. work relegated primarily to the “private” sphere. So, while that work may have some status or value typically it is status or value within ~ sphere generally taken to be of less seriousness, significance, or political importance than the “public sphere” of men’s work.

13 Notice that calling a conceptual framework “patriarchal” does not mean that it is one held by all, or by only, males. To the extent that both males and females in contemporary culture are raised within a patriarchal conceptual framework, they will both be affected by that framework even if, as men and women, they are affected by it in different ways and to different extents.

14 Other approaches to showing the link between critical thinking and feminism also could be used. For instance, one could show the ways in which understanding how the college and pre-college climate is “chilly for women” bears on understanding women student’s abilities or dispositions . to think critically, or how testing situations and measurements fail to use examples or situations which draw on the particular or cultural experiences of women. See Roberta M. Hall and Bernice R. Sadler, “The Classroom Climate: A Chilly One For Women?” Project for the Status and Education of VVOMEN Association of American Colleges, 1818 R. Street NW, Washington, DC 20009.

15 For a helpful discussion of bias, and the unavoidable but potentially dangerous bias of a “point of view,” see J. Anthony Blair’s “What is Bias?” in Selected Issues in Logic and Communication, ed. Trudy Govier (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing: 1988): 93-103.

16 The examples are chosen from science and ethics because these two fields represent a wide range of issues concerning the making and assessing of so-called factual and value claims which are central to discussions of critical thinking. They thereby illustrate both the breadth and depth of feminist concerns about the nature and teaching of critical thinking.

17 Ruth Bleier, Science and Gender: A Critique of Biology and its Theories on Women (New York: Pergamon Press, 1984).

18 Bleier, “Introduction,” in Feminist Approaches to Science, ed. by Ruth Bleier (New York: Pergamon Press, 1986), p. 2. I do not intend to defend Bleier’s views here, or any of the other views given by the feminist scientists and feminist ethicists cited. My objective is simply to use their views to show why and how the way critical thinking is conceived and practiced within patriarchal conceptual frameworks is a feminist issue.

19 Sherry B. Ortner was one of the first to address a similar question of interests to ecological feminists: “Are women closer to nature than men?” (Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is To Culture?” in Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds., Woman, Culture, and Society (Stanford: Standford University Press, 1974), pp. 67-68. Ecological feminists raise the same sort of objection to this question “Are women closer to nature than men?” that I have raised here to the question” Are there biological differences between men and women?” For example, Joan Griscom argues that “the question is itself flawed” since’ ‘we are all part of nature, and since all of us, biology and culture alike, is part of nature” (Joan Griscom, “On Healing the Nature/Culture Split in Feminist Thought,” Heresies 13: Feminism and Ecology, 4 (1981): 9.

20 See Donna Haraway, “Primatology is Politics by Other Means” and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, “Empathy, Polyandry, and the Myth of the Coy Female, ” in Feminist Approaches to Science, ibid., pp. 77-118 and 119-146, respectively.

21 Bleier, “Introduction,” Feminist Approaches to Science, p. 8.

22 Bleier, Science and Gender, p.29.

23 Ibid., p. 9.

24 Judith Jarvis Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion, ” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (September, 1971): 47-66.

25 See Kathryn Adelson, “Moral Revolution, ” in Women and Values: Readings in Recent Feminist Philosophy, ed. Marilyn Persall (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1986): 291-309.

26 Ibid., p. 306.

27 Jane Roland Martin, Reclaiming A Conversation: The Ideal of the Educated Women (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 197.

28 As in the preceding section on feminist science, my purpose here is not to resolve this important issue about bias in ethics. Nor is it to suggest that whatever bias exists in ethics requires revolutionary, rather than reformist, changes to remedy (as Addelson claims). Rather, it is to use recent feminist discussions in ethics to illustrate ways in which the charge of bias arises in ethics and what the bias has to do with conceptual frameworks.

29 Compare Evelyn Fox Keller’s discussion of cytogeneticist Barbara McClintock’s approach to her research of the maize plant. According to Keller, McClintock urges scientists to “let the material speak to you [the material in McClintock’s case is the corn plant]” by developing a “feeling for the organism.” (Evelyn Fox Keller, “Women, Science, and Popular Mythology,” in Machina Ex Dea: Feminist Perspectives 01/ Technology, ed. Joan Rothschild (New York: Pergamon Press, 1983), p. 141). For a complete discussion of Keller’s treatment of McClintock’s work, see Keller, A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock (San Fransisco: W. H. Freeman, 1983).

30 Bleier, Science and Gender, p. 107.

32 Such considerations have led many feminist scientists to conclude that there is no single correct scientific methodology, and that scientific methodology cannot protect research and its conclusions from the investigator’s biases, values and beliefs. See Bleier, Science and Gender, pp. 4-5. 33 Similarly, if one operates from within a racist conceptual framework which assumes that nonwhites are genetically inferior to whites, it will be very difficult to take seriously the points of view that there are no relevant genetic difference between whites and nonwhites, that whites and blacks are equal, that “white supremacy” is a piece of ideology. It will be impossible to take those opposing views seriously if one continues to adhere to the basic assumptions of the racist conceptual framework.

34 Notice that I have not argued here for the view that only a feminist point of view is an “openminded” view. What I have claimed is that from a feminist point of view, openmindedness does not require taking seriously all points of view, since some points of view (e.g. that women ought to be treated as inferior to men) do not warrant serious consideration.

35 This is the notion of bias that Michael Scriven offers in his book Reasoning (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976): 208.

36 Alison M. Jaggar, “Teaching Sedition: Some Dilemmas of Feminist Pedagogy,” Report from the Center for Philosophy and Public Policy, pp. 8-9.

37 Norris, ibid., p. 42. The reference to Evans is to J. S1. B.T. Evans, The Psychology of Deductive Reasoning (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982).

38 Space does not permit me to discuss the relevance of research on “feminist pedagogy” in this paper. For a discussion of such issues, see the journal Feminist Teacher; Mary Anne Wolff’s “According to Whom? Helping Students Analyze Contrasting Views of Reality,” Educational Leadership (October, 1986): 36-41 ; Charlotte Bunch and Sandra Pollack, eds. Learning Our Way: Essays in Feminist Education (Trumansburg, N. Y.: Crossing Press, 1983); Margo Culley and Catherine Portugues, eds. Gendered Subjects: The Dynamics of Feminist Teaching (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985); Bernice Fisher, “What is Feminist Pedagogy?” in Radical Teacher, 18 (1981): 20-24; Henry A. Giroux, Theory and Resistance in Education: A Pedagogy for the Opposition (South Hadley: Bergin and Garvey, 1983); Nancy Hoffman, “White Woman, Black Woman: Inventing an Adequate Pedagogy,” in Women’s Studies Newsletter, 1-2 (1977): 21-24; Nancy Porter, “Liberating Teaching,” in Women’s Studies Quarterly, X (1982): 19-24.

39 Robert J. Swartz, “Critical Thinking, the Curriculum, and the Problem of Transfer,” in Thinking: Progress in Research and Teaching. ed. David N. Perkins et al. (Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Assoc., 1987), p. 283.

40 Norris, ibid., p. 44.

41 Ibid., p. 42.

42 Swartz, ibid., p. 270. Professor Karen 1. Warren, Philosophy Department, Macalester College, 1600 Grand A venue, Saint Paul MN 55105 0

Thinking, Reasoning, Relating Copyright © 2019 by Dr. Jenni Hayman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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5 Feminist Critical Theory

Allison Weir is a Canadian social and political philosopher who researches and writes about critical theories of freedom, identity and power, feminisms and theories of gender, race, class, and religion, Indigenous philosophies, decolonizing theories, and global care chains. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto. Allison Weir co-founded the Institute for Social Justice in Sydney, Australia, where she was Research Professor and Director of the Doctoral Program in Social Political Thought, until the Institute closed in late 2018. Before moving to Australia she held a tenured professorship in Philosophy and in Women and Gender Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. She has held visiting positions at Concordia University in Montreal, the New School in New York, the University of Dundee, Scotland, and the University of Frankfurt, Germany. Her book, Decolonizing Freedom, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2021. She is the author of Identities and Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Sacrificial Logics (Routledge, 1996), as well as many articles in books and journals including Hypatia: An International Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Philosophical Topics, and Critical Horizons.

• Published: 12 May 2021
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This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in feminist philosophical engagements with critical theory, focusing specifically on critical theory of the Frankfurt School. The chapter’s discussion reflects on examples of important feminist interventions in and contributions to critical theory, debates within feminist critical theory, and the extent to which critical theory can be considered feminist given its critique of power relations and interests in emancipation. The chapter suggests that future directions in the field must go beyond the question of gender inclusion and focus on the transformation of critical theory itself.

There are many kinds of feminist critical theories. Feminist theorists have made extensive contributions to critical legal theory, critical race theory, and critical literary theory. I would argue that feminist theory is by definition critical theory. The scope of this entry, however, is considerably narrower. It will focus on feminist critical theories emerging out of and engaging with the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, which originated with the work of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, and others in the 1930s, and continues today with the work of Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, Seyla Benhabib, Nancy Fraser, Rainer Forst, Thomas McCarthy, Amy Allen, and others.

Max Horkheimer defined the aim of critical theory as the emancipation of human beings from slavery (Horkheimer 1972 , 246). The Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory draws on the philosophical tradition of critique from Kant through Hegel and Marx; the social theories of Weber, Durkheim, and Mead; and the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Klein, and Winnicott, sometimes to consider how human emancipation might be possible, but more often to understand the forces producing our continued enslavement. This has involved critiques of capitalist political economy along with wide-ranging social and cultural analysis and analyses of the self and subjectivity, to understand the complexity of forms of social power and to ask how and why human beings so often seem to desire their own subjection.

