Abstract
The pragmatist political tradition has often been accused of assuming an excessively optimistic view of democracy and of lacking an appropriate account of how class, gender, or race can shape the experience of the most vulnerable citizens within our political systems. The pragmatist genealogy has indeed reproduced the bias of the traditional philosophical canon by neglecting the contributions of theorists who at the very beginning paid attention to the vulnerability of certain collectives and sought to overcome this bias by using pragmatists and progressivist tools. This chapter proposes to recover the insights of Jane Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, W. E. B. Du Bois and Anna Julia Cooper on social issues that are useful not only to understand the sufferings of the less privileged but also to offer solutions to these social evils.
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Notes
- 1.
Cudd refers to the following passage in chapter XI of Leviathan: “Fear of oppression, disposeth a man to anticipate, or to seek aid by society: for there is no other way by which a man can secure his life and liberty” (Hobbes, 1998, p. 67).
- 2.
On the exclusion of women from the philosophical canon, see also Hamington (2009) and Warren (2009). I have further developed Seigfried’s explanations in Miras Boronat (2020). In this chapter, my main concern has to do with the critical reception of women pragmatists inside mainstream feminist philosophy.
- 3.
I thank my friend and colleague from the Geography Department at the University of Barcelona, Núria Font-Casaseca, for drawing my attention to the conceptual and practical innovation contained in the Maps and Papers. My reflections are based to a great extent on our fruitful conversations on Jane Addams and pragmatism. See Font-Casaseca (2016).
- 4.
The maps have a precedent in Charles Booth’s maps of Westminster in London (London School of Economics & Political Science, 2016).
- 5.
It is difficult to find information about Agnes Sinclair Holbrook (Iowa, 1867–California, 1896). Thanks to the blog of the statistics expert Sharon Lohr, I discovered that Holbrook studied at Wellesley College and attended classes in mathematics, chemistry, physics, zoology, and psychology, along with literature, rhetoric, religion, and history. She received her Bachelor’s in Science in 1892, and shortly afterwards moved to Hull-House. She was the person who designed and constructed the maps and took all the decisions regarding the contents of the graphs. She lived in Chicago until almost her death, a few days before turning 29. See Lohr (2020).
- 6.
The first version appeared in McClure’s Magazine, issue 38, November 1911. A search on the Digital Edition of Jane Addams’s Papers shows that she was very active on this front in the period between 1910 and 1912, the time when she was writing this essay.
- 7.
For the historical background, see Wahab (2002). The essay even inspired a short film in Addams’s times: Shoes (1916, directed by Lois Weber). Weber was a director, actress and producer who made 71 silent films. This is further proof of the extent to which the women creators were connected and inspired each other. Much of this influence has been neglected because of the gender bias in the historiography.
- 8.
Shklar’s The Faces of Injustice (1990), a revision of the hegemonic liberal theory of justice from the perspective of the victims, was not published until 1990. Shklar does not refer to Addams in her book, but the paths of their thought may be closer than they appear. At any rate, the relatively new research field of the victim justice approach would benefit from a reconstruction of the dialogue between them.
- 9.
This essay does not intend to take part in this vast debate, nor to assess whether Addams’s position is the only reasonable one. What we emphasize here is Addams’s form of reasoning and some general guidelines for thematizing social vulnerability. Varela (2019, p. 297) proposes the introduction of more nuanced positions between abolition and regulation, including mild legalization and moderate social control.
- 10.
She writes literally “monogamous marriage has been growing to be the accepted form of sex-union-prostitution- we have accepted, and called a ‘social necessity’.” (Gilman, 2016, p. 21). Unfortunately, there is no critical edition of Gilman’s work, as far as I know, and I have only been able to access reprints or readers.
- 11.
- 12.
According to Gilman’s own assertions in her autobiography: “The social philosophy I was teaching included my organic theory of social economics, later developed in Human Work; the theory of the economic independence and specialization of women as essential to the improvement of marriage, motherhood, domestic industry, and racial improvement; with much on advance in child culture.” (Gilman, 1991, p. 186).
- 13.
- 14.
This question would require further development and careful investigation, but my guess is that Gilman is searching for a distinction that sometimes overlaps with the sex-gender difference widely accepted within feminist theory. She also experimented with gender fluidity in short fictions like “If I Were A Man” (1914).
- 15.
The origins of the phrase are normally attributed to either the last German Emperor Wilhelm II, or to his first wife, Empress Augusta Victoria, in the middle of the nineteenth century. They were three (Kinder, Küche, Kirche), Gilman added and popularized the fourth “K” (Kleider, fashion).
- 16.
See Jusino (2015).
- 17.
I was inspired to read Du Bois’s and Cooper’s texts after attending several talks by Shannon Sullivan, Federica Gregoratto and Judith Green, and my occasional conversations with them. See Gregoratto (2018).
- 18.
According to hooks and Davis, the first written text on intersectionality would be the published transcription of Sojourner Truth’s speech “¿Ain’t I A Woman?” back in 1852.
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Miras Boronat, N.S. (2022). Toward a Pragmatist and Feminist Theory of Oppression: Thoughts on Class, Gender, and Race. In: Miras Boronat, N.S., Bella, M. (eds) Women in Pragmatism: Past, Present and Future. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00921-1_3
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