/lit/ - Literature

Rosa Luxemburg, Emma Goldman, Judith Butler, and, of course, Simone de Beauvoir

>>4633537
Thanks for the direction. Could you recommend a specific work to start with?

>>4633544
The Second Sex is the big one, combining history, psychology and existentialism over the course of 760 pages. Emma Goldman mostly wrote short pieces, you can read any of her stuff, she's a Nietzsche fangurl. Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist, so being familiar with Marx is a good idea for her. Judith Butler is a postmodernist, if you enjoy Foucault (who was her mentor) and shit like that, you'd love Gender Trouble.

I'm tempted to read Le deuxième sexe myself, but I'm going to follow a sage writer's personal taste and read The Ethics of Ambiguity as well.

A friend of mine is reading Wollstonecraft, says it's funny how she critiques her patriarchal society.

I'm also fond of having Virgina Woolf's books on my shelf without actually having read anything more than excerpts and critiques of her work.

Another thing to keep in mind, as I was told by my German prof who is a PhD in gender studies actually, is that there are two schools of thought when it comes to matters such as privilege, social justice, feminism, etc. You can read and write about marginalised writers or you can critique the viewpoints and contexts of non-marginalised writers. You can easily find sentiments of feminism as early as Cervantes, for example, or you can seek out a female voice from that time to see what issues were representative of the time to her instead. Either way, you're analysing a part of the picture. But neither analysis can be exclusive or independent of the other.

That being said, although Atwood would vehemently deny being categorized in any way whatsoever, I do suggest reading her Handmaid's Tale as an enjoyable fiction that focusses on women's issues.

Atlas Shrugged is not a philosophical book and Ayn Rand is not a philosopher. I'm not sure why you're posting her picture.

none

>>4633532
>I've been reading a few philosophical books recently, but none written by women.

Use that smart philosophical brain and figure it out, bud

No Arendt or Anscomb in here? What the fuck guys? Grab up The Human Condition by Arendt and Intention by Anscomb.

>>4633622
>Ayn Rand (/ˈaJn ˈrænd/;[1] born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum; February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1905 – March 6, 1982) was an American novelist, philosopher [...]
>philosopher

>>4633634

What did she contribute to the field of philosophy that is not a lazy amalgamation of other peoples' work?

>>4633645
Objectivism

Good suggestions so far (aside from Ayn Rand trolls). I'd also suggest Luce Irigary.

>>4633816
>I'd also suggest Luce Irigary.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

He ideas on speech are worthwhile. Her ideas on economics are interesting, although lacking the rigor to be anything more than intellectual entertainment. But is anything else she said meritable?

>>4633537
Why not recommend someone who contributed something of value to human thought, such as Hannah Arendt?

>>4633874
I wanted to leave the pleasure of recommending her to another.

Hannah Arendt. Great political thinker.

I think that female thinkers who devote most of their philosophical energy to ruminating on their own womanhood and how marginalized/oppressed they are tend to be parochial and uninteresting. Am I being unfair?

>>4633892
It depends on how much you've read of them, but I actually think women don't get ENOUGH serious rumination seeing as how they comprise 50% of the planet. Most postmodern feminist theory isn't about trying to show women are oppressed, it's about understand why women and men behave certain ways and how their identities work and what they're functions are in social mechanism.

>>4633903
Do female philosophers ever write about anything besides feminism and women's issues?

Maybe they don't get more consideration because men don't only write about how men are being oppressed in our society.

>>4633645
Romantic freemarketism and 'individualism'.

>>4633903
Depends upon what she is ruminating, really.

I feel that I can ignore bullshit naval-gazing from authors of either sex.

>>4634799
>Maybe they don't get more consideration because men don't only write about how men are being oppressed in our society.

I am beyond baffled as to how you thought this was a legitimate thought. I don't know how to begin. This is a problem of intellect so deep it needs a professional therapist to really get to.

>>4633892
>Am I being unfair?

It does seem to be a bit of a rationalization. "See! I like female political writing fine! I'm not a misogynist I swear."

