Abstract
Feminist philosophy in Australasia has a relatively recent history, spanning the last 30 years. Despite the recency of this history, Australasian feminist philosophers have made significant contributions to the development of feminist philosophy internationally, in areas as diverse as history of philosophy, political philosophy, continental philosophy, ethical theory, moral psychology, applied ethics, bioethics, environmental philosophy and logic. In turn, the work of feminist philosophers in Australasia has been significantly influenced by developments in feminist philosophy internationally, particularly in France and the USA. My aims in this chapter are twofold. First, I want to convey some sense of the diversity and depth of the philosophical contributions of Australasian feminist philosophers. Second, I want to highlight the thematic connections among these diverse contributions and to outline the main issues and debates on which the work of Australasian feminist philosophers has focused.
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Notes
- 1.
In this chapter the term ‘Australasia’ should be understood as referring to Australia and New Zealand. Thus, references to ‘Australasian feminist philosophy’ are inclusive of New Zealand, as distinct from references to ‘Australian feminist philosophy’. My discussion in this chapter refers mainly to the work of Australian feminist philosophers. However, I also discuss contributions by New Zealand philosophers Jan Crosthwaite, Rosalind Hursthouse and Christine Swanton.
- 2.
For this reason, while the bibliography for this chapter includes contributions to Australasian feminist philosophy published after 2002, I do not discuss these contributions in the chapter.
- 3.
Braidotti completed her undergraduate degree at the Australian National University and has since become a major figure in feminist philosophy internationally.
- 4.
A recent example is the discussion of feminist philosophy in Franklin (2003, Chap. 14).
- 5.
- 6.
These statistics are drawn from Goddard (2008).
- 7.
My discussion in this section focuses on the broad project of reinterpreting the history of philosophy from a feminist perspective, rather than feminist critical engagement with the work of particular historical figures, such as Hegel, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, or Spinoza.
- 8.
Although it is likely that Pateman would not identify herself as an Australasian feminist philosopher, The Sexual Contract (1988) was written and published while Pateman was Reader in Government at the University of Sydney. Pateman was thus a central figure in Australasian feminist philosophy during the 1980s and The Sexual Contract played an important role in the development of Australasian feminist philosophy.
- 9.
See, for example, Pargetter and Prior (1986), who interpret Lloyd as engaged in much the same enterprise as Carol McMillan in Women, Reason and Nature (1982). McMillan criticises feminism for having uncritically accepted a rationalistic conception of abstract reason typically associated with ‘masculine’ pursuits, such as science and mathematics, while denigrating the kind of ‘intuitive knowledge’, or practically oriented styles of reasoning embodied in women’s traditional domestic and childrearing activities. While Pargetter and Prior are rightly critical of McMillan’s gendered distinction between ‘reason’ and ‘intuitive knowledge’, they are quite misguided in conflating McMillan’s affirmation of women’s distinctive styles of reasoning with Lloyd’s project. For a critical analysis of McMillan, see Gatens (1991, Chap. 4).
- 10.
For further discussion and elaboration, see Lloyd (1993b).
- 11.
For further discussion, see Lloyd’s preface to the second edition of The Man of Reason (1993a).
- 12.
Pateman discusses Freud in The Sexual Contract (1988, Chap. 4).
- 13.
For an argument that conceptions of the social contract need to be substantially revised to accommodate women’s interests, see Thompson (1993).
- 14.
Gatens is not alone in focusing on these figures. During the 1980s and 1990s, a number of Australian feminist philosophers responded both to the work of these writers and to each others’ interpretations of this work. See, for example, P. Deutscher (1997), Green (1993, 1995), La Caze (1994), Mackenzie (1986, 1993, 1998).
- 15.
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- 20.
Green’s argument draws on Australian anthropologist Diane Bell’s ethnographic work with Aboriginal women from a number of sex-segregated tribal groups in central Australia. Bell’s work documents how the women’s groups in these societies have developed their own rituals and stories, are economically independent, and play an active role in the maintenance of kinship structures.
- 21.
Max Deutscher was a key figure in championing Le Doeuff’s work among Australian feminist philosophers during the 1980s and thereafter. His edited collection, Michele Le Doeuff (2000), includes papers on Le Doeuff by many Australian feminist philosophers, including Penelope Deutscher, Robyn Ferrell, Moira Gatens, Marguerite La Caze, Genevieve Lloyd, and Michelle Boulos Walker. For other discussions of Le Doeuff’s work by Australian feminist philosophers, see Walker (1993); Grosz (1989); and P. Deutscher (1997). Moira Gatens’ notion of the ‘sociocultural imaginary’ (Gatens 1996), discussed in the section ‘Equality, Sexual Difference and Embodiment’, extends Le Doeuff’s notion of the ‘philosophical imaginary’ to the broader sociocultural context.
- 22.
- 23.
Le Doeuff develops this argument in considerably more detail in Hipparchia’s Choice (1991, Second Notebook).
- 24.