The approach of critical theory is, as Horkheimer argued, distinct from both normative and positivist empirical theories. As Amy Allen writes, “Critical theory understands itself to be rooted in and constituted by an existing social reality that is structured by power relations that it therefore also aims to critique by appealing to immanent standards of normativity and rationality. … [W]hat is distinctive about critical theory is its conception of the critical subject as self-consciously rooted in and shaped by the power relations in the society that she nevertheless aims self-reflexively and rationally to critique” (2016, xiii). Iris Young writes, “The method of critical theory, as I understand it, reflects on existing social relations and processes to identify what we experience as valuable in them, but as present only intermittently, partially, or potentially” (2000, 10). Nancy Fraser returns to Marx, to define critical theory as “the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age” (1987, 31). The theorists of the original Frankfurt School were Jews in Nazi Germany, some of whom escaped to America, some of whom did not. Their studies of anti-Semitism and the authoritarian personality, and of a strange America apparently dominated by Walt Disney, were acutely attuned to the struggles and wishes of their age. Critical theory, as Wendy Brown writes, “upturned the myth of Enlightenment reason, integrated psychoanalysis into political philosophy, pressed Nietzsche and Weber into Marx, attacked positivism as an ideology of capitalism, theorized the revolutionary potential of high art, plumbed the authoritarian ethos and structure of the nuclear family, mapped cultural and social effects of capital, thought and rethought dialectical materialism, and took philosophies of aesthetics, reason, and history to places they had never gone before” (2006, 2). According to Brown, this involved not only grasping social orders of power but also revisioning thought itself, to develop “new forms of thinking.”

Critical theory, then, would seem to be an approach particularly suited to feminist theory. If critical theory is focused on the “the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age,” it should, as Fraser has pointed out, respond to contemporary feminism—and, I would add, to Black Lives Matter, queer politics, Indigenous resistance to colonization, struggles against Islamophobia and Western imperialism, struggles to address climate change and the Anthropocene, and the displacement of peoples in the context of global capitalism and imperialism.

So what’s feminist about critical theory? For many critical theorists, there is nothing feminist whatsoever. The entry for “Critical Theory” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy barely mentions feminism; the entry for “The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy does not mention it at all; and both field overviews include virtually no women (or nonwhite men) in their lists of references. Furthermore, The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory (Thompson 2017 ) rarely mentions feminism, and includes only two essays by women, out of a total of thirty-two. One might be forgiven for concluding that only (straight) white men do critical theory, and that feminist critical theory does not exist. But one would be wrong.

Feminist critical theory in the Frankfurt School tradition includes substantial bodies of work by Nancy Fraser, Seyla Benhabib, Iris Young, and Amy Allen, and many other feminist theorists have engaged with critical theory, including Jessica Benjamin, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Mary Caputi, Jean Cohen, Patricia Hill Collins, Drucilla Cornell, Angela Davis, Jodi Dean, Barbara Fultner, Maria Pia Lara, Claudia Leeb, Robin Marasco, Maria Markus, Lois McNay, Johanna Meehan, Patricia Mills, Linda Nicholson, Kelly Oliver, Georgia Warnke, Allison Weir, Cynthia Willett, Linda Zerilli, and others. Feminist critical theorists have contributed incisive critiques of the effects of the androcentrism and inattention to gender in critical theory, and have developed important analyses of the gendered production of the public and private spheres in the capitalist welfare state, as well as theories of individual and collective subjectivity and agency, power and emancipation.

Yet many feminist theorists have not engaged deeply with the tradition of Frankfurt School critical theory—in part because in the past few decades this school has been dominated by the work of Habermas, oriented toward the establishment of universal norms at a time when these have been thoroughly deconstructed. Contemporary Frankfurt School theory is, ironically, resistant to many of the prevalent forms of critique and critical theory outside the Frankfurt School, including deconstruction and poststructuralism—and to much of the work of the early Frankfurt School. Few critical theorists have engaged much with critical race theory or with postcolonial or decolonial thought.

In this brief chapter, I discuss the historical development of feminist critical theory, beginning with the early interventions in the 1970s and 1980s, noting some of the directions taken since this early work, and then taking up the pivotal debate on agency and the feminist subject in Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange (Benhabib et al. 1995 ). Finally, I discuss the engagements of feminist critical theory with issues of race and colonization.

Early Interventions

Feminist critical theory in the era of second-wave feminism can be traced to Angela Davis’s “Women and Capitalism,” an essay written in the Palo Alto Jail in 1971 (1977). Another important early contribution was a lecture by Herbert Marcuse titled “Marxism and Feminism,” published in the journal Women’s Studies in 1974 (1974). Both argued that the feminist movement could be a force of resistance against capitalism and its “performance principle,” which rationalizes domination in the reduction of human life to the performance of productive labor, and glorifies masculine aggression and competition. Women’s liberation would involve the emancipation of eros from “repressive desublimation” and the emancipation of positive qualities that have been designated as feminine. Davis went on to develop analyses of the intersections of racism and patriarchy with capitalism in Women, Race, and Class (1981). Referencing Marcuse, Wendy Brown notes that the commitment to utopian revolution in this early work, and in much of early feminist theory, has since been replaced by more cautious projects. As she writes, feminist theory has abandoned its radicalism: ambitions to overthrow relations of domination have been replaced by “projects of resistance, reform, or resignification, on the one hand, and normative political theory abstracted from conditions for its realization, on the other” (2006, 2). Brown suggests that this abandoned radicalism is commensurate with feminist disengagement with critical theory. However, I would argue that much of feminist critical theory tends to fall into the two camps she describes here.

The 1987 collection Feminism as Critique sets out the key interventions and debates in contemporary feminist critical theory in the 1980s and early 1990s (see, e.g., Nicholson 1986 ; Fraser 1989 ; Butler 1990 ; Young 1990 ; Cornell 1991 ; and Benhabib 1992 ). In what follows, I will take up some of the central themes in this work.

Theorizing the Public and Private Spheres

Linda Nicholson and Nancy Fraser analyze the effects of the failure of Marx and Habermas to consider gender as a category of analysis, focusing on their failure to problematize the gendered nature of paid work and work in the capitalist private sphere of the family and their tendency to naturalize the capitalist division of public and private realms. Nicholson notes the importance of the work of feminists who have criticized Marx’s focus on production to the exclusion of reproduction, but also notes Iris Marion Young’s critique of the “dual systems theory” of Marxist feminism: while it is important to include reproductive work in social analysis, the danger is that this can be simply additive, failing to challenge the framework of Marxist theory. Nicholson argues that Marx’s historical analysis is undermined by his designation of the categories of production and of the economy as ahistorical universals. Thus, she writes, “The Marxist tendency to employ categories rooted in capitalist social relations and its failure in comprehending gender are deeply related. In so far as Marxists interpret ‘production’ as necessarily distinct from ‘reproduction,’ then aspects of capitalist society are falsely universalized and gender relations in both precapitalist and capitalist societies are obscured” (1987, 29). Nancy Fraser argues that while Habermas’s analysis of modern capitalist society in terms of four domains—economy, state, public participation, and family—usefully problematizes the public/private binary, his failure to comprehend gender systems severely limits his analysis. Habermas assumes, for example, that the nuclear family is primarily a domain of the “lifeworld,” organized through communicative relations, as opposed to spheres governed by functional imperatives of a “system” (the state, the economy). Fraser points out that in capitalist societies “the household, like the paid workplace, is a site of labor” and “families are thoroughly permeated with, in Habermas’s terms, the media of money and power. They are sites of egocentric, strategic and instrumental calculation as well as sites of usually exploitative exchanges of services, labor, cash, and sex, not to mention sites, frequently, of coercion and violence” (1987, 37). As Fraser continues, “By omitting any mention of the childrearer role, and by failing to thematize the gender subtext underlying the roles of worker and consumer, Habermas fails to understand precisely how the capitalist workplace is linked to the modern, restricted, male-headed, nuclear family” (45). Fraser complicates Habermas’s analysis, developing a differentiated account of multiple spheres that takes gendered relations into account.

Elsewhere Fraser develops this analysis in her work on the politics of need interpretations, analyzing the socialist feminist politicization of issues considered “private” (located in capitalist property relations and in the private realm of the family and sexuality) and the ways in which these contesting discourses are met with discourses of reprivatization and depoliticization in the “juridical-administrative-therapeutic state apparatus” (drawing on Foucault and Habermas) of the American welfare state. In this work, Fraser calls the sphere of contesting discourses “the social,” and differentiates it from the public sphere (Fraser 1989 ). Fraser continues to problematize the public/private split in Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition (1997). For example, the chapter “A Genealogy of ‘Dependency’: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State” (coauthored with Linda Gordon) presents an analysis of the raced and gendered histories of the concepts of “independence” and “dependency” in the American welfare state (121–50). Also, in the chapter “After the Family Wage: A Postindustrial Thought Experiment,” Fraser argues that the “ideal typical citizen” should be not just a paid worker but a caregiver (41–68).

Central to this work is the question Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell articulated a decade earlier in their introduction to Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender in Late Capitalist Societies : “What kind of a restructuring of the public/private realms is possible and desirable” (1987). In her essay in this volume, “Impartiality and the Civic Public,” Iris Marion Young ( 1987 ) argues for a reconception of the public realm, critiquing the ideal of impartiality grounded in ideals of universal reason and the identity of the subject (56–76). Within a few years, Nancy Fraser, Seyla Benhabib, Joan Landes, Young, and others criticize the assumption of a single public sphere focused on determining a shared general interest, noting the gendered nature of the division between the public and the social, and the exclusion of modes of reasoning and modes of expression deemed “feminine.” While they commend Habermas’s theory of communicative action and discourse ethics as a better basis for determining shared norms than either liberal or communitarian theories, all argue that Habermas remains wedded to divisions between public and private, reason and affect, justice and the good life, generalizable interests and private need interpretations, public norms and private values—all of which are called into question by feminist analyses (see, e.g., Meehan 1995 ). Fraser ( 2013 ) and Young (1992) argue for a broadening of our understanding of the public sphere to include multiple contesting discourses in multiple spheres. Benhabib ( 2002 ) draws on Hannah Arendt to extend her analysis of public participation, arguing that domains Arendt designated as social spheres, such as eighteenth- to nineteenth-century “salons,” are in fact sites of public political discussion.