>>4634817
it's the spellbinding power of modern ideology. some people never realise that history and power are real things that shape our lives, they think of society as a particularised haze of Rational Actors playing out decisions and pairwise interactions in a vacuum. fucked up but true

>>4634831
oh fuck off you tart

>>4634864
"Pat me on the back I like Hannah Arendt! Now it'll seem less dubious when I call feminist literature parochial!"

The woman who can write something interesting is very rare. A woman's role in our society, the expectations, experiences and judgments that shape her are not conducive to art. There is a lack of creative and mental courage in women.

>>4634806

>>4634902
It goes beyond society. In nature itself.

>>4634874

I feel positively about feminism, but how is calling feminism "parochial" a criticism of it? I mean, it hardly seems true that feminism has a quality of being "of or relating to a church parish".

That being said, it does seem highly suspect to dismiss feminist discourse altogether but then insist you're not a misognyst BC ARENDT

>>4634902

>The person* who can write something interesting is very rare. A person's* role in our society, the expectations, experiences and judgments that shape him/her are not conducive to art. There is a lack of creative and mental courage in people*.

Fix'd

>>4634902
you could read good literary fiction with philosophical implications. flannery o'connor, eudory welty, toni morrison etc.

fuck you all.

>>4634831
>>4634874
except for you...
you're making me laugh.

>>4634902
>>4635074
let's be honest here. you don't know any woman well outside of your own mother, right? don't lie. it's an anonymous board and we don't know who you are.

>>4634902
This man is right. It is a man's role to be creative. Being original is the most masculine thing possible, to conserve oneself for fear of failure or defamation? That is something feminine.

There's nothing sexist about it, it's just a fact.

>>4635096
Ofcourse I do, and if you'd see things more objectively then you'd agree with me.

>>4635120
If you saw things objectively you'd adopt more of an egalitarian stance towards gender, since that is the prevailing objective stance of morality

>>4635096
Im sure it would be a more comforting world for you, if all misogynists were unsocialized shut-ins. Unfortunately it's not true, knowing and even loving someone doesn't necessarily raise your opinion of their abilities nor of others like them. In fact a lot of the affection men feel for women is steeped in the notion that they are more capable and aware than the woman and that the woman needs and admires them. Forming meaningful bonds with women has made me more sexist although not particularly hateful. Of course the same is true for knowing men and misandry but misandry hardly matters in society.

>>4635106
>Being original is the most masculine thing possible

worrying about being original is the most FEMININE thing possible. originality depends on worrying about other people. like a true womanly socialite.

a manly creative person follows the impulse of the moment. doesn't care whether it's original or not. it's about satisfying the impulse of whatever takes your creative interest in the moment. you know nothing of manly art.

>>4635096
>let's be honest here. you don't know any woman well outside of your own mother, right?
I know REAL women, girls who act LIKE GIRLS, get laid all the time BY REAL, NORMAL GUYS, and I know by experience with THESE women that creativity in the female almost exclusively happens when it has to do with A MAN or a child.

Can women have other interests? Of course. But she will never be as severe in her other interests as men are in these areas. A woman who is, is the exception. Often there's something wrong with her sexuality or femininity, too.

>>4635165
Reminds me of the lesbian writer aspirant character from a certain Murakami novel.

>>4635165
>A woman who is, is the exception.
see. i'm a man and i can truthfully say the man who is, is the exception too.

it's like you think a certain way about women and art then BAM. you read someone like flannery o'connor whose better short stories are more hardcore and better told than anything i've read by a man. then later i read morrison's song of solomon and it's like holy shit. i didn't know black women could write...let alone think this kind of shit. totally made me reconsider how i looked at things. and you say these woman are the exception. i say any man who writes half is well... is just as well the exception.

i could turn it around and say men with your attitude can all be attributed to bad relationships with dense women. or some internal issue they're not ready to deal with like equal potential for possibility in the realm of art.