Susan Okin was born and raised in New Zealand and educated at the universities of Auckland, Oxford, and Harvard. She held academic positions at Auckland, Vassar College, Brandeis, Harvard, and Stanford. On the basis of the inclusion/exclusion principle outlined at the outset of the chapter, I am not counting her as an Australasian feminist philosopher.
- 25.
Lloyd draws here on Joan Scott’s discussion of equality and difference in Scott (1988).
- 26.
Moira Gatens, ‘A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction’. Originally published in ‘Beyond Marxism? Interventions after Marx’, ed. J. Allen & P. Patton, Interventions, 1983. Reprinted as Ch. 1 of Imaginary Bodies (Gatens 1996). Page references to this article in the text refer to the 1996 reprint.
- 27.
- 28.
For a related reading of Irigaray, see Whitford (1991).
- 29.
Clare Colebrook (2000) argues that in their work, Lloyd, Grosz and Gatens have all articulated, in different ways, this conception of embodiment and bodily difference as dynamic, arguing that in doing so they have developed a distinctively ‘Australian’ feminist perspective on corporeality. In my view, the differences between Grosz’s conception of corporeal feminism and Gatens’ conception of the imaginary body are more significant than Colebrook’s reading would suggest. I also think it is a mistake to align Lloyd’s work with that of Grosz.
- 30.
- 31.
At various points in this chapter, I have referred to the influence of psychoanalysis on the work of some Australian feminist philosophers. However, because my central concerns in this chapter are philosophical, I have not discussed this influence in any detail. For detailed discussion of psychoanalytic theory and its relevance to the work of French feminist philosophers who have, in turn, influenced some Australian feminist philosophers, see Grosz (1989, 1994). The work of Robyn Ferrell, which I have not discussed in this chapter, is particularly influenced by psychoanalysis. See, for example, Ferrell (1996).
- 32.
- 33.
- 34.
Cannold (1998) also develops an argument along these lines and provides some empirical support for this view, drawing on interview data with different groups of women, some of whom were pro-choice, some anti-abortion.
- 35.
Although Rosalind Hursthouse’s (1991) virtue theory approach to the morality of abortion is not explicitly feminist, her approach converges with mine on many issues. We agree that abortion is a unique moral problem, that an adequate response to the morality of abortion must recognise the asymmetries between men’s and women’s embodied experiences during pregnancy, that fetal development is morally relevant and hence that there is a moral difference between early and late term abortions, and that some liberal arguments, such as Warren’s (1975) comparison between having an abortion and having a haircut, trivialise the moral seriousness of an abortion decision.
- 36.
The work of Rachel Ankeny, Susan Dodds, and Wendy Rogers has been particularly influential in feminist bioethics both within Australasia and internationally. Dodds was instrumental in establishing the International Network of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics in 1992, and in 2007, Ankeny, Dodds, and Rogers were instrumental in founding the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics. As one of the editors of the Journal of Applied Philosophy, Suzanne Uniacke, who is now based in the UK, continues to play an important role in the broader field of applied philosophy.
- 37.
For further development of the silencing argument, see Langton and West (1999).
- 38.
Note that Crosthwaite and Swanton do not assume that all sexual harassment targets women. However, they take male–female sexual harassment as the paradigm case on the grounds that it is the most prevalent form, due to sex-role stereotypes and differential power relations between the sexes. Crosthwaite revises this view in Crosthwaite and Priest (1996), arguing that sexual harassment is bound up with social structures that oppress women.
- 39.
In a later paper, Crosthwaite and Priest (1996) agree with Dodds et al. about the importance of a behavioural account, but they disagree with their focus on the associations between behaviour and the mental states of harasser and harassee, arguing instead that the locus of sexual harassment is oppressive social structures.
- 40.
I suspect that Maori voices are also similarly absent in New Zealand philosophy. However, my discussion here focuses on the situation in Australia. Despite the lack of indigenous voices in Australian academic philosophy, there are, nevertheless, powerful and articulate Aboriginal intellectuals within Australian academic institutions and in public life. It is no doubt in large part due to their voices that feminist philosophers have recently begun to reflect on our obligations as white intellectuals.
- 41.
- 42.
Jones’ work on trust is influenced by Annette Baier’s extremely important work in feminist moral psychology (see especially Baier 1994). Baier, who until her recent death was Emeritus Professor at the University of Otago, was originally from New Zealand and worked briefly at the University of Sydney in the 1960s but spent most of her career in the US. On the basis of the inclusion/exclusion principle outlined at the outset of the chapter, I have not counted her as an Australasian feminist philosopher, although in some respects she clearly does count as one.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Genevieve Lloyd and Cynthia Townley for their extremely helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter. Thanks also to Marguerite La Caze for a helpful discussion of the central themes in the chapter and for sharing with me her bibliography on the work of Australasian feminist philosophers.
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Mackenzie, C. (2014). Feminist Philosophy. In: Oppy, G., Trakakis, N. (eds) History of Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6958-8_23
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