Hope Under Oppression Studies in Feminist Philosophy is designed to showcase cutting-e dge monographs and collections that display the full range of feminist approaches to philosophy, that push feminist thought in important new directions, and that display the outstanding quality of feminist philosophical thought. STUDIES IN FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY Linda Martín Alcoff, Hunter College and the CUNY Serene Khader, Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center Graduate Center Elizabeth Barnes, University of Virginia Helen Longino, Stanford University Lorraine Code, York University, Toronto, Emerita Catriona Mackenzie, Macquarie University Penelope Deutscher, Northwestern University Mari Mikkola, University of Amsterdam Ann Garry, California State University, Los Angeles Sally Scholz, Villanova University Sally Haslanger, Massachusetts Institute of Laurie Shrage, Florida International Technology University Alison Jaggar, University of Colorado, Boulder, Lisa Tessman, Binghamton University Emerita Nancy Tuana, Pennsylvania State University Recent Books in the Series: Ecological Thinking: The Politics of Epistemic Location Vulnerability: New Essays in Ethics and Feminist Lorraine Code Philosophy Self Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Edited by Catriona Mackenzie, Wendy Rogers, and Normalized Bodies Susan Dodds Cressida J. Heyes Sovereign Masculinity: Gender Lessons from the War Family Bonds: Genealogies of Race and Gender on Terror Ellen K. Feder Bonnie Mann The Physiology of Sexist and Racist Oppression Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics, Shannon Sullivan Second Edition Margaret Urban Walker Disorientation and Moral Life Ami Harbin The Moral Skeptic Anita M. Superson The Wrong of Injustice: Dehumanization and Its Role in Feminist Philosophy “You’ve Changed”: Sex Reassignment and Personal Mari Mikkola Identity Edited by Laurie J. Shrage Beyond Speech: Pornography and Analytic Feminist Philosophy Dancing with Iris: The Philosophy of Iris Marion Mari Mikkola Young Edited by Ann Ferguson and Mechthild Nagel Differences: Between Beauvoir and Irigaray Edited by Emily Anne Parker and Philosophy of Science after Feminism Anne van Leeuwen Janet A. Kourany Categories We Live By Shifting Ground: Knowledge and Reality, Transgression Ásta and Trustworthiness Naomi Scheman Equal Citizenship and Public Reason Christie Hartley and Lori Watson The Metaphysics of Gender Charlotte Witt Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic Unpopular Privacy: What Must We Hide? Serene J. Khader Anita L. Allen Women’s Activism, Feminism, and Social Justice Adaptive Preferences and Women’s Empowerment Margaret A. McLaren Serene Khader Being Born: Birth and Philosophy Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law Alison Stone Elizabeth Brake Theories of the Flesh: Latinx and Latin American Out from the Shadows: Analytic Feminist Feminisms, Transformation, and Resistance Contributions to Traditional Philosophy Edited by Andrea J. Pitts, Mariana Ortega, and Edited by Sharon L. Crasnow and Anita M. Superson José Medina The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Elemental Difference and the Climate of Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations the Body José Medina Emily Anne Parker Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Ambiguity Hope under Oppression Sonia Kruks Katie Stockdale Identities and Freedom: Feminist Theory between For a complete list of books published in the series, Power and Connection please visit the Oxford University Press website. Allison Weir Hope Under Oppression KATIE STOCKDALE 1 3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2021 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data Names: Stockdale, Katie, author. Title: Hope under oppression / Katie Stockdale. Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, [2021] | Series: Studies in feminist philosophy series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021003871 (print) | LCCN 2021003872 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197563564 (hb) | ISBN 9780197563571 (paperback) | ISBN 9780197563595 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Hope. | Oppression (Psychology) Classification: LCC BD216 .S76 2021 (print) | LCC BD216 (ebook) | DDC 152.4— dc23 LC record available at https://l ccn.loc.gov/ 2021003871 LC ebook record available at https://l ccn.loc.gov/ 2021003872 DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197563564.001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America Dedicated to Dave Acknowledgments This project began its life when I was a doctoral student at Dalhousie University. I was initially interested in forgiveness, then anger, then finally hope. At some point, I realized that I wouldn’t have much to say about for- giveness until I thought more about anger. And it was reading Sue Campbell’s influential “Being Dismissed: The Politics of Emotional Expression,” then tracing back to Lynne McFall’s “What’s Wrong with Bitterness?” cited in that article, that