The Constitution of the Feminine Subject and the Deconstruction of Gender Identity

In their essays in Feminism and Critique (1987), Seyla Benhabib, Maria Markus, and Isaac Balbus argue, as Marcuse did, that we can find resources in socialized femininity to challenge the patriarchal capitalist performance principle, the masculine model of the atomistic unencumbered self, and androcentric unitary reason. Benhabib ( 1987 ) argues for a conception of the self as situated in relation to concrete, as well as generalized, others. In their contribution to the volume, Drucilla Cornell and Adam Thurschwell ( 1987 ) draw on psychoanalytic theory and argue that “the gender categories themselves retain indelible traces of their Other, belying the rigid identification of one’s self as a fully gender-differentiated subject.” Citing Jacques Derrida and Christie McDonald, they suggest “the immanent potential for a way of relating ‘where the code of sexual marks would no longer be discriminating’ ” (145).

Judith Butler argues instead for a deconstruction of sexed and gendered identity, drawing on Wittig’s argument that human social identities are “structured by a gender system predicated upon the alleged naturalness of binary oppositions and, consequently, heterosexuality” (1987, 135). Hence “the category of ‘sex’ is always subsumed under the discourse of heterosexuality” (136). Unlike Wittig, Butler does not call for the emancipation of the lesbian as the harbinger of a sexless society, which will emerge through the dissolution of the binary framework. Drawing on Foucault, and against Marcuse, Butler argues that the eros that is liberated will be already structured by power dynamics. Instead, she follows Foucault in calling not for transcendence but for subversion of binary opposites through a proliferation of multiple differences. While she cautions that this call can repeat the existentialist ideal of radical self-invention and notes the Lacanian psychoanalytic objection that this proliferation is a preoedipal fantasy, she opens and imagines the possibility of a future proliferation of genders, released from their binary restrictions.

Benhabib and Cornell end their editors’ introduction to Feminism as Critique by identifying a tension between the “deconstructive” critiques of identitarian binary logic in the work of Butler, Cornell and Thurschwell, Young, and Fraser, and the “reconstructive” arguments made by Benhabib, Markus, and Balbus, who “see in present forms of gender constitution utopian traces of a future mode of otherness” (1987, 13). But, in fact, Butler’s essay in the volume, despite her own caveats, imagines a utopian future, as does Cornell and Thurschwell’s essay. The difference lies in the imagined utopias, and in their theoretical and political foundations.

The Subject of Feminism: Theorizing Feminist Agency

The differences thematized here harden into oppositions with the publication of Feminist Contentions (1995) (including responses to an earlier version published in Praxis International in 1990), which focuses on some of the most important political and philosophical questions in contemporary feminist theory: questions of individual and collective agency, the meaning of gender, and the normative and theoretical foundations of feminism. Central to this debate is Benhabib’s position that feminist critical theory must be grounded in normative critical theory, against Butler’s poststructuralist critique of norms.

The debate opens with Benhabib’s critique of the dangers of postmodernist influences in feminist critical theory. Benhabib argues that the postmodernist theses of the death of man, the end of history, and the end of metaphysics (as described by Jane Flax 1990 ) are useful in moderation, but “the postmodernist position(s) thought through to their conclusions may eliminate not only the specificity of feminist theory but place in question the very emancipatory ideals of the women’s movements altogether” (Benhabib et al. 1995 , 20). Benhabib names the feminist versions of these theses as “Demystification of the Male Subject of Reason,” “Engendering of Historical Narrative,” and “Feminist Scepticism Toward the Claims of Transcendent Reason” (18–19, capitalized in the original). Feminism, she argues, would be unthinkable without adherence to normative ideals of autonomy and emancipation. For Benhabib, while the situated and gendered subject is heteronomously determined, she still strives toward autonomy. We necessarily relate to ourselves as the author and character of a narrative that makes sense to us. Hence, any call for the “death of the subject” is incompatible with feminist ideals of emancipation. Similarly, while she agrees with the critique of grand narratives, she argues that we need to hold onto the ideal of historical emancipation. Finally, she argues that feminism as situated criticism requires “philosophy,” which involves an ordering of normative priorities and a clarification of principle, oriented toward a utopian vision of the future. Critical feminist theory requires critique from the perspective of utopian ideals.

Many of these criticisms are directed toward Butler, who responds by questioning the assumption that politics requires philosophical foundations and criticizing the authority of a normative political philosophy that positions itself beyond the play of power. For Benhabib, politics, critical theory, and philosophy require normative grounds; for Butler, the role of philosophy, and particularly critical theory, is to question assumptions, and the practice of politics cannot be constrained by unquestionable certainties. We need to ask what our positions authorize and what they exclude or foreclose. Butler agrees with Benhabib that political action includes working collectively toward the achievement of normative ideals, opposing oppressive regimes. But political action also involves many other forms of action: questioning, subversions, parodies, microresistances, resignifying performances. For Butler the “sphere of the political” is where our agency is produced: political action is where we risk transforming who we are, and the answers to our questions of which way to go and who we will be cannot be known in advance.

Both are making important points that can open up crucial questions. What is the role of philosophy? To propose ideal norms, or to open our certainties to question? And how do we do politics? Butler is, of course, not just arguing that all positions must be opened to question. She’s also arguing for some strong positions. Her argument shifts between two descriptions of the constitution of subjects and identities. On one hand, “subjects are formed through exclusionary operations” (Benhabib et al. 1995 , 48); “identity categories are never merely descriptive, but always normative, and as such, exclusionary” (50). On the other hand, she writes, “If feminism presupposes that ‘women’ designates an undesignatable field of differences, one that cannot be totalized or summarized by a descriptive identity category, then the very term becomes a site of permanent openness and resignifiability” (50). On one hand, language constitutes subjects and identities always and only through an exclusionary identitarian logic; on the other hand, identity categories are fields of differences open to resignification and change. Similarly, she shifts from the claim that all metaphysical claims and normative positions must be questioned to the metaphysical claim that all identities are normative and all norms are predicated on exclusions and are claims to authority.

Fraser contends that Benhabib and Butler are embracing “false antitheses” (Benhabib et al. 1995 ). Both positions are important, and the breadth and complexity of feminist issues require an eclectic, pragmatic feminist critical theory, in which different theories are appropriate to address different questions in different contexts. Both Fraser and Nicholson worry that Benhabib, Butler, and Cornell rely on problematic universals—Benhabib’s universal norms, Butler’s universalized theory of language, and Cornell’s psychoanalytic theory of the symbolic order (also in Benhabib et al. 1995 ). They question Benhabib’s adherence to a philosophy that defends universal validity claims, to a conception of history characterized by a singular historical narrative, and to a theory of a universal process of individuation. And they argue that Butler’s theory of the subject produced through universal norms of language is ahistorical and deterministic. Both argue for a critical theory that is defined by historically situated social critique. Against the charge of linguistic determinism, leveled by Benhabib, Fraser, and Nicholson, Butler argues, “to be constituted by language is to be produced within a given network of power/discourse which is open to resignification, redeployment, subversive citation from within, and interruption and inadvertent convergences with other such networks. ‘Agency’ is to be found precisely at such junctures where discourse is renewed” (135). Cornell’s argument for what she calls “ethical feminism,” characterized by a reworking of the feminine subject position from a psychoanalytic perspective, receives little attention in this debate, apart from the charge of universalism.

The elephant in the room in this discussion is queer theory and politics, which is, weirdly, never mentioned by anyone. The shift from a politics of women’s liberation and gay and lesbian liberation to the queer politics of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) and Queer Nation was co-constitutive with the shift in theory from grand theories and normative commitments, theories of autonomous agency and identity politics, to Foucauldian, poststructuralist, and deconstructivist critiques. But while the terms “postmodern,” “poststructuralist,” and “deconstruction” are hotly contested, and Foucault and Derrida and others are named, the term “queer theory” is never used. 1 Acknowledging queer politics might have had a transformative effect on this debate. For example, if Butler were to point out that her theory is addressing the heterosexist constitution of complementary gender identities that produces “deviant” subjects and oppresses all gendered subjects who are forced to police their identities, and to repress or abject qualities that are not gender normative, that might satisfy the demand for a normative position while maintaining the critique of the constitution of norms and normative identities. If Benhabib were to acknowledge the queer politics of subversion, she could shift her focus from the need to defend a collective feminist subject and the emergence of women’s autonomy to acknowledge the historical diversity of forms of political struggle, and even possibly to acknowledge that philosophy and politics can involve not just defending norms but questioning certainties. As Butler points out, this entire debate excludes the questions and arguments posed by postcolonial theorists and feminists of color, who similarly question claims to a collective feminist subject. For Linda Zerilli ( 2005 ), the whole debate founders on “the subject question” rather than asking how feminists can do politics (see also McNay 2000 ; Brown 2005 ; Allen 2008 ; Weir 1996 and 2013 ; Leeb 2017 ).

