Analytic approaches to gender
I’ve been mulling over the questions I asked a week ago about gender. In my master’s program, apart from my reading Nietzsche, the topic of sexuality or human embodiedness was not taken up. I did have a course at SLU in phenomenology, but I cannot recall much in the way along these lines (we didn’t read any Maurice Merleau-Ponty).
So here I am, interested in topics of epistemology, mind and religion, but finding myself unequipped to investigate what is a major component of human experience: gendered being.
I did what any philosophy major would do–a Philosopher’s Index search, which led me to articles about analytic philosophy and feminism. Shock! Such a thing exists? I won’t bore you with mundane summaries (yet), but I’m looking forward to the piece by Alison Adam, “Gender/Body/Machine” which argues for how embodied knowing can influence Artificial Intelligence research.
Along the way, she interacts with WVO Quine, Thomas Nagel, Daniel Dennett, et. al. However, she also takes up Michel Foucault and George Lakoff, as well as evolutionary theorists like Richard Dawkins. Thankfully, for me, she ignores Judith Butler–whose writing I find tedious–although I suppose her notion of gender as performativity is important to at least respond to in these studies.
As I consider the wide-ranging subjects I’ve blogged about recently, I recognize that there is a ghost in the blog: a more thorough discussion of precisely what reductionism (causal and ontological, if you can distinguish them) is. For example, gender theorists are trying to avoid reducing us to biological descriptions, but also to present a framework that isn’t unattached to bodily existence (as postmodern, performative and linguistic accounts tend to do). In what I’ve read of postcolonial ethics, theorists resist reducing the Other to the stereotyping gaze of the Westerner. Buddhism understands reality as reducible to atoms and an interdependent network of causes.
This means that, along with epistemology and the use of language, there are metaphysical assumptions going on. Sure, this LEMMing connection is something I’ve been aware of, but going outside of the scope of my earlier education has driven it home in new ways. What is challenging is determining what kinds of finely honed questions I can put to these topics, so as not to chase threads of spiderwebs in circles.
Hopefully I can put something forward with regard to gender in the next few weeks. And, like I intimated in my discussion of Thich Nhat Hanh, I plan to use my course in postcolonial religious ethics to explore the epistemology of Buddhism more thoroughly.
Image: Flickr photo of Athena, goddess of war and wisdom, by Frank Hangler.
PS: Any readers with advice on articles, websites or books that can help me out, leave comments!