Handbook

We often understand knowledge as a neutral, disinterested point of view: as purely rational, untainted by partiality or prejudice, and detached from the social and political entanglements that cloud objectivity. In recent decades, however, theoretical feminism, critical race theory, and postcolonial theory have questioned this view of knowledge. In this course you will consider how race and gender is expressed in modes and styles of theorising. By claiming to be neutral, does a philosophy or theory exclude certain positions marked by social difference? If western traditions of thought are typically ‘masculine’ and ‘white,’ then (how) can academic philosophy accommodate the experiences of women and non-Europeans? How have philosophers historically represented racial and sexual difference? And what contributions can philosophy make to theorising race and gender in the contemporary world?