Feminist Aesthetics

This chapter summarizes central issues and themes in feminist philosophical aesthetics in the analytic tradition, although some continental figures are discussed. After introducing the interdisciplinary, intersectional and trans* inclusive approach that feminist aesthetics is starting to take, this essay discusses situatedness, artistic canon formation, humanism vs. gynocentrism, rewriting the philosophical canon, overcoming artworld biases, and the role of the aesthetic in systemic oppression. Specific topics to be discussed include the male gaze, the female nude, the concept of artistic genius, women’s artistic production, the purported universality of correct aesthetic judgment, the sex/gender distinction as it pertains to aesthetics and the arts, and body aesthetics.

Postcolonial and Decolonial Theories

This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in feminist philosophical engagements with postcolonial and decolonial theories, reflection on examples of important contributions to this discussion, and a discussion of current and future directions in anti-colonial feminist philosophy. It focuses on the specific contexts, issues, and lifeworld concerns that ground anti-colonial feminisms in different regions and provides nonfoundational histories and definitions for the purposes of resisting philosophical appropriations of anti-colonial feminisms. It argues that to understand what is postcolonial or decolonial about feminisms requires a focus on women’s material and historical contexts rather than a primary focus on academic genealogies of concepts.

Queer Theory

This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in queer theory, with particular attention to the challenges it has posed to the concepts of normativity, identity, and the category of “woman.” It explores queer theory’s emergence from lesbian and gay studies, and considers its relation to feminist philosophy and trans theory. The chapter outlines the founding contributions of Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, along with several other influential queer theorists, and traces the concept of heteronormativity from its central place in queer theory’s earliest works to more recent reconsiderations.

Pragmatism

This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in feminist philosophical engagements with the uniquely American intellectual tradition often referred to as American pragmatism. After introducing pragmatism, the foundational feminist work and influence of Jane Addams is presented, followed by a discussion of other noteworthy contributors to feminist pragmatism. Significant themes in feminist pragmatism including race and identity, epistemology, care ethics, utopian thinking, and environmentalism are explored. The chapter addresses the extent to which feminist work has changed or entered the mainstream of the American pragmatism, as well as current and future directions of feminist pragmatism. In addition to offering a history of the development of feminist pragmatism, the chapter considers how feminism is a resource for pragmatism and how pragmatism is a resource for feminist philosophy.

Bias

This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in feminist philosophical reflections on bias and objectivity. Some feminists have argued that objectivity is an unachievable and thus inappropriate epistemic norm for human beings. But at the same time, these feminists have criticized philosophy for displaying masculinist bias. This complex critique faces a problem I’ve called the “Bias Paradox” and that Helen Longino calls an “Essential Tension:” how we can criticize partiality at the same time we acknowledge its ubiquity. I explain Longino’s proposed “social empiricist” solution, and contrast it with my own. I argue for a re-conception of “bias” as a normatively neutral epistemic inclination. Biases, in this sense, play a crucial constructive role in the development of human knowledge by solving the problem of underdetermination of theory by evidence. The biases we (correctly) regard as morally bad, such as social prejudice, involve the operation of neutral biases in unpropitious natural or social environments.

Feminism and Epistemic Injustice

This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in feminist philosophical work on injustice that is distinctly epistemic. The first part of the chapter focuses on the contributions that classic feminist theorists have made to the conceptualization of issues of epistemic injustice long before such name was available, focusing especially on the writings of feminists of color from the seventeenth century onward (Sojourner Truth, Maria Stewart, Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, etc.). The second half of the chapter focuses on the contributions to recent discussions of epistemic injustice by contemporary feminist scholars, especially Lorraine Code, Kristie Dotson, and Miranda Fricker. The chapter highlights the ways in which the feminist paradigms of intersectionality and standpoint theory have shaped analyses of epistemic injustice and epistemic resistance against injustice, elaborating the key notions of epistemic agency, epistemic responsibility and epistemic advocacy.

Prisons

This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in feminist philosophical work on prisons, examples of important contributions, and future directions for feminist work in the field. It does so, however, in a way that consciously deploys a feminist methodology that resists the replication of hierarchical norms and structural violence in the very doing of theory and history. In this spirit, it emphasizes the record of struggle across the prison’s history, the resistance efforts that live behind individual academic theories, and the conceptual frameworks generated by groups bearing the brunt of carcerality, and it investigates alternative strategies of harm reduction developed across those communities. The chapter closes with an explicit exploration of prison abolitionism, which works not only to radically rethink punishment but also to shift the locus of voice and leadership. In so doing, the chapter aims to review, as much as to create anew, a feminist theoretical analysis of prisons.

Feminist Philosophy of Human Rights

This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in feminist philosophical work on human rights, including examples of important contributions to this discussion, as well as current and future directions. Major feminist theories of the grounding of human rights are presented together with feminist critiques of human rights as a basis for feminist practice. Genocidal rape and the right to bodily integrity, the right to care and the care drain from the Global South to the Global North, and the feminization of poverty in the context of global justice are discussed in detail. Issues concerning women’s agency within diverse cultural contexts punctuate these discussions.

Philosophy of Science Analytic Feminist Approaches

Feminist philosophy of science in the analytic tradition converges towards feminist empiricism that comes in three types: critical contextual empiricism, radical empiricism, and standpoint empiricism. Each type of feminist empiricism provides important resources for feminist philosophers of science especially when they seek to solve the bias paradox. The bias paradox arises when one aims to criticize some biases as epistemically harmful while at the same time acknowledge that some other biases are epistemically beneficial. The challenge is to understand how pernicious bias can be distinguished from an innocuous one. Critical contextual empiricism aims to solve the bias paradox by introducing epistemic norms for scientific communities and radical empiricism by subjecting biases to empirical testing. Standpoint empiricism emphasizes the importance of generating new evidence by empowering disadvantaged social groups. While feminist philosophers of science have abandoned the ideal of value-free science, they have not given up the concept of objectivity. Objectivity of scientific knowledge comes in degrees and depends on how well scientific communities facilitate criticism and succeed in eliminating pernicious bias.

Analytical Feminist Ethics

Feminist ethics is that branch of ethics that is concerned first and foremost with understanding the oppression of women and developing a normative analysis of its wrongness. Analytical feminist ethics uses the tools and techniques of analytical philosophy, such as conceptual analysis, to further understand the injustices revealed by feminist approaches to ethics. The chapter surveys analytic themes, trends, and tendencies within feminist ethics taking a broad lens on what counts. The chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in analytic feminist philosophical engagements with ethics, reflection on examples of important contributions to this discussion, a discussion the extent to which feminist work has changed or entered the mainstream of the field, and current and future directions in analytic feminist ethics.