The debates between Benhabib, Butler, Cornell, and Fraser in Feminist Contentions continue to inform their later work. Benhabib continues to explore subjectivity and agency, drawing on Arendt to develop a narrative conception of the self. Butler refines her conception of language and resignification, and addresses relational psychoanalytic theories of dependency and theories of otherness. And Fraser turns from pragmatic eclecticism to “comprehensive, normative, programmatic thinking” (1997, 4). In their more recent work, these feminist critical theorists engage with transnational and global issues, with feminism as just one dimension of broader arguments. For example, Benhabib has published extensively on cosmopolitanism and international human rights; Fraser has theorized transnational publics and counterpublics and global capitalism; and Butler has addressed nationalisms, war and Zionism, and the politics of assembly.

Race, Colonization, and Western Imperialism

Frankfurt School critical theorists tend to forget that the aim of critical theory, according to Horkheimer’s founding text, is emancipation from slavery . There has been little analysis by prominent critical theorists of the African slave trade and the continuing legacies of colonization, racialization, and white supremacy in America and worldwide. Nor have many critical theorists addressed the destruction of Indigenous peoples and cultures and the appropriation of land as property in settler colonization. Hence, there has been little analysis of the ways in which global capitalism and modern regimes of power have historically been enabled through the appropriation and commodification of labor and land, and of how these practices have been linked with and facilitated through heteropatriarchal institutions and disciplinary regimes.

To return to a theorist with whom this chapter began, Angela Davis could be said to have invented feminist critical theory with her 1977 essay “Women and Capitalism.” In subsequent work Davis engages directly with the aim of emancipating human beings from slavery, analyzing relationships between capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and white supremacy in the United States. In Women, Race, and Class , Davis addresses the legacies of slavery in the continued exploitation of Black women’s labor in domestic work, but also in the “legacy of tenacity, resistance and insistence on sexual equality” of Black women who worked as equals with Black men and who resisted and fought against slavery (1981, 29). Part of this legacy, Davis argues, was a new standard of women’s equality, which, along with the political experience of white women abolitionists who affirmed solidarity with Black activists, led to the movement for women’s rights. In later work, Davis’s ( 2003 ) analyses of the prison industrial complex focus directly on the incarceration of Black people as a continuation of slavery. White feminist critical theorists have not substantially engaged these analyses, and Davis is not included within the pantheon of contemporary Frankfurt School critical theory.

There are some Frankfurt School feminist critical theorists who have engaged with race issues. For example, Iris Marion Young includes some discussions of racialized oppression and of race and gender identity politics throughout her work. Nancy Fraser ( 1997 ) thematizes the intersecting axes of gender and class in modern capitalism in “A Genealogy of Dependency” and in her work on recognition and redistribution. Both Fraser and Young argue for transformative politics that address the oppression of social groups in relation to normative ideals of justice. Young ( 1990 ) argues for a politics of difference that stresses the importance of recognition, identifying five “faces” of oppression (exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence) and distinguishing among four dimensions of justice (distribution, division of labor, decision-making power, and cultural meanings). Fraser ( 1997 ) argues for a distinction between socioeconomic injustice, requiring a politics of redistribution, and cultural injustice, requiring a politics of recognition. 2 And she distinguishes between “affirmative” forms of redistribution and recognition (the liberal welfare state, multiculturalism policies, and identity politics) and “transformative” forms (socialism, deconstruction of race and gender identities, and queer politics). Ultimately, she argues that justice requires the transformative forms of both redistribution and recognition: the ideal is to transform the political economic system, and to transform our identities, to “change everyone’s sense of self” (24). While both Fraser and Young argue for transformative politics, the framing in terms of the politics of recognition and redistribution situates the debates within the politics and theories of the liberal Western state. Similarly, Benhabib affirms a deliberative democratic politics within the liberal state to adjudicate issues of difference and diversity.

In their more recent work, both Young and Fraser address transnational colonization and imperialism. Before her death in 2006, Young worked on Indigenous anticolonial politics and responsibility for global injustice and had begun to explore postcolonial and anticolonial theories (Young 2007 ; Levy and Young 2011 ). Fraser is currently working on analyses of racialized capitalism, theorizing racialized colonization, accumulation, and expropriation as “background conditions” of an expanded conception of capitalism. Drucilla Cornell has done extensive work drawing on imaginaries and symbolic and legal systems beyond the Eurocentric frame, focusing particularly on the South African idea of uBuntu, to defend normative ideals of freedom and justice and to “decolonize” critical theory. (Cornell 2008 )

While race and colonization are thematized within feminist critical theory, there has been little attention to critical race and postcolonial theories in this work. Charles Mills puts it quite bluntly: “Critical theorists” are white, and “critical race theorists” and postcolonial theorists are black and brown (Mills 2017 ). There has been little engagement in feminist critical theory with postcolonial critiques of Western feminisms and with how ideals of autonomy, rights, and secularism are used to support Western imperialism. In her extensive discussions of the global politics of gender and cultural diversity, Benhabib affirms a deliberative democratic multicultural politics within the liberal democratic state that “does not confine women and children to their communities of origin against their will, but encourages them to develop their autonomous agency vis-à-vis their ascribed identities” (2002, 86). As Amy Allen (2013) points out, Benhabib assumes that the modern Western ideal of autonomy, entailing a distanced reflection on one’s attachments and identities, represents a developmental advance over values and identities affirmed in other forms of life. Feminist critical theorists still tend to regard religion as the opiate of the masses, and cultural identities and attachments as primarily oppressive. This stance fails to address postcolonial and Islamic feminist critiques of Western secularism, and of the use of the discourse of the liberation of women from their oppressive cultures and religions to legitimate American imperialism and perpetuate Islamophobia.

Genuine engagement with all of these issues would require an expansion and transformation of the narrow definition of “critical theory” to include critical race theory and postcolonial theories, and reflection on the Eurocentrism and whiteness of the tradition of critical theory. This will require a transformation of what critical theory is and who it includes. Feminist critical theorists have struggled to expand Frankfurt School critical theory to include gender issues. They are now faced with the challenge of transforming critical theory. 3

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While the term “queer” was just emerging when the first version of this debate was published in 1990, it was well known by the time Feminist Contentions was published in 1995.

Fraser later adds a third dimension: representation.

This work has begun, with the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs, founded in 2016 by Judith Butler and Penelope Deutscher. The Consortium aims to globalize critical theory, to connect disparate projects and programs, and to incite new forms of collaborative research. The Consortium has founded a journal, Critical Times, and a book series, Critical South.

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Feminist Theory and Critical Theory: Unexplored Synergies

Although both feminist theory and critical theory focus on social and economic inequalities, and both have an agenda of promoting system change, these fields of inquiry have developed separately and seldom draw on each other’s work. This paper notes areas of common interest. It assesses the validity of critiques of feminist theory, such as claims that it focuses on privileged women and does not challenge existing hierarchical arrangements. Because these critiques do not accurately describe much of contemporary feminist scholarship, this paper argues that synergies between critical theory and feminist theory could and should be explored.

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Critical thinking and feminism, informal logic - canada, doi 10.22329/il.v10i1.2636.

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Feminist Philosophy

This entry provides an introduction to the feminist philosophy section of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP). Overseen by a board of feminist philosophers, this section primarily takes up feminist philosophy of the twentieth and twenty-first century. It has three subsections of entries (as can be seen in Table of Contents under “feminist philosophy”): (1) approaches to feminist philosophy, (2) feminist interventions in philosophy, and (3) feminist philosophical topics. By “approaches to feminist philosophy” we mean the main philosophical approaches such as analytic, continental, psychoanalytic, pragmatist, and various intersections. We see these as methodologies that can be fruitfully employed to engage philosophically isssues of feminist concern. The second group of entries, feminist interventions in philosophy, includes entries on how feminist philosophers have intervened in and begun to transform traditional philosopical areas such as aesthetics, ethics, the history of philosophy, metaphysics, and political philosophy. Entries in the third group, feminist philosophical topics, take up concepts and matters that traditional philosophy has either overlooked or undertheorized, including autonomy, the body, objectification, sex and gender, and reproduction. In short, this third group of entries shows how feminist philosophers have rendered philosophical previously un-problematized topics, such as the body, class and work, disability, the family, human trafficking, reproduction, the self, sex work, and sexuality. Entries in this third group also show how a particularly feminist lens refashions issues of globalization, human rights, popular culture, race and racism, and science. Following a brief overview of feminism as a political and intellectual movement, we provide an overview of these three parts of the feminist section of the SEP.

In addition to the feminist philosophy section of the SEP, there are also a number of entries on women in the history of philosophy, for example, on Mary Wollstonecraft , Mary Astell , Jane Addams , Rosa Luxemburg , Simone de Beauvoir , Iris Murdoch , and others. Additionally, dozens of other entries throughout the SEP discuss facets of feminist philosophy, including, to name just a handful, the entries on global justice , respect , contemporary Africana philosophy , multiculturalism , privacy , and Latinx philosophy .

• 1. Introduction
• 2. What is Feminism?

3. Approaches to Feminism

4. interventions in philosophy, 5. topics in feminism, other internet resources, related entries, 1. what is feminism.

Broadly understood, feminism is both an intellectual commitment and a political movement that seeks an end to gender-based oppression. Motivated by the quest for social justice, feminist inquiry provides a wide range of perspectives on cultural, economic, social, and political phenomena. It identifies and evaluates the many ways that some norms have been used to exclude, marginalize, and oppress people on the basis of gender, as well as how gendered identities have been shaped to conform and uphold the norms of a patriarchal society. In so doing, it tries to understand the roots of a system that has been prevalent in nearly all known places and times. It also explores what a just society would look like.