>>4635224
>some internal issue they're not ready to deal with like equal potential for possibility in the realm of art.

possibly latent homosexual desires that cause passive aggressive undertone in such a discussion. possibly.

>>4635241
>not being at least gay enough to fuck a man in the ass so as to assert dominance

>>4635258
i only wish...well...i..b-b-but i don't know

>>4634799
Do men ever write about women's issues? because they're the issues of 50% of the planet.

Gender is a huge field and a lot more than oppression. It's just fucking applicable to everything, It goes beyond men and women, it applies to perception of sickness and death and money. Gender is fundamentally ingrained in the social consciousness that it's hard to imagine a place where it isn't applicable.

Helene Cixous

>>4635156
>a manly creative person follows the impulse of the moment.
This does not have to be exclusive to creativity, and you can see how creative males are in comparison to women by how horde-like and complacent females naturally are. Not that this is inherently a bad thing, women should be loquacious and voluptuous, but if they should try to tempt men they should find resistance, not acceptance as modern day society would have it.

>>4635772
Or it doesn't have to be exclusive to originality, rather.

You understand the point though, that originality does not originate through the oppression, but rather the freedom of an individual.

>>4635651
What about pet owners' issues?

>>4635843
When half the population are born pet owners and remain so until death and it radically affects everything they do in life and how they're perceived and treated and how they're expected to act and think about everything and what sort of person they're expected to fuck, then we can talk.

>>4635885
It's 60%.
Let's talk.

>>4635983
It's 0%. Nobody is born a pet owner.

>>4636022
I was.

>>4636046
And you effectively make up 0%, if we're rounding.

>>4635651
That's beside the point. The point is that men write about deep issues that affect every living being, while women seem content to focus on feminism.

I ask again, do any female philosophers ever write about anything besides women studies and feminism?

>female
>philosophers

[zoom into pic]

>>4636146
>That's beside the point. The point is that men write about deep issues that affect every living being, while women seem content to focus on feminism.
Actually, men tend to write shit for men and about men.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallogocentrism

Gender DOES affect every living being, and no, men generally write about issues from a male perspective.

>I ask again, do any female philosophers ever write about anything besides women studies and feminism?
Yes, they've been named. Now how many black philosophers have written about white issues?

>>4636146
>I ask again, do any female philosophers ever write about anything besides women studies and feminism?

Arendt and Anscombe have both been mentioned a million times in the thread already, you dumbfuck

>>4636170
>Yes, they've been named. Now how many black philosophers have written about white issues?
Either you're missing the point, or ignoring it.

It would be black philosophers writing about general issues, not white issues.

I don't claim women don't write enough about men's issues, I claim they don't write enough about general issues.

>>4636431
Well this is a really inane thing to argue over.

>>4636431
Except men conceive of male issues as "general issues", they write about them from the male viewpoint. Love from a male view point, war from a male view point, religion from a male viewpoint. There was existentialism, and that too was written mostly about the understanding of it from male experiences; and when women write about female existentialist experiences, then it's "not general". One of the big complaints in The Second Sex is the the "default experience" is the male experience. Women write about the same issues men do, they just write about how women experience them as different from men, and then people like you look your noses down at that.

>>4636467
Of course it's implied men are writing from a male viewpoint, and women write from a female one. But if that were where it ended, I'd see no problem. No, women go out of their way to call all their viewpoints "Women's studies", and focus on issues only affecting women. As a man, I feel completely excluded from reading any of their work for any reason other than to understand what it's like to deal with women's issues.

>Women write about the same issues men do, they just write about how women experience them as different from men
Then it's not writing about the same issue. It's writing about a meta-issue, which is "how women experience them as different from men"

I'm sure The Second Sex has a great deal to say about women's issues and the differences between how women experience things, but it only reiterates that women write about women's issues.

>>4636467
To illustrate, let's take Harry Potter. Did J.K. Rowling preface the book to say that this is how women view the wizarding world? Did she spend the entire book explaining the differences between how men and women view wizards? No, she wrote a book about fucking wizards. Was it from a female viewpoint? Of course it was.

