The Feminist Standpoint Revisited, And Other Essays by Hartsock Nancy C.M

Author:Hartsock, Nancy C.M. [Hartsock, Nancy C.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2019-07-15T16:00:00+00:00

Notes

In Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka (eds.), Discovering Reality , 283–310. Copyright © 1983 by D. Reidel Publishing Company.

I take my title from Iris Young’s call for the development of a specifically feminist historical materialism. See ‘Socialist Feminism and the Limits of Dual Systems Theory,’ in Socialist Review 10, 2/3 (March-June, 1980). My work on this paper is deeply indebted to a number of women whose ideas are incorporated here, although not always used in the ways they might wish. My discussions with Donna Haraway and Sandra Harding have been intense and ongoing over a period of years. I have also had a number of important and useful conversations with Jane Flax, and my project here has benefitted both from these contacts, and from the opportunity to read her paper, ‘Political Philosophy and the Patriarchal Unconscious: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Epistemology and Metaphysics.’ In addition I have been helped immensely by collective discussions with Annette Bickel, Sarah Begus, and Alexa Freeman. All of these people (along with Iris Young and Irene Diamond) have read and commented on drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank Alison Jaggar for continuing to question me about the basis on which one could claim the superiority of a feminist standpoint and for giving me the opportunity to deliver the paper at the University of Cincinnati Philosophy Department Colloquium; and Stephen Rose for taking the time to read and comment on a rough draft of the paper at a critical point in its development.

An interesting historical note is provided by the fact that even Nausicaa, the daughter of a Homeric king, did the household laundry. (See M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus [Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1979], p. 73.) While aristocratic women were less involved in actual labor, the difference was one of degree. And as Aristotle remarked in The Politics , supervising slaves is not a particularly uplifting activity. The life of leisure and philosophy, so much the goal for aristocratic Athenian men, then, was almost unthinkable for any woman.

41 George Bataille, Death and Sensuality (New York: Arno Press, 1977), p. 90.

42 Women Against Violence Against Women Newsletter, June, 1976, p. 1.

43 Aegis: A Magazine on Ending Violence Against Women , November/December 1978, p. 3.

44 Robert Stoller, Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred (New York: Pantheon, 1975), p. 88.

45 Bataille, p. 91. See pp. 91ff for a more complete account of the commonalities of sexual activity and ritual sacrifice.

46 Death and Sensuality , p. 12 (italics mine). See also de Beauvoir’s discussion in The Second Sex , pp. 135, 151.

47 Bataille, p. 14.

48 Ibid. , p. 42. While Adrienne Rich acknowledges the violent feelings between mothers and children, she quite clearly does not put these at the heart of the relation (Of Women Born) .

49 Bataille, pp. 95–96.

50 The Second Sex , p. 58. It should be noted that killing and risking life are ways of indicating one’s contempt for one’s body, and as such are of a piece with the Platonic search for disembodiment.

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