While less frequently than one would think, throughout history women have rebelled against repressive structures. It was not until the late 19th century that feminism coalesced into a movement. In the mid-1800s the term feminism was still used to refer to “the qualities of females.” After the First International Women’s Conference in Paris in 1892, the term feminism , following the French term féministe , was used regularly in English for a belief in and advocacy of equal rights for women based on the idea of the equality of the sexes. Hence the term feminism in English is rooted in the mobilization for women’s suffrage in Europe and the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

As a term, feminism has many different uses and its meanings are often contested. For example, some writers use the term to refer to a historically specific political movement in the United States and Europe; other writers use it to refer to the belief that there are injustices against women, though there is no consensus on the exact list of these injustices. Some have found it useful, if controversial, to think of the women’s movement in the United States as occurring in “waves.” The wave model has some virtues, but it also tends to overlook a great deal of heterogeneity of thought in any given moment. It works well enough for what is thought of as the first wave, identified as the period from the mid-nineteenth century until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. This first wave focused on the struggle to achieve basic political rights. According to the wave model, feminism in the United States waned after women achieved voting rights, to be revived in the late 1960s and early 1970s as “second wave” feminism. In this second wave, the model holds, feminists pushed beyond the early quest for political rights to fight for greater equality across the board, e.g., in education, the workplace, and at home. But in actuality, many feminists during this time were focusing on more than equality. Like the first wave, many of the leaders of the second wave of feminism were white women seeking equal rights. But also, as in the first wave, other voices emerged, broadening the movement. The second wave came to include women of different identities, ethnicities, and orientations. In addition to calling for equal political rights, they called for greater equality across the board, e.g., in education, the workplace, and at home. Transformations of feminism beginning in the 1990s have resulted in a “third wave.” Third Wave feminists often critique earlier feminists for their lack of attention to the differences among women due to class, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and race (see Breines 2002; Springer 2002), and emphasize “identity” as a site of gender struggle. (For more information on the “wave” model and each of the “waves,” see the subsection on Waves of Feminism in the Other Internet Resources section.)

Some feminist scholars object to identifying feminism in terms of waves on the grounds that doing so eclipses differences within each wave as well as continuity of feminist resistance to male domination throughout history and across cultures. In other words, feminism is not confined to a few (white) women in the West over the past century or so. Moreover, even considering only relatively recent efforts to resist male domination in Europe and the United States, the emphasis on “First” and “Second” Wave feminism ignores the ongoing resistance to male domination between the 1920s and 1960s and the resistance outside mainstream politics, particularly by women of color and working class women (Cott 1987). The wave model also cannot account for theoretical work taking place between waves, for example, of the tremendous work done by Simone de Beauvoir in her groundbreaking book of 1949, The Second Sex . Because of these many limitiations of the wave model, the feminist section of the SEP makes little use of it.

Although the term feminism has a history in English linked with women’s activism from the late nineteenth century to the present, it is useful to distinguish feminist ideas or beliefs from feminist political movements, for even in periods where there has been no significant political activism around women’s subordination, individuals have been concerned with and theorized about justice for women. So, for example, it makes sense to ask whether Plato was a feminist, given his view that some women should be trained to rule ( Republic , Book V), even though he was an exception in his historical context (see, e.g., Tuana 1994). Overall, feminism can be understood as not only a social movement but also a set of beliefs, concepts, and theories that seek to analyze, diagnose, and identify solutions to the manifold injustices that people suffer on account of gendered norms. Broadly understood, this is feminism as a intellectual movement. The SEP feminist section aims to chronicle and explain the various theories, concepts, and philosophical tools that feminist philosophers have developed.

Much has been made of the methodological differences or “divides” between various philosophical traditions, namely analytic and continental, but also pragmatist and psychoanalytic. But throughout these entries the reader will find a continuity of descriptions on the meaning of feminism, even with the heterogeneity of the philosophical methodologies these entries’ authors employ. The entry on feminist ethics, written by the analytic feminist philosopher Kathryn Norlock, describes that field in a way that is agreeable to almost any feminist philosopher:

Feminist Ethics aims “to understand, criticize, and correct” how gender operates within our moral beliefs and practices (Lindemann 2005, 11) and our methodological approaches to ethical theory. More specifically, feminist ethicists aim to understand, criticize, and correct: (1) the binary view of gender, (2) the privilege historically available to men, and/or (3) the ways that views about gender maintain oppressive social orders or practices that harm others, especially girls and women who historically have been subordinated along gendered dimensions including sexuality and gender-identity. (entry on feminist ethics , introduction)

Likewise, the entry on feminist perspectives on power, written by the critical theorist Amy Allen, proposes the idea that “although any general definition of feminism would no doubt be controversial, it seems undeniable that much work in feminist theory is devoted to the tasks of critiquing gender subordination, analyzing its intersections with other forms of subordination such as racism, heterosexism, and class oppression, and envisioning prospects for individual and collective resistance and emancipation.” (entry on feminist perspectives on power , introduction)

Even with general overall shared commitments about the meaning of feminism, numerous differences among feminist philosophers do show up in the array of arenas outlined in this section of the SEP. Some of these may be due to different methodological approaches (whether, for example, continental or analytic), but others show up because of different ontological commitments (such as the category of woman) and beliefs about what kind of political and moral remedies should be sought.

Nonetheless, over the decades there has been a lot of frustration, perhaps because as philosophers these feminist theorists often want to get to the (one) truth of the matter, for example, what is “a woman”? What is freedom? What is autonomy? Yet so far any search for a unified or unifying theory of feminism has yet to bear fruit. Consider the seemingly unproblematic claim that feminism is a commitment to women’s equal rights. Perhaps it is, but framing it this way comes with its own presuppositions. The first is that feminism is committed to a liberal model of politics. Although most feminists would probably agree that there is some sense of rights on which achieving equal rights for women is a necessary condition for feminism to succeed, most would also argue that this would not be sufficient. This is because women’s oppression under male domination rarely if ever consists solely in depriving women of political and legal rights, but also extends into the structure of our society and the content of our culture, and the workings of languages and how they shape perceptions and permeate our consciousness (e.g., Bartky 1988, Postl 2017). A second presupposition is that there is some clear and universal definition of what it is to be a woman. The SEP entry, Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender, gives a rich overview of what is problematic about this supposition. Any attempt to define “woman,” according to Judith Butler, is also an attempt to exclude some from that category. More recently this debate shows up in discussions about nonbinary and trans people. Previously, it showed up in suppositions that the typical subject of feminism was white and middle class. While feminism would be easier to theorize if it were clear who its subject is, any attempt to define it runs into trouble. (see the entry on feminist perspectives on trans issues )

Is there any point, then, in asking what feminism is? Rather than looking for a unified field theory of feminism, perhaps feminism can be identified as an engagement precisely where there are contradictions over questions of freedom, identity, and agency. These contradictions are not just logical ones but also historical ones. For example, the question of women’s political equality to men arose precisely at those historical moments when “all men” came to be deemed as equal (McAfee 2021). During the French Revolution, the French settled the matter by saying that “men” meant men and not women. In the American Revolution, “men” was not so clearly gendered but it was certainly raced as white. Equality becomes an issue precisely where there is a disjunct between what seems to be the case normatively and what is happening empirically. Questions about the category of women arise in the context of political diversity and biological malleability, where peoples of many cultures mingle and sexual or gender identity can be altered. Feminist debates over pornography and sex work become heated in the context, respectively, of a free press and economic precarity. In short, feminist inquiry arises in the context of disagreement and contradiction and it produces new ways of approaching issues and asking questions. Thus, that it lacks a cohesive set of answers may be beside the point.

In sum, “feminism” is an umbrella term for a range of views about injustices against women. There are disagreements among feminists about the nature of justice in general and the nature of sexism, in particular, the specific kinds of injustice or wrong women suffer; and the group who should be the primary focus of feminist efforts. Nonetheless, feminists are committed to bringing about social change to end injustice against women, in particular, injustice against women as women.

2. Feminist Scholarship

Contemporary feminist philosophical scholarship emerged in the 1970s as more women began careers in higher education, including philosophy. As they did so, they also began taking up matters from their own experience for philosophical scrutiny. These scholars were influenced both by feminist movements in their midst as well as by their philosophical training, which generally was anything but feminist. Until about the 1990s, one could not go to graduate school to study “feminist philosophy.” While students and scholars could turn to the writings of Simone de Beauvoir or look back historically to the writings of “first wave” feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft, most of the philosophers writing in the first decades of the emergence of feminist philosophy brought their particular training and expertise to bear on analyzing issues raised by the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, such as abortion, affirmative action, equal opportunity, the institutions of marriage, sexuality, and love. Additionally, feminist philosophical scholarship increasingly focused on the very same types of issues taken up by mainstream philosophers.

Feminist philosophical scholarship begins with attention to women, and to limitations on their roles and locations and the ways they were valued or devalued. It developed further by considering gender in less binary terms as well as recognizing that gender is only one fact of the complex interactions among class, race, ability, and sexuality. Feminist scholarship asks how attention to these might transform feminist philosophy itself. From here we move to the realm of the symbolic and how it constructs “the feminine.” How is the feminine instantiated and constructed within the texts of philosophy? What role does it play in forming, either through its absence or its presence, the central concepts of philosophy?

Feminist philosophers brought their philosophical tools to bear on these questions. Since these feminist philosophers employed the philosophical tools they knew best and found most promising, feminist philosophy began to emerge from all the traditions of Western philosophy prevalent at the end of the twentieth century, including analytic, continental, and classical American philosophy. While the thematic focus of their work was often influenced by the topics and questions highlighted by these traditions, the larger shared feminist concerns often create as much commonality as difference. Hence, a given question could be taken up and addressed from an array of views in ways that are sometimes divergent and at other times complementary.