brought me to feminist approaches to hope in the first place. If bitterness involves a loss or absence of hope, as I found myself thinking, then what is hope? I am grateful to the Department of Philosophy at Dalhousie for being so supportive of me and my early work investigating these questions. I am especially grateful to Chike Jeffers, Greg Scherkoske, Susan Sherwin, and Lisa Tessman, who helped me develop early versions of the ideas in this book. They have all been sources of insight, support, and guidance for many years. I also owe a great deal of thanks to Cheshire Calhoun, who originally suggested that I think about a book at the 2016 Nature and Norms of Hope Workshop at the University of Notre Dame. Cheshire’s feedback on the man- uscript, and ongoing support, made writing a book seem like something I could actually do. During my time as a residential dissertation fellow in the Hope and Optimism: Conceptual and Empirical Investigations project at Cornell University, I learned much about hope from conversations with Luc Bovens, Andrew Chignell, Alex Esposito, Nicole Hassoun, Miriam McCormick, Michael Milona, Hannah Tierney, and Andre Willis and through confer- ences and workshops that brought hope scholars in different disciplines to- gether from across the world. I used to be more critical of hope than I am today, in part thanks to my experience in this project. David Hunter, Mercy Corredor, Michael Milona, and Catherine Rioux all read the manuscript in full as part of a Zoom book club generously organized by David during our collective COVID-1 9 isolation. I am very grateful for these philosophers’ valuable feedback on the manuscript, which helped me reframe and strengthen many arguments and examples in the final stages of x Acknowledgments writing. Colin Macleod and Audrey Yap also provided feedback on multiple chapters that helped me strengthen the book significantly. Many other scholars have contributed to ideas in this book through conversations and written feedback that have shaped my thinking about this project. Thanks especially to Clifford Atleo, Claudia Blöser, Barrett Emerick, Matt Hernandez, Chris Howard, Graham Hubbs, Alice MacLachlan, Ben Mitchell- Yellin, Colleen Murphy, Maura Priest, Titus Stahl, Olúfẹmi Táíwò, students at the University of Victoria, students at Sam Houston State University, and anonymous reviewers at various journals. I also received val- uable feedback from audiences at the New Directions in the Philosophy of Hope conference at Goethe University (2018); the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Society Meeting in New Orleans (2018); the Hope and Optimism Midpoint Conference in Estes Park (2016); the Hope, Social and Political Perspectives Workshop at the University of Groningen (2016); and the Notre Dame Hope and Optimism Workshop at the University of Notre Dame (2016). I am also grateful to audiences who attended my colloquium talks at Dalhousie University, Sam Houston State University, and the University of Redlands, and my job talks at various institutions that shall remain unnamed. I was very lucky to have had Lucy Randall and Cheshire Calhoun as editors, who both believed in this project from the beginning and whose en- couragement kept me going as the book evolved. The reviewers at Oxford University Press, Adrienne Martin and an anonymous reviewer, were also the best reviewers for the book I could have hoped for. Their suggestions and criticisms on multiple drafts transformed the book into something I am very proud of. I am particularly indebted to Adrienne for her ongoing mentorship throughout my writing process and for pushing me to continue working on parts of the book that needed improvement even when I felt as though I had nothing left to say. I did have more to say, and the book is now much stronger. Thanks also to Hannah Doyle for editorial assistance and Lisa Fedorak for help preparing the index. All remaining errors are very much my own. I am grateful to family and friends for continuing to encourage me throughout these many years of writing, especially my mom Kristine, stepdad John, and sister Sarah, who were much more optimistic that I’d finish and publish this book than I was. And I owe everything to Dave Dexter, the love of my life and best person I know. Dave read multiple drafts of the manu- script in their entirety, and his insights have contributed to every chapter and argument in the book. Dave’s love and unshakable faith in me have sustained Acknowledgments xi me since I was a first-y ear doctoral student trying to find my path in philos- ophy. I would be lost without him. Sections from “Hope’s Place in Our Lives” and “The Value and Risks of Hope” were published in the Journal of Social Philosophy 50, no. 1 (2019): 28– 44. Parts of “Losing Hope, Becoming Embittered” were published in Hypatia 32, no. 2 (2017): 363–3 79. I am grateful to these journals for their permission to reuse these works in the book. Introduction Oppression and the Question of Hope I’m sure that all readers can remember times at which they were told to “be hopeful,” to “never give up hope,” and that “there is always room for hope.” Hope, we learn at a very young age, is always good to have. Fortunately, too, there is apparently always hope to find. If we focus hard enough, we are sup- posed to be able to sustain hope—e ven when the world around us is fright- ening, dark, and unjust. Losing hope, or being suspected of losing hope, is often met with condemnation. “You shouldn’t get bogged down in negative thinking like that. Stay hopeful!” we often hear from our family, friends, and the media. But what is this thing “hope” that ends up in so many sayings, news headlines, and inspirational quotes? And why is hope so valuable that we are so often urged to preserve and protect it? This book is about the role of hope in human life, particularly in the lives we lead as moral, social, and political beings. It is about the nature and value of hope in the real world in which we live, a non-i deal world that includes suffering, disadvantage, luck, violence, harm, and loss. I want to understand what human agents hope for in this world, whether hope is valuable to us as we navigate our vulnerabilities and the hardships of life, and the relation- ship between hope and other elements of our psychologies including expec- tation, trust, anger, and faith. This project is, ultimately, an inquiry in moral psychology: a field concerned with how “we function as moral agents” and the roles of cognition, perception, and emotion in moral agency (Walker 2004, x).1 The approach to hope I take is quite different from how philosophers have traditionally approached the subject. Discussions of hope in the 1 As Margaret Urban Walker (2004) explains, philosophical moral psychology is part of ethics. It is a descriptive and normative project that “discovers our real possibilities and limits, and assesses mor- ally our adequacy for living our lives” (xiii). Although it is not itself empirical, philosophical moral psychology “can and should take a searching and critical view of scientific claims” (xiii). Walker’s description of moral psychology captures how I characterize my work. Hope Under Oppression. Katie Stockdale, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197563564.003.0001 2 Hope Under Oppression philosophical literature have typically taken place in the existential and pragmatist traditions. Until recently, hope had earned surprisingly little attention in analytic philosophy, the field in which I situate my work.2 But beginning in the 1950s, analytic philosophers began to see the relevance of hope to areas of the discipline such as epistemology, rational decision theory, and moral psychology. Hope, most of us agree, involves some combination of belief and desire; and realizing that hope involves cognitive and conative elements, philosophers interested in rationality and motivation were nat- urally drawn to think about hope. In 2014, Adrienne M. Martin published her highly influential How We Hope: A Moral Psychology and proposed a sophisticated theory of hope, its relationship to faith, and the role of hope in interpersonal relationships. The John Templeton Foundation launched the Hope and Optimism: Conceptual and Empirical Investigations project at the University of Notre Dame and Cornell University that year, bringing together philosophers, social scientists, and religious studies scholars from around the world to explore hope, optimism, and related states. Although investigations of hope once lay at the periphery of analytic phi- losophy, there is growing interest in different facets of the subject. My own interest in hope emerged as I engaged more with feminist approaches to moral, social, and political philosophy. Feminist perspectives have helped to make visible the ways in which persistent, widespread, and multifaceted forms of oppression structure certain individuals’ lives, oppressions based not only on gender but also on race, class, sexual orientation, disability, and other features of social difference. Oppression is commonly theorized as a type of structural or social injustice that confines, restricts, or immobilizes people in virtue of their membership in certain social groups (Frye 1983; Young 1990; Cudd 2006). As Marilyn Frye (1983) famously argues, the ex- perience of oppression is analogous to that of a bird locked away in a cage. If you look closely at just one wire, you do not see the other wires, and you may wonder why the bird doesn’t just fly around it and escape. To understand that the bird is caged in, you must step back and look at the cage macroscopically. Only then does it become obvious that the bird is caught within a network of systematically related barriers and forces (Frye 1983, 5). Taking a macroscopic perspective involves a shift in focus from the indi- vidual to the collective and institutional. We might ask: How is a particular 2 Hope had also earned surprisingly little attention in psychology. Matthew W. Gallagher (2018) notes that “with other positive psychology constructs, hope was largely ignored as a topic of study for much of the 20th century” (3).