>Women write about the same issues men do, they just write about how women experience them as different from men
The line you wrote perfectly makes my point for me (with regards to women in philosophy).

>>4636609
>Of course it's implied men are writing from a male viewpoint, and women write from a female one. But if that were where it ended, I'd see no problem. No, women go out of their way to call all their viewpoints "Women's studies", and focus on issues only affecting women. As a man, I feel completely excluded from reading any of their work for any reason other than to understand what it's like to deal with women's issues.
I think the main reason it's called "women's issues" is because the writing is relatively scarce. If half of all cerebral works were written from a feminine viewpoint, there would be no "women's studies' category.

>I'm sure The Second Sex has a great deal to say about women's issues and the differences between how women experience things, but it only reiterates that women write about women's issues.

And men write about men's issues. It's just that men call men's issues, "general issues". Sort of like how the first-world writes about first-world issues and then calls them "general issues", and third-world issues, "third-world studies"

>>4636630
The main character was, in fact, a male. The main antagonist was a male, the main mentor is a male; the father figure is, of course, a male. The world is shown through Harry's eyes. This is a MALE viewpoint. This is what men consider a "general" viewpoint.

>Although she writes under the pen name "J. K. Rowling" (pronounced rolling),[17] the author's name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply "Joanne Rowling". Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers asked that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother.[18]

>>4636765
So because her publisher abbreviated her name on the cover, she somehow managed to write a book from a male viewpoint despite never having lived as a male?

>>4636796
You don't need to be a male to write from a male viewpoint any more than you need to be a soldier to write from a soldier's viewpoint. It can help you not do a shitty job, but it's not a requisite.

>>4636765
>Did J.K. Rowling preface the book to say that this is how women view the wizarding world? Did she spend the entire book explaining the differences between how men and women view wizards?

That's all female philosophers do. They try to explain the differences between how men and women view things, or discuss how oppressed women are, rather than dealing with general issues that affect everyone.

>>4636812
General issues affect everyone, but they don't affect everyone the same way.

>ctrl + f simone weil
>0 results

Are you serious /lit/?

>>4636813
That is completely true. What I've noticed however is that women are obsessed with discussing only the differences between how issues affect men and women, or discussing how oppressed women in particular are.

>>4636153
see
>>4636817

stay told etc

>>4636818
Women are obsessed with discussing how women see thing differently because men completely ignore it. Men give almost no attention to how women experience things; why should women care at all to talk about how men experience things when men don't talk about how women experience things?

>>4636831
Do you believe there is no middle ground? There can only be a male viewpoint or a female viewpoint, and no human viewpoint other than the default male viewpoint?

>>4636831
>why should women care at all to talk about how men experience things

Indeed, why the fuck?

>>4636837
There is, but it must by nature be highly abstract due to how deeply gendered concepts are rooted in our culture.

>>4636831

>why should women care at all to talk about how men experience things when men don't talk about how women experience things?

Not to play the womyn-defending whiteknight here but is is largely due to their "experiences" being tailored around a patriarchal narrative.

Don't get riled because I used the "p word", just get over yourself and understand that this is the case.

>>4635651
>Do men ever write about women's issues?
Why would they write about issues that don't concern them?

>>4636878
It permits them to reevaluate their outlook, desires and conception of worth.

As for simple relevancy, women are far more prominent in the social sphere apart from the home than they used to be. That makes understanding their perceptions practically applicable.

Finally, some men might simply enjoy exploring the perspective; whether or not they do is up to them.

>>4636901
>That makes understanding their perceptions practically applicable.
Maybe from a marketing perspective, otherwise it still doesn't concern men.

>>4636923
>2014
>not having theory of mind

>>4636170
>that link you posted
>proving anything

>>4636965
Can you name ten great male thinkers of the last thousand years who didn't write from a male perspective?

>>4636974

Again. When most cultures and societies are looked at on a macro level it shows a narrative moved by male perspective.

You aren't saying anything crazy or unexpected here.

You aren't even saying anything interesting.