As an historically male discipline, many of the leading philosophical journals and societies did not recognize much feminist scholarship as properly philosophical. In response, feminist scholars began founding their own journals and organizations. The first leading feminist journal, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy , was founded in 1982 as a venue for feminist philosophical scholarship. It embraced a diversity of methodological approaches in feminist philosophy, publishing work from a variety of traditions. Feminist scholarship in each of these traditions is also advanced and supported though scholarly exchange at various professional societies, including the Society for Women in Philosophy, founded in the United States in 1972. Additionally, the Society for Analytical Feminism, founded in 1991, promotes the study of issues in feminism by methods broadly construed as analytic, to examine the use of analytic methods as applied to feminist issues, and to provide a means by which those interested in analytical feminism can meet and exchange ideas. The journal philo SOPHIA was established in 2005 to promote continental feminist scholarly and pedagogical development. The Society for the Study of Women Philosophers was established in 1987 to promote the study of the contributions of women to the history of philosophy. Similar organizations and journals on many continents continue to advance scholarship in feminist philosophy. Often a feminist philosophical society will publish its own journal, just as the International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics publishes the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics. While the discipline of philosophy in the West remains predominantly white and male, feminist journals and scholarship continues to proliferate.

Important feminist philosophical work has emerged from all the current major philosophical traditions, including analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, and American pragmatist philosophy. It is also emerging from other new areas of inquiry, such as Latin American thought, which arises out of the context of colonialism. Entries in the SEP under the heading “approaches to feminism” discuss the impact of these traditions and constellations of thought on feminist scholarship. The subsection also addresses how some work, such as psychoanalytic feminism, bridges two or more traditions. The editors of the feminist section of the SEP see these different traditions as a rich array of methodologies rather than “continental divides.” The array reflects a variety of beliefs about what kinds of philosophy are both fruitful and meaningful. The different methodologies bring their own ways of asking and answering questions, along with constructive and critical dialogue with mainstream philosophical views and methods and new topics of inquiry.

As the SEP continues to grow, we anticipate that this subsection on approaches to feminism will expand to address other traditions, including Black feminism. But for now, here are links to entries in this subsection:

• analytic feminism
• continental feminism
• Latin American feminism
• pragmatist feminism
• intersections between pragmatist and continental feminism
• intersections between analytic and continental feminism
• psychoanalytic feminism

Though not included along with these in the table of contents, another relevant approach can be found in the entry on gender in Confucian philosophy .

All these approaches share a set of feminist commitments and an overarching criticism of institutions, presuppositions, and practices that have historically favored men over women. They also share a general critique of claims to universality and objectivity that ignore male-dominated theories’ own particularity and specificity. Feminist philosophies of almost any philosophical orientation will be much more perspectival, historical, contextual, and focused on lived experience than their non-feminist counterparts. Unlike mainstream philosophers who can seriously consider the philosophical conundrums of brains in a vat, feminist philosophers always start by seeing people as embodied. Feminists have also argued for the reconfiguration of accepted structures and problems of philosophy. For example, feminists have not only rejected the privileging of epistemological concerns over moral and political concerns common to much of philosophy, they have argued that these two areas of concern are inextricably intertwined. Part 2 of the entry on analytic feminism lays out other areas of commonality across these various approaches. For one, feminist philosophers generally agree that philosophy is a powerful tool for, as Ann Garry states in that entry, “understanding ourselves and our relations to each other, to our communities, and to the state; to appreciate the extent to which we are counted as knowers and moral agents; [and] to uncover the assumptions and methods of various bodies of knowledge.” As such, philosophy is also a powerful tool for understanding how gender itself has been constructed, that is, why and to whose benefit it is to construct some people as lesser and less capable than others. Along these lines, feminist philosophers are keenly attuned to male biases at work in the history of philosophy, such as those regarding “the nature of woman” and supposed value neutrality, which on inspection is hardly neutral at all. Claims to universality, feminist philosophers have found, are usually made from a very specific and particular point of view, contrary to their manifest assertions. Another orientation that feminist philosophers generally share is a commitment to normativity and social change; they are never content to analyze things just as they are but instead look for ways to overcome oppressive practices and institutions.

Such questioning of the problems of mainstream approaches to philosophy has often led to feminists using methods and approaches from more than one philosophical tradition. As Ann Garry notes in Part 3 of the entry on analytic feminism (2017), it is not uncommon to find analytic feminists drawing on non-analytic figures such as Beauvoir, Foucault, or Butler; and because of their motivation to communicate with other feminists, they are more motivated than other philosophers “to search for methodological cross-fertilization.” Moreover, feminist philosophers are generally inclined to incorporate the perspectives of all those who have been oppressed.

Even with their common and overlapping orientations, the differences between the various philosophical approaches to feminism are significant, especially in terms of styles of writing, influences, and overall expectations about what philosophy can and should achieve. Analytic feminist philosophy tends to value analysis and argumentation, though anyone trained in philosophy does so as well. Continental feminist theory puts more emphasis on interpretation and deconstruction, and pragmatist feminism values lived experience and exploration. Coming out of a post-Hegelian tradition, both continental and pragmatist philosophers usually suspect that “truth,” whatever that is, emerges and develops historically. They tend to share with Nietzsche the view that truth claims often mask power plays. Yet where continental and pragmatist philosophers are generally wary about notions of truth, analytic feminists tend to argue that the way to “counter sexism and androcentrism is through forming a clear conception of and pursuing truth, logical consistency, objectivity, rationality, justice, and the good.” (Cudd 1996: 20).

These differences and intersections play out in the ways that various feminists engage topics of common concern. One key area of intersection, noted by Georgia Warnke, is the appropriation of psychoanalytic theory, with Anglo-American feminists generally adopting object-relations theories and continental feminists drawing more on Lacan and contemporary French psychoanalytic theory, though this is already beginning to change as it becomes clearer that continental psychoanalytic theory is also interested, via Julia Kristeva and Melanie Klein, in object-relations theory (see the entry on intersections between analytic and continental feminism ). The importance of psychoanalytic approaches is also underscored in Shannon Sullivan’s entry on intersections between pragmatist and continental feminism . Given the importance of psychoanalytic feminism for all three traditions, a separate essay on this approach to feminist theory is included in this section.

No topic is more central to feminist philosophy than sex and gender, but even here many variations on the theme flourish. Where analytic feminism, with its critique of essentialism, holds the sex/gender distinction practically as an article of faith (see the entry on feminist perspectives on sex and gender and Chanter 2009), continental feminists tend to suspect either (1) that even the supposedly purely biological category of sex is itself socially constituted (Butler 1990 and 1993) or (2) that sexual difference itself needs to be valued and theorized (see especially Cixous 1976 and Irigaray 1974).

Despite the variety of different approaches, styles, societies, and orientations, feminist philosophers’ commonalities are greater than their differences. Many will borrow freely from each other and find that other orientations contribute to their own work. Even the differences over sex and gender add to a larger conversation about the impact of culture and society on bodies, experience, and pathways for change.

Philosophers who are feminists have, in their work in traditional fields of study, begun to change those very fields. The Encyclopedia includes a range of entries on how feminist philosophies have intervened in conventional areas of philosophical research, areas in which philosophers often tend to argue that they are operating from a neutral, universal point of view (notable exceptions are pragmatism, poststructuralism, and some phenomenology). Historically, philosophy has claimed that the norm is universal and the feminine is abnormal, that universality is not gendered, but that all things feminine are not universal. Not surprisingly, feminists have pointed out how in fact these supposed neutral enterprises are in fact quite gendered, namely, male gendered. For example, feminists working on environmental philosophy have uncovered how practices disproportionately affect women, children, and people of color. Liberal feminism has shown how supposed universal truths of liberalism are in fact quite biased and particular. Feminist epistemologists have called out “epistemologies of ignorance” that traffic in not knowing. Across the board, in fact, feminist philosophers are uncovering male biases and also pointing to the value of particularity, in general rejecting universality as a norm or goal.

Entries under the heading of feminist interventions include the following:

• feminist aesthetics
• feminist bioethics
• feminist environmental philosophy
• feminist epistemology and philosophy of science
• feminist ethics
• feminist history of philosophy
• liberal feminism
• feminist metaphysics
• feminist moral psychology
• feminist philosophy of biology
• feminist philosophy of language
• feminist philosophy of law
• feminist philosophy of religion
• feminist political philosophy
• feminist social epistemology

Feminist critical attention to philosophical practices has revealed the inadequacy of dominant philosophical tropes as well as the need to turn philosophical attention to things that had previously gone unattended. For example, feminists working from the perspective of women’s lives have been influential in bringing philosophical attention to the phenomenon of care and care-giving (Ruddick 1989; Held 1995, 2007; Hamington 2006), dependency (Kittay 1999), disability (Wilkerson 2002; Carlson 2009), women’s labor (Waring 1999; Delphy 1984; Harley 2007), the devaluation of women’s testimonies (see the entry on feminist epistemology and philosophy of science ), and scientific bias and objectivity (Longino 1990). In doing so they have revealed weaknesses in existing ethical, political, and epistemological theories. More generally, feminists have called for inquiry into what are typically considered “private” practices and personal concerns, such as the family, sexuality, and the body, in order to balance what has seemed to be a masculine pre-occupation with “public” and impersonal matters. Philosophy presupposes interpretive tools for understanding our everyday lives; feminist work in articulating additional dimensions of experience and aspects of our practices is invaluable in demonstrating the bias in existing tools, and in the search for better ones.

Feminist explanations of sexism and accounts of sexist practices also raise issues that are within the domain of traditional philosophical inquiry. For example, in thinking about care, feminists have asked questions about the nature of the self; in thinking about gender, feminists have asked what the relationship is between the natural and the social; in thinking about sexism in science, feminists have asked what should count as knowledge. In some such cases, mainstream philosophical accounts provide useful tools; in other cases, alternative proposals have seemed more promising.

