Women 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 or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Jane Duran has asserted her moral right under the copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing company Wey court east 110 cherry Street union road Suite 3-1 Farnham Burlington, Vt 05401-3818 Surrey, Gu9 7Pt uSa england www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 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) V Printed and bound in Great Britain by mPG PrintGrouP 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