>>4636994
We're not even talking macro level, we're talking philosophy in general. Men wrote about men for men, not for general audiences, and they still do. But women are expected to be general?

>>4633532

>What works by female philosophers should I read?

none.

if you have the free time to invest in philosophy there is absolutely no reason to waste a single minute of it on anything by a woman

I'm telling you this as someone who spends a tremendous amount of time studying philosophy from all schools.

don't waste your time and energy

>>4636974
John Stuart Mill

>>4637006
>Men wrote about men for men, not for general audiences, and they still do
How do you even verify this?

>>4637038
When Nietzsche wrote that god was dead, he meant that for me, the male god was dead. He wrote about men for me, not for general audiences.

>>4637038
>>4637042
>When Nietzsche wrote that god was dead, he meant that for men, the male god was dead. He wrote about men for men, not for general audiences.
fixed.

>>4637042
This man is right.

It's not really sexist, it's just I can't imagine a woman reading Nietzsche. I mean it's not that they wouldn't understand it, it just wouldn't agree with who they were, you know?

>>4637047
Interestingly enough, Nietzsche was VERY interesting to feminists. They applied his existentialist notions to the female experience, which made them general instead of just male. Which should be a good thing, but is instead derided by asshats like in this thread. Philosophy was build in a way that sort of exclude women, feminism allows women to be a part of it and that should be encouraged. Wouldn't more intellectual women make men happy?

>ctrl+f "catherine malabou": 0 results
Disappointed in this entire thread.

>>4633532
>Rosa Luxemburg
>Emma Goldman
>Hannah Arendt
>Judith Butler
So apparently the only women capable of philosophizing are jewish?

>>4637199
>>>/pol/

>>4637181
>ctrl+g "dike": 0 results
hide thread

>>4635885
Boo hoo you whinny cunt. Stop pretending you are oppressed and live your life.

No one gives a single shit about what you do. You shouldn't care even if they did.

>>4637214
Baby's first edge

That fat lesbo who wrote about relativity theory being sexist and shit.

>>4637244
She said it was "sexed" not "sexist". Huge fucking difference.

>hoes writing philosophy

lmao

>>4637204
What? I'm not being offensive. I just think it shows that gender roles are dictated by culture. Obviously there's something about being raised jewish that has liberated women to think critically.

>>4637257
Nooo, it's just that Jews were a severely oppressed minority in Europe and so their intellectuals were attracted to leftism and leftism is pro women and so opened up male ears and women's voices

>>4637291
You think Jews, which make up like 0% of the population, were the only leftists in Europe, or even made up a majority of the leftists?

>>4637291
Then why is the far left in France usually linked to anti-Semitism while rightism is linked to Zionism and being pro-Israel?

Even in the USA, the Republicans are more pro-Israel than the Democrats, although both political groups are Zionists.

>>4634799
>Do female philosophers ever write about anything besides feminism and women's issues?

A lot of them in the analytic tradition hardly write about gender at all. Philippa Foot wrote about virtue ethics and normative ethics; Anscombe wrote about philosophy of action and meta-ethics; Patricia Churchland is famous for defending eliminative materialism in philosophy of mind. To my knowledge, none of them writes or wrote about women's issues.

>>4637750
Thanks for informing me. I had trouble finding any like them.

>>4637745
The Right's love affair with Israel is a symptom of their antisemitism. European antisemites use Israel as a back-door for Mid-East imperialism and, in return, let Israel do whatever they want to whomever. Jews (meaning White European and Russian Jews) are the neoliberals' model minority pet project and buffer against Arabs/Muslims, there's no real love involved.

>>4637650
They made up a majority of major leftist thinkers around the turn of the century, yes.

>>4637745
Left is linked to being anti-Israeli policy, but not antisemetic. Roger Garaudy was an antisemitic leftist and he was consequently shunned by everyone on the left, especially Foucault.

>>4637764
The love affair started with neoliberalism, which is far too concerned with efficiency to be racist in the conventional, ideological sense; the racism of neoliberalism is all about maximization of this and that.