Diversity, Social Justice, and Inclusive Excellence: Transdisciplinary and Global Perspectives

3: Teaching Feminist Pedagogy on Race and Gender: Beyond the Additive Approach?

CHAPTER THREE Teaching Feminist Pedagogy on Race and Gender Beyond the Additive Approach? MECHTHILD NAGEL Feminist standpoint theory and critical race theory have popularized an interlocking systems of oppression approach that raises serious questions about the durability of feminist and antiracist epistemic practices loyal to an “additive” approach (King, 1988/1995; Spelman, 1988). This chapter addresses a dilemma in feminist philosophy: How do we engage effectively with historical texts that marginalize the subaltern other? I argue that the interlocking approach does make our epistemic practices more robustly truth-seeking; however, it seems to undermine the “ampersand” or additive approach that feminist philosophers have used to ferret out discriminatory evaluations in the “classic” andropocentric texts and in the contemporary life-world. My question is whether we can continue to teach and investigate race and gender as if they were isolated facts of life or whether we can appropriate a combination of additive and intersectional analysis, which engender a meaningful practice of solidarity. In their textbook Theorizing Feminisms, editors Elizabeth­ Hackett and Sally Haslanger (2006) ask the following self-reflective study question: “Does thinking about intersectionality reveal weaknesses in Haslanger’s discussion of the social construction of gender, Wendell’s discussion of the social construction of disability, or Young’s discussion of oppression”? (p. 40). I would like to offer an affirmative answer and at the same time point to the difficulty of articulating a rich account of intersectionality of systems of domination in 55 56 Mechthild Nagel­ particular when teaching courses on prejudice and discrimination. I find it troubling that it remains a major challenge for me to teach the interlocking approach to undergraduates in the U.S. context . Perhaps part of the problem is that our textbooks and methodology are overly loyal to the additive distinctions that Deborah King (1988/1995) and Elizabeth Spelman (1988) have argued against over 20 years ago. We simply lack the models that show a different approach. However, two philosophers, who wished to overcome this divide, are Carole Pateman (1988) and Charles Mills (1997). Their seminal texts on the sexual and racial contract, respectively, provided a singular focus and critique on implicit and explicit gender/race bias in the social contract tradition. By authoring a joint book (2007) on these biases and on global dimensions of the racial-sexual contract, Pateman and Mills provided an important philosophical model for an interlocking analysis. Mills, in particular, validates the perspectives of women of color feminists in his pertinent essay “Intersecting Contracts ” (2007), since they had historically, philosophically, and legally no privileged access to the racial-sexual contract, and he endorses Crenshaw’s analysis that they had in fact been rendered ontologically invisible or suspect (p. 198). Being written out of history and philosophy strengthened Black women’s resolve to “talk back” (bell hooks, 1999) and to lay claims to an intersectional analysis of oppression (p. 191). In her paper “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be,” Sally Haslanger (2000) argues that an analysis of gender and race categories should be guided by four concerns “in the fight against injustice”: (1) identify persistent inequalities and explain how they are socially constructed; (2) identify the effects of interlocking oppression, following Crenshaw (1993); (3) understand that disciplines themselves such as philosophy, religion, science, and law “might be ‘gendered’ and/or ‘racialized’ ”; and (4) take into account the agency of those who are oppressed so that they can be empowered as critical social agents (Haslanger, p. 36). I would go further to add (5) a need to decolonize philosophy, giving voice and listening to those—and assigning their writings in our classes—who have been marginalized and silenced in “the canon.” Furthermore, rather than “empowering” oppressed people, I would hold with Foucault that power comes from below, and does not need to seek authorization by those who are in privileged positions. U.S. feminist theory has moved far by first staking out claims in terms of dual systems theory (gender and class oppression as cofoundational), then tri-systems theory (gender, race, and class) to a more nuanced discussion of intersectionality approach of trying to understand how multiple forms of oppression crisscross and sustain 57 Teaching Feminist Pedagogy on Race and Gender privilege as well as discrimination. Textbooks such as James Sterba’s Social and Political Philosophy (2003) specifically endorse “feminist and multicultural perspectives,” but when looking closely, they discuss classical Western texts almost...