Table Of ContentWomen in Political Theory
Jane Duran
Women in Political theory
For SNCC, SDS, the FSM and
the women of the 60s
Women in Political Theory
Jane Duran
University of California, USA
© Jane Duran 2013
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
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Jane Duran has asserted her moral right under the copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988, to
be identified as the author of this work.
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Duran, Jane.
Women in political theory / by Jane Duran.
pages cm
includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-5408-3 (hbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-5409-0 (ebk) -- ISBN 978-
1-4724-0318-6 (epub) 1. Women in the social sciences. 2. Women philosophers. 3. Women-
-Political activity. 4. Feminists--Biography. i. title.
h62.D79787 2012
320.092’52--dc23
2012042965
ISBN: 978-1-4094-5408-3 (hbk)
ISBN 978-1-4094-5409-0 (ebk – PDF)
ISBN 978-1-4724-0318-6 (ebk – ePUB)
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Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments ix
PART I: COMMENCING THE PROJECT
1 an overview 3
PART II: NINETEENTH-CENTURY THOUGHT
2 Sarah Grimké and Politics 31
3 the Feminist Grimké 57
4 anna Julia cooper and color 81
5 cooper, Gender, and Politics 107
PART III: POLITICS AND THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
6 Jane addams’s Work 133
7 reading addams and Feminism 159
8 radicalism and luxemburg 183
9 a new look at luxemburg 207
10 arendt as Philosopher 231
11 Women and arendt 257
PART IV: FINAL VIEWS
12 concluding the Project 283
Index 307
This page has been left blank intentionally
Preface
the retrieval project on women philosophers proceeds apace, and sometimes
with insufficient attention to what might be thought to be the categorization
problem with respect to women thinkers. The difficulties in convincing at
least some that women have done philosophy for centuries, if not millennia,
appear to have kept those working in the area from attempting to engage in a
breakdown of which philosophical areas, in particular, women have worked in.
Although it might be deemed of paramount importance to try to buttress the
assertion that women have historically worked in metaphysics, epistemology
and so forth, there is an abundance of evidence pointing to other, perhaps less
classic, loci for women’s work, and it would seem to be important to try to set
some of these areas out.
Political philosophy—now a staple topic in the media, and by no means
unknown as a category of coursework in most colleges and universities—has
long been an area of investigation for women thinkers, with an emphasis on
what today might be referred to as rights, obligations, and duties. At least some
of the women working in this area are, indeed, known to us as political thinkers,
but many are not. In this work the attempt is made to tie together the theorizing
of five women—three American and two from the Continent—whose work is
philosophical but largely political. Of perhaps just as great interest is whether
or not (in the tradition of much of the current retrieval effort) we can make the
claim that the women whose writings we examine here were driven by at least
some concerns that might now be labeled “feminist.” Although the variation
from thinker to thinker is great, an investigation into that area will also be of
concern here.
The five women whose work is examined here range in a time period from
the late eighteenth century to the latter part of the twentieth, and although
Rosa Luxemburg and Hannah Arendt are well-known as political thinkers,
Sarah Grimké and Anna Julia Cooper are not so well-known, with Jane Addams
comprising a middle figure whose work is just now receiving intense scrutiny.
Part of what it means to think politically, obviously, is to engage parts of the
Western tradition that have been examined by the ancients and other thinkers
in a more or less direct line up to the present time. In other words, we cannot
use the notion of the political without advertence first to the work of Plato
and Aristotle, and, at least in passing, to the work of such later political (but
not necessarily overtly philosophical) thinkers as Filmer, Machiavelli, and Marx.
Again, much work has been done that ties both Luxemburg and Arendt to this
Women in Political theory
tradition—and that work was not difficult to do, since they both employed
overtly political categories, and mentioned other political philosophers in their
work. But in the cases of Grimké and Cooper, whose nineteenth-century
American work is driven by the concerns of the abolition of slavery and the
promotion of women’s rights, we must be a great deal more careful in our
examination, and, again, Addams presents us with some ties to political theory
but perhaps not as many obvious ties as we would like.
This work proceeds with an introductory chapter for the purposes of stage-
setting, and then comprises 10 individual chapters, two on each of the thinkers,
with the first chapter of the two contrasting the work of the thinker in question
with standard political thought, and the second chapter of the two trying to
create the link to what would currently be thought to be feminist theorizing,
if indeed that link can be created. The chapters on the various thinkers are
sufficiently independent of each other that they can be read out of order, and
yet are unified in their approach so that a standard line of treatment is accorded
to each author. For each of the women, an effort has been made to examine at
least three or more the woman’s better-known works, so that it is not the case
that the argument rests on the analysis of simply one or two of that theorist’s
published writings. A concluding chapter attempts, once again, to articulate the
concept of political theorizing as a subdivision of philosophical thought, while
simultaneously arguing for its striking relevance today, given contemporary
global problems.
As international communications proceed to become more complex at what
often seems like an accelerating rate, it becomes particularly important for us
to be aware of as many aspects of preceding social and political thought as
we can. From the push of the Arab Spring to concerns about global warming,
and from our awareness of the impact of cartels to a growing realization that
religious fundamentalism pervades at least some aspect of almost every society,
the data and incidents of global politics and politicization assume ever greater
importance. Over the last two centuries, five women whose work is, in some
cases, comparatively unexamined, did important work in political theory. We
owe it to ourselves and our future to familiarize ourselves with their work.
viii
Acknowledgments
any work on women and political theory is always interdisciplinary, and work
that attempts to address issues having to do with women of color is all the
more so. insofar as the history of Black women is concerned, and their efforts
to forge a stance that would give rise to notions of justice for all, writings
having to do with Anna Julia Cooper, who figures here, are in the forefront.
For assistance with the thought of anna Julia cooper—as well as that of Sarah
Grimké, Jane addams, rosa luxemburg, and hannah arendt—i thank the
Department of Black Studies at the university of california at Santa Barbara,
as well as the Departments of Political Science and english. cooper’s work, and
Grimké’s, are only now emerging into lines of contemporary scholarship, and
much work still needs to be done.
as is the case with so much that is done within the framework of the university
of california system, writings undertaken at ucSB are often the product of
both interdisciplinary conversations and interdisciplinary study groups. over
the years the meetings of the Political theory reading Group and the research
focus group on Science and technology Studies were extremely helpful, and
members of the groups deserve individual thanks for their comments on
hannah arendt, in particular. Several meetings of the Political theory group
either focused on arendt, or on feminist response to thinkers of the past whose
work has been deemed to be canonical with respect to political theory. meetings
that focused, for example, on feminist interpretations of locke or Plato helped
form much of the work done in several of these chapters.
For discussions above and beyond the call of duty, gratitude is owed to
several past and present members of the Department of Black Studies,
including martha Swearingen Davis, oyeronke oyewumi, cedric robinson,
earl Stewart, and Jeffrey Stewart. Special thanks are due to discussions with
students in the department who either served as teaching assistants or research
assistants on a variety of related projects: Kourtney Bristow, Debra Jones, and
Sharon Woodlief, among others, provided invaluable assistance.
librarians at ucSB helped me many a time, and the new work that is being
done on such figures as Rosa Luxemburg could not have been accessed without
their assistance. Finally, a work such as this reflects not only the global concerns
to which allusion has been made in previous books, but the spirit of political
activity of earlier decades. the women of the sixties whose political work
often figured in the media at that time are the originators and, as a group, the
source of much of this work, and certainly are the source of the impetus for