In the sub-entries included under “feminism (topics)” in the Table of Contents to this Encyclopedia , authors survey some of the recent feminist work on a topic, highlighting the issues that are of particular relevance to philosophy. These entries are:

• feminist perspectives on argumentation
• feminist perspectives on autonomy
• feminist perspectives on class and work
• feminist perspectives on disability
• feminist perspectives on globalization
• feminist perspectives on objectification
• feminist perspectives on power
• feminist perspectives on rape
• feminist perspectives on reproduction and the family
• feminist perspectives on science
• feminist perspectives on sex and gender
• feminist perspectives on sex markets
• feminist perspectives on the body
• feminist perspectives on the self
• feminist perspectives on trans issues

See also the entries in the Related Entries section below.

• Ahmed, Sara, 2006, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others , Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Alaimo, Stacy and Susan Hekman, 2007, Material Feminisms , Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Alanen, Lily and Charlotte Witt (eds.), 2004, Feminist Reflections on the History of Philosophy , Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
• Alcoff, Linda Martín, 2005, Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Allen, Amy, 2008, The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Alexander, M. Jacqui and Lisa Albrecht(eds.), 1998, The Third Wave: Feminist Perspectives on Racism , New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.
• Anderson, Elizabeth S., 1999, “What is the Point of Equality?” Ethics , 109(2): 287–337. doi:10.1086/233897
• Anzaldúa, Gloria (ed.), 1990, Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras , San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.
• Atherton, Margaret (ed.), 1994, Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period , Indianapolis: Hackett.
• Baier, Annette C., 1994, Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Barker, Drucilla and Edith Kuiper (eds.), 2010, Feminist Economics , New York: Routledge.
• Barrett, Michèle, 1991, The Politics of Truth: From Marx to Foucault , Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Bartky, Sandra Lee, 1988, “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power”, in Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance , Irene Diamond and Lee Quimby (eds), Northeastern University Press, pp. 61–86. Reprinted in in her 1990 Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression , New York: Routledge, 63–82.
• Basu, Amrita, 1995, The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women’s Movements in Global Perspective , Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
• Battersby, Christine, 2007, The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference , New York: Routledge.
• Baumgardner, Jennifer and Amy Richards, 2000, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future , New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
• Beauvoir, Simone de, 1949, Le Deuxième Sexe , 2 volumes, Paris: Gallimard. Printed in English 1953 as The Second Sex by H.M. Parshley (trans. and ed.), New York: Knopf. Retranslated 2009 by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, London: Jonathan Cape.
• Bell, Linda, 2003, Beyond the Margins: Reflections of a Feminist Philosopher , New York: SUNY Press.
• Benhabib, Seyla, 1992, Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics , New York: Routledge.
• Bergmann, Barbara, 2002, The Economic Emergence of Women , second edition, New York: Palgrave, St. Martin’s Press.
• Bergoffen, Debra B., 1996, The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities , New York: SUNY Press.
• Breines, Wini, 2002, “What’s Love Got to Do with It? White Women, Black Women, and Feminism in the Movement Years”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , 27(4): 1095–1133. doi:10.1086/339634
• Butler, Judith, 1990, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity , New York: Routledge.
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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

Resources listed below have been chosen to provide only a springboard into the huge amount of feminist material available on the web. The emphasis here is on general resources useful for doing research in feminist philosophy or interdisciplinary feminist theory, e.g., the links connect to bibliographies and meta-sites, and resources concerning inclusion, exclusion, and feminist diversity. The list is incomplete and will be regularly revised and expanded. Further resources on topics in feminism such as popular culture, reproductive rights, sex work, are available within each sub-entry on that topic.

• Feminist Theory Website
• Women and Social Movements in the US: 1600–2000
• The Path of the Women’s Rights Movement: Detailed Timeline 1848–1997
• Documents from the Women’s Liberation Movement (Duke Univ. Archives)
• Documenting Difference: An Illustrated & Annotated Anthology of Documents on Race, Class, Gender & Ethnicity in the United States
• Race, Gender, and Affirmative Action Resource Page

Associations

• The Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP)
• Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST)
• Feminist Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Science Studies (FEMMSS) http://femmss.org/
• Feminist Theory Website (Introduction)
• philoSOPHIA: A Feminist Society
• Society for Analytical Feminism
• The Society for the Study of Women Philosophers

“Waves” of Feminism

• “Waves of Feminism” by Jo Freeman (1996).
• Winning the Vote (Western NY Suffragists).
• Amendments to the US Constitution: 13th, 14th, 15th, 18th, 19th, 21st
• NOW’s 1966 Statement of Purpose
• “The Women’s Liberation Movement: Its Origins, Structures, and Ideals” by Jo Freeman (1971).

Feminism and Class

Marxist, socialist, and materialist feminisms.

• WMST-L discussion of how to define “Marxist feminism” Aug 1994)
• Marxist/Materialist Feminism (Feminist Theory Website)
• A Marxist Feminist Critique

Feminist Economics

• Feminist Economics (Feminist Theory Website)
• International Association for Feminist Economics
• International Center for Research on Women

Women and Labor

• Rights for Working Women
• United States Department of Labor
• United States Department of Labor: Audience – Women , a shortcut to information and services the Department of Labor (DOL) offers for women.

Feminism and Disability

• Center for Research on Women with Disabilities (CROWD)

Feminism, Human Rights, Global Feminism, and Human Trafficking

• Global Feminism (Feminist Majority Foundation)
• NOW and Global Feminism
• Sisterhood is Global Institute
• Polaris Project
• Not For Sale Campaign
• Human Trafficking Search website

Feminism and Race/Ethnicity

General resources.

• Office of the Gender and Women’s Studies Librarian (U. Wisconsin)
• Women of Color Web Sites (WMST-L)

African-American/Black Feminisms and Womanism

• Feminism and Black Womanist Identity Bibliography (Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library)
• Black Feminist/Womanist Works: A Beginning List (WMST-L)

Asian-American and Asian Feminisms

• American Women’s History: A Research Guide (Asian-American Women)
• South Asian Women’s Studies Bibliography (UC Berkeley)
• Journal of South Asia Women’s Studies

Chicana/Latina Feminisms

• Chicano/a Latino/a Movimientos

American Indian, Native, Indigenous Feminisms

• Native American Studies Program (Dartmouth College)

Feminism, Sex, Sexuality, Transgender, and Intersex

• Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture (Duke Special Collections)

affirmative action | communitarianism | contractarianism | discrimination | egalitarianism | equality | equality: of opportunity | exploitation | feminist philosophy, approaches: Latin American feminism | feminist philosophy, interventions: epistemology and philosophy of science | feminist philosophy, interventions: ethics | feminist philosophy, interventions: history of philosophy | globalization | homosexuality | identity politics | justice: as a virtue | justice: distributive | legal rights | liberalism | Mill, Harriet Taylor | Mill, John Stuart | multiculturalism | parenthood and procreation | race

Acknowledgments

Over many revisions, thanks go to Ann Garry, Heidi Grasswick, Elizabeth Harman, Elizabeth Hackett, Serene Khader, Ishani Maitra, Ásta Sveinsdóttir, Leslee Mahoney, and Anita Superson.

Copyright © 2023 by Noëlle McAfee < noelle . c . mcafee @ emory . edu > Ann Garry Anita Superson Heidi Grasswick Serene Khader

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2.5: Feminist Theory- An Overview

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Let’s whet our appetite for literature in a different, maybe more peculiar way. Let’s read a different text, this one from a local Wisconsin cookbook, the Amberg Centennial 1890–1990 Cookbook .American Legion Auxiliary #428, Amberg Centennial 1890–1990 Cookbook (n.p.: n.d.).The two recipes come from the section “Game.”

Duck with Wild Rice

Boil duck, onion, and celery until tender. Remove meat from bones. Set aside. Cook rice. Set aside. Melt butter and sauté onion. Stir in flour and half-and-half to make cream sauce. Add parsley and seasonings. Add cooked duck, rice, mushrooms, and almonds to cream sauce. Bake mixture in a casserole at 350 ° for 30–45 minutes. Serves 6–8.

—Mrs. Charles T. Dekuester (Doris Van Vleit)

Bessie’s Birds

Sauté salted and floured birds in small amount of butter or bacon drippings to brown well. Put rice in bottom of buttered oblong casserole dish. Place birds on top of rice. Sprinkle peppers and onion on top. Pour consommé and onion soup over casserole. Cover casserole with aluminum foil and bake at 350 ° for 45 minutes. Serves 6.

Chicken may be substituted for the birds.

—Mrs. Hugh Guy (Viola Barette)

CLASS PROCESS

• Put students in groups of three or four.
• Have them read the recipes carefully.
• Have them interpret the recipes as they would examine a story or poem.
• What “themes” can they find in the recipe text?
• Generate class discussion, as you are guided by the discussion following the excerpt.

The recipes reflect a particular view of women and their role in the domestic space. In other words, the woman’s domain is in the house, her workspace the kitchen, where she will cook for her husband (and by extension the children). Notice that each recipe privileges the male name, with the woman’s maiden name—her original name and identity—put in parenthesis. Even the use of Mrs. denotes her married status, whereby Mr. does not tell us the married status of the male. We are in the realm of patriarchy , the condition that demonstrates male domination over women. The recipes are even more interesting, for the section of this cookbook is “Game,” further suggesting particular gender roles: men, the sportsmen, go hunting for this game, while the women, remaining at home, cook up that game for the family. If we interpret these recipes as we might a piece of literature, we can identify particular themes that represent feminist criticism: women are inferior to men in patriarchy; women’s space is the private place of domesticity, the man’s space is public (in this case the rugged wild); the woman’s identity is determined by her husband’s identity (she, like Eve, is dependent on her husband’s rib, so to speak).

