Where Are the Women? Why Expanding the Archive Makes Philosophy Better by Sarah Tyson (review)

In where are the women? Why Expanding the Archive Makes Philosophy Better, Sarah Tyson considers how practices of exclusion direct and limit philosophical thinking. Tyson analyzes the problem that women’s work is largely absent from established European and Anglophone philosophical canons and asks how it can be reclaimed for philosophy. Those of us with a background in feminism can easily predict that the lack of women in philosophy is not universally recognized as a problem. Tyson, however, argues that the exclusion of women from the history of philosophy is in fact a complex philosophical issue encompassing the logics of authority used to construct and maintain disciplines, the ways that history is engaged within philosophical practice, the ongoing impact of injustices on theoretical projects, and the idea of what is or ought to define philosophy as a discipline and a pursuit. Her book articulates a method by which women’s work can be reclaimed for philosophical practice by way of critically transforming philosophy.

Tyson argues that a critical understanding of the logic of women’s exclusion from philosophy must guide any attempt to reclaim texts written by women, as “reclamation risks permitting some women into the history of European and Anglophone philosophy in ways that strengthen philosophy’s exclusionary practices, because the practices of producing philosophical authority have not been changed” (Tyson 2018, xxvii). Moreover, she notes that the category woman that is used in such a reclamation project must itself be interrogated as to its history of exclusion and, most centrally to her argument, its racial exclusions (Tyson 2018, xvii). She develops a transformative method for reclamation, a “critical uchronic method” (Tyson 2018, 174) and uses this method to argue for the philosophical significance of two women’s texts that are not generally considered part of European and Anglophone philosophical canons: The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions signed at the Seneca Falls convention in 1848 and Sojourner Truth’s speech from the Women’s Rights Convention in 1851, often (although controversially) titled “Ain’t I a Woman?”

In chapter 1, Tyson interrogates established methods of reclaiming women’s texts for philosophy, identifying four dominant approaches. The enfranchisement strategy argues that women “wrote and write philosophy just like recognized canonical European and Anglophone philosophers” and thus already are qualified to be read alongside the men in the canon (Tyson 2018, 3). This method of reclamation does not sufficiently question the historical processes by which the norms of philosophical authority and the category of woman have come into being. The alternate history strategy suggests that “women have established a tradition of thinking independently of men’s” and have thereby remained unaffected by philosophy’s problems (Tyson 2018, 19). This approach suffers from accepting that philosophy has been men’s domain and denying that women have shared with men “contexts of thinking” that may allow exclusionary logics to permeate women’s writing as well (Tyson 2018, 31). The corrective strategy uses the ideal notion of philosophy against itself, suggesting that “Insofar as philosophers have failed to question biases against women, it has failed to live up to its role in rousing us out of our complacency” (Tyson 2018, 31). While this is likely a compelling argument to many feminist philosophers, this point of view does not sufficiently engage the normative practices of philosophy that have as a matter of historical fact excluded women (Tyson 2018, 32).

Tyson’s preferred strategy is transformative reclamation, which “shows how women’s exclusion has shaped prevalent notions of what is considered philosophy and shows how European and Anglophone philosophy must be reshaped to redress this exclusion” (Tyson 2018, 40). This opening chapter clears the way for the development of Tyson’s own method, but it is also valuable on its own merits as a work of careful critique that cogently lays out the predictable pitfalls of various attempts to expand European and Anglophone philosophy’s canons...