Race and Gender: Philosophical Issues
Intensive: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, December 9-30 2015
Instructor: Dr Karen Jones, The University of Melbourne (jonek@unimelb.edu.au).
All required readings for this subject are available electronically from the subject site.
Useful resource: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP): http://plato.stanford.edu/
This course surveys recent developments in our philosophical understanding of the social categories
of race and gender. The subject explores issues in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of
language that arise for biological vs social constructivist accounts of race and gender. Special
attention will be paid to the similarities and differences between race and gender and the ways in
which they interact. If race and gender are biological categories, they may involve erroneous
assumptions. If they are socially constructed categories, it follows that our current categories can be
reshaped. We conclude with a discussion of one application area: epistemology, credibility and the
construction of ignorance.
Lecture Schedule
Part One: The metaphysics of race
1. Wednesday 9/12 – Overview plus preliminary exploration of the metaphysics of race. How have
people thought about race? What is biological determinism about an identity category? Does the
biology of race support determinism? If biological determinism is false, what are the implications
for our use of racial categories? We begin with the proposal of eliminativism: if race isn’t
biologically real, perhaps we should stop using racial categories. The alternative is to think of race
as a socially real, but constructed category. We outline the varieties of social construction.
Required readings:
Naomi Zack, selection from Philosophy of Science and Race, Routledge 2002.
Ron Mallon, 2007. “A Field Guide to Social Construction.” Philosophy Compass 2(1): 93-108
2. Monday 14/12 – According to Sally Haslanger, race is a socially constructed relational property.
Race is the social meaning of color and races are, by definition, hierarchically organized. We
examine this view and possible problems for it, including methodological ones, and whether it can
account for passing and for the pride in oppressed identities that is sometimes part of social change.
Required readings:
Sally Haslanger, 2000. “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?
Nous 34:1:35-55. (Skim through the sections on gender. We will return to them.)
----, 2012. Introduction to Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. (OUP)
3. Wednesday 16/12 – Further maps the terrain of social constructivist positions and considers the
critiques that social constructionism is unable to account for passing and that some versions of SC
have problems accounting for solidarity and shared interests.
Required readings:
Charles Mills, 1998. ‘“But What Are You, Really?” The Metaphysics of Race.” In his Blackness
Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race. Cornell University Press.
Ron Mallon, 2004. “Passing, Traveling, and Reality: Social Constructionism and the Metaphysics
of Race,” Nous 38(4): 644-673.
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Recommended further reading on the metaphysics of race:
Introductory:
1. Michael James, "Race", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 edition), ed.
Edward N. Zalta, available from <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/race/>.
Extension:
1. K. Anthony Appiah, “Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections,” Color Conscious;
eds. K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University
Press, 1996.
Part Two: The metaphysics of gender (the basics)
4. Monday 21/12 – Biological determinism about gender has a long history. Its newest
manifestation is in neuroscience. But are the arguments any better? We look at the new biological
essentialism and at the original feminist sex/gender distinction and critiques of it.
Required readings:
Cordelia Fine, 2010. Selection from Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences
(Icon Books), pp. 99-118.
Simone de Beauvoir, 1952. Short selection from The Second Sex.
Anne Fausto-Sterling, 1993b, “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female are Not Enough”, The
Sciences, 33: 20–24
Judith Butler, 1999. Short selection from Gender Trouble, London: Routledge, 2nd edition.
Recommended further reading on sex and gender:
Introductory:
1. Mari Mikkola, "Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2012 edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, available from
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2012/entries/feminism-gender/>.
Extension:
1. Natalie Stoljar, “Different Women. Gender and the Realism-Nominalism Debate,” Feminist
Metaphysics: Explorations in the Ontology of Se, Gender and the Self; ed. Charlotte Witt, London,
Springer, 2011.
Part Three: Intersectionality, or race + gender + …, together
5. Wednesday 23/12 – Does a feminist politics require that women have a shared identity? What do
women as a group have in common, given they are of different races, classes, sexualities,
(dis)abilities and so forth? We look at two accounts of how to think about commonality across
difference: gender as a social series, and gender as relations of dominance and subordination that
overlap with other relations of dominance and subordination.
Required readings:
Iris Young, 1994. “Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective,” Signs
19(3): 713-738.
Sally Haslanger, 2000. “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?
Nous 34:1:35-55. (See lecture 2.)
----, 2012. Introduction to Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. (OUP) – see
lectures 5&6. (See lecture 2.)
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6. Monday 28/12 – What is it to be oppressed as a member of a social group? How does oppression
work across intersectionality; for example, in what ways is the oppression experienced by women
of color similar to and different from the oppression experienced by White women and Black
[Indigenous/Latino/Asian] men?
Required reading:
Kimberle Crenshaw, 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence
Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43(6): 1241-1299.
Recommended further reading on intersectionality:
Introductory:
1. Ava Vidal, “'Intersectional feminism'. What the hell is it? (And why you should care),” The
Telegraph, 15 January, 2015, available from <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womenslife/10572435/Intersectional-feminism.-What-the-hell-is-it-And-why-you-should-care.html.>
2. Iris Young, “Five Faces of Oppression,” in Justice and the Politics of Difference,” Princeton,
Princeton University Press, 1990. Pp.37-64.
Extension:
1. Sally Haslanger, “Oppressions: Racial and Other,” in Resisting Reality: Social
Construction and Social Critique, New York, Oxford University Press, 2012.
Application: Race, gender, and epistemology
7. 30/12 – Much of our knowledge is social, but the social is also political. If the social
constructivist accounts of race and gender are right, then these identity categories are constitutively
inflected with relations of dominance and subordination. This opens up the possibility of epistemic
injustice. What is epistemic injustice? What forms does it take and how can it be remedied?
Required Reading:
Miranda Fricker, 2003. “Epistemic Injustice and the Role for Virtue in the Politics of Knowing,”
Metaphilosophy 34(1/2): 154-173
Charles Mills, “White Ignorance,” Race and the Epistemology of Ignorance; eds. Shannon
Sullivan and Nancy Tuana, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-79147102-9. Pp. 13-38.
Recommended further reading on epistemology:
Introductory:
1. Miranda Fricker, “Introduction,” in Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing,
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. 2-8.
Extension:
1. Karen Jones, “The Politics of Credibility,” in A Mind of One's Own: Feminist Essays on Reason
and Objectivity, eds. Louise Antony and Charlotte Witt, Boulder, Westview Press, 1993.
2. Louise Antony, “Quine As Feminist: The Radical Import of Naturalized Epistemology,” in A
Mind of One's Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity, eds. Louise Antony and Charlotte
Witt, Boulder, Westview Press, 1993.
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