Now let’s look at a literary use of the kitchen as a domestic space. Here is the cast of characters and opening set description for Susan Glaspell’s one-act play, Trifles (1916). The play was first performed by the Provincetown Players in Massachusetts, with Glaspell playing the role of Mrs. Hale. A year later, Glaspell turned the play into a short story, “A Jury of Her Peers,” partly to reach a larger reading audience. The inspiration for the play came from a murder reported in the Des Moines Register .Articles on case: www.midnightassassin.com/sgarticles.html .

• GEORGE HENDERSON (County Attorney)
• HENRY PETERS (Sheriff)
• LEWIS HALE, A neighboring farmer

SCENE: The kitchen is the now abandoned farmhouse of JOHN WRIGHT , a gloomy kitchen, and left without having been put in order—unwashed pans under the sink, a loaf of bread outside the bread-box, a dish-towel on the table—other signs of incompleted work. At the rear the outer door opens and the SHERIFF comes in followed by the COUNTY ATTORNEY and HALE . The SHERIFF and HALE are men in middle life, the COUNTY ATTORNEY is a young man; all are much bundled up and go at once to the stove. They are followed by the two women—the SHERIFF ’s wife first; she is a slight wiry woman, a thin nervous face. MRS HALE is larger and would ordinarily be called more comfortable looking, but she is disturbed now and looks fearfully about as she enters. The women have come in slowly, and stand close together near the door. Susan Glaspell, Trifles (1916; Project Gutenberg, 2011), http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10623/10623-h/10623-h.htm#TRIFLES .

The following excerpt is the opening of the short story “A Jury of Her Peers”:

WHEN Martha Hale opened the storm-door and got a cut of the north wind, she ran back for her big woolen scarf. As she hurriedly wound that round her head her eye made a scandalized sweep of her kitchen. It was no ordinary thing that called her away—it was probably farther from ordinary than anything that had ever happened in Dickson County. But what her eye took in was that her kitchen was in no shape for leaving; her bread all ready for mixing, half the flour sifted and half unsifted.

She hated to see things half done; but she had been at that when the team from town stopped to get Mr. Hale, and then the sheriff came running in to say his wife wished Mrs. Hale would come too—adding, with a grin, that he guessed she was getting scarey and wanted another woman along. So she had dropped everything right where it was.Susan Glaspell, “A Jury of Her Peers,” in The Best Short Stories of 1917 , ed. Edward J. O’Brien (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1918; University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center, 1996), etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin...ublic&part=all .

• Have the students read Trifles .
• Ask the students to make a chart on a piece of paper: label the left side “men,” the right side “women.”
• Students should then fill in the chart: what symbols are associated with the men and women?

When we turn to the Trifles example, we see how a writer uses this domestic space and its implications to create a symbolic statement about gender. The men all have first and last names and are given an occupation (attorney, sheriff, or farmer); the women are only known by their husband’s names—they are not even given first names. This naming becomes important in the play, for the suspected murderer Minnie Wright is referred to as Minnie Foster by Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, suggesting that she had lost her identity by marrying her husband, who was a cold and cruel man, even preventing her from singing in the choir or having a telephone in the house (see Gretchen Panzer’s sample paper on voice in The Great Gatsby later in the chapter).

Furthermore, the setting of the play is important—all the action on stage takes place in the kitchen, a kitchen that is in disarray. The men, of course, view the messy kitchen as a fault of Minnie’s: she just isn’t a very good housewife and housekeeper, for that is her primary role according to the men. To be a housewife, in addition, means that women are only concerned with “trifles,” insignificant things. Later in the play and the short story we find out that Minnie’s canning—her preserves—have been ruined because the jars have frozen and burst. Again, the men see this as sloppy housekeeping, while the women view the preserves as Minnie’s hard work to care for her family. The idea of “preserves” or “preservation” becomes a central theme in Glaspell’s work, for Minnie must preserve her dignity as a woman, even if it means that she must murder her husband. The great irony of the play and short story is that the women discover the evidence—the strangled bird—that would be enough to convict Minnie of murder, but they withhold this evidence, thus implying that Minnie will be set free. The women create their own justice system, becoming a jury of their peers: women.

Feminism is a powerful literary theory that is dedicated to social and political change. “How to define feminism? Ah, that is the question,” a befuddled Hamlet might ask. A useful definition can be found in Michael Kimmel and Thomas Mosmiller’s Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1776–1990: A Documentary History (1992). They focus on four central points:

• There is evidence that women are treated differently and unequally.
• Women are not treated equally in the private and public sphere.
• If these points are true, then that’s wrong and becomes a moral problem.
• Thus feminism is a commitment to change.Michael Kimmel and Thomas Mosmiller, Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1776–1990 a Documentary History (Boston: Beacon, 1992).
• On the blackboard or whiteboard, have the students generate examples for points 1 and 2 of the list. This should lead to a spirited discussion.

Two other definitions will be useful to you: Barbara Smith argues that “feminism is the political theory and practice that struggles to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, disabled women, Jewish women, lesbians, old women—as well as white, economically privileged, heterosexual women. Anything less than this vision of total freedom is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement.”from A History of U.S. Feminisms by Kory Dicker (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2008), p. 7. Noted feminist author bell hooks adds, “Feminism is a struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganize society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.”bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center , 2nd ed. (London: Pluto, 2000).

Feminist literary criticism is also about this commitment to equality, to change, and it works its way by arguing that literature is a powerful cultural force that mirrors gender attitudes. Feminist literary criticism can be categorized into three stages: patriarchal criticism, gynocriticism, and feminine writing.

Patriarchal criticism examines the prejudices against women by male writers. Such criticism analyzes the way that canonical authors—mostly men—create images of women. For example, Gretchen Panzer’s sample paper in this chapter explores how F. Scott Fitzgerald silences Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby , further reinforcing the notion that this great American novel depicts women in demeaning ways.F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York: Scribner, 2003). This criticism is often focused on close textual study since it will examine how men and women are depicted in literary texts. Patriarchal criticism will be central to this chapter.

Gynocriticism is concerned with women writers, particularly in the ways that women writers have become included within the canon. In American literature, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God are classic examples;Kate Chopin, The Awakening , 2nd ed., ed. Nancy A. Walker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000); Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: HarperCollins, 2000). these texts, now part of the canon of American literature, have only been seen as such for the past twenty-five years or so. Another interesting example is the evolution of The Norton Anthology of English Literature , which reflects the insertion of women into the canon. The edition for 1968,M. H. Abrams, ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature , rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968). which covers the Middle Ages, the seventeenth century, the Restoration and the eighteenth century, the Romantic period, the Victorian age, and the twentieth century, includes no women. That’s right—not one single woman! The latest (eighth) edition of this anthology,Stephen Greenblatt and M. H. Abrams, eds., The Norton Anthology of English Literature , 8th ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996). published thirty-eight years later, includes the following women writers:

• Middle Ages : Marie De France and Margery Kempe
• Sixteenth and seventeenth centuries : Queen Elizabeth, Mary (Sydney) Herbert, Aemilia Lanyer, Mary Wroth, Katherine Philips, and Margaret Cavendish
• Restoration and eighteenth century : Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Frances Burney
• Romantic period : Anna Letitia Barbauld, Charlotte Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Felicia Dorothea Hemans
• Victorian age : Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Christina Rossetti
• Twentieth century : Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Jean Rhys, Nadine Gordimer, Alice Munro, and Anne Carson

What does it mean, consequently, when there are no representations of women? Historically, if women didn’t exist in the canon, then we did not—we could not—study them. But with the rise of the field of women’s studies in the 1960s, which introduced the idea of feminist literary criticism, we now value the study of women and their accomplishments, as well as thinking about how gender is constructed and perpetuated generally. This evolution about women and literature is mirrored in the evolving contents of the Norton anthology, which also reflects the evolving canon that is more inclusive, particularly to women writers.

Feminine writing explores the notion that women may write differently than men, suggesting that there may be a “women’s writing” that is an alternative to male writing. Elaine Showalter in A Literature of Their Own (1977)Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). traces women’s writing into three stages. The first stage is Imitation or Feminine (1840–80), where women imitated men. The classic examples of this are Charlotte and Emily Brontë (of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights fame, respectively), who took on male names—Currer Bell and Acton Bell.Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre , ed. Richard J. Dunn (New York: Norton, 2001); Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights , ed. Richard J. Dunn (New York: Norton, 2003). To give another famous example, George Eliot, who wrote the Victorian classic Middlemarch , was actually Mary Ann Evans.George Eliot, Middlemarch , ed. Bert G. Hornback (New York: Norton, 2000). The second stage of women’s writing is Protest or Feminist (1880–1920), which sees women becoming much more political as writers, reacting directly to male domination in society and literature. Kate Chopin is an example of this stage, as is Virginia Woolf. Finally, the third stage, Self-Discovery or Female (1920–), becomes more radical as women turn inward toward the female, toward the body, creating works that mirror a writing particular to women.

As you can see, to narrowly define feminist literary criticism is difficult, for there are a myriad of approaches to take. Feminism is often referred to in the plural—feminisms—because there is such diversity within feminism about core terms and philosophies. A useful starting point is Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism , edited by Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl .Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl, eds., Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism , rev. ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997). You can examine the table of contents at www.amazon.com/Feminisms-Anthology -Literary-Theory-Criticism/dp/0813523893#reader_0813523893 .

A look at this table of contents will show you the complexity of feminist literary criticism and provide you with some ideas to focus your feminist paper on.

Your Process

• Choose a literary work to examine: either a male or female writer.
• Look through the table of contents of Feminisms and choose three chapter areas that might lead to a focus for your paper.
• Write down several possible working thesis ideas for your paper.
• Remember, you may decide to focus your paper on gender criticism or masculinity studies, which are defined in the Key Terms.

Critical Thinking and Feminism

Citation Count

Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy: Relations, Differences, and Limits

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