Pacifism, Politics, and Feminism: Intersections and Innovations

177 Pages·2019·1.891 MB·English

by  Jennifer Kling

Pacifism, Politics, and Feminism
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Value Inquiry Book Series
Founding Editor
Robert Ginsberg
Executive Editor
Leonidas Donskis†
Managing Editor
J.D. Mininger
volume 330
Philosophy of Peace
Edited by
Danielle Poe (University of Dayton)
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/vibs and brill.com/pop
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, ,
Pacifism Politics and Feminism
Intersections and Innovations
Edited by
Jennifer Kling
leiden | boston
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Cover illustration: Kneeling by Spenser (@spensewithans) on Unsplash. Published on January 22, 2017.
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Contents
Notes on Contributors  vi
Introduction  1
Jennifer Kling
1 Violence and the Boundaries of the Community: a Relational Approach to
Autonomy  7
John Lawless
2 The Violence of Silencing  28
Barrett Emerick
3 “White people, we need to stop being so damn fragile!”: White and Male
Fragility as Epistemic Arrogance  51
Megan Mitchell
4 Eight Dimensions of Resistance  68
Tamara Fakhoury
5 Of Course, God is a Man! Masculinist Justifications of Violence and
Feminist Perspectives  80
Jane Hall Fitz-Gibbon
6 Engaging in a Cover-Up: the “Deep Morality” of War  96
Jennifer Kling
7 Climate Change Mitigation and the U.N. Security Council: a Just War
Analysis  117
Harry van der Linden
8 Pacifism, Feminism, and Nonkilling Philosophy: a New Approach to
Connecting Peace Studies and Gender Studies  137
William C. Gay
9 Letters from the Messiah: Arts and Peace Building  155
David Boersema
Index  165
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Notes on Contributors
David Boersema
is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Pacific University, in Forest Grove, Or-
egon (USA). Among his publications are Philosophy of Human Rights: Theory
and Practice and Philosophy of Art: Aesthetic Theory and Practice. In addition,
he is co-editor, with Katy Gray Brown, of Spiritual and Political Dimensions of
Nonviolence and Peace. He is a past executive director (2004–2012) and past
president (2016–2017) of the Concerned Philosophers for Peace.
Barrett Emerick
is Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He
writes and teaches about normative ethics, moral psychology, and social jus-
tice, focusing in particular on gender, racial, and restorative justice. He recently
published a chapter called “Forgiveness and Reconciliation” in The Moral Psy-
chology of Forgiveness (Rowman and Littlefield), edited by Kathryn J. Norlock.
One of his current projects is to explore the limits of the moral rights of free
thought and expression.
Tamara Fakhoury
is a teaching fellow in Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, where she will receive her PhD in the Spring of 2019. Her research inter-
ests span normative ethics and feminist philosophy. In her current project, she
focuses on the inherent personal value of non-political forms of resistance to
oppression and the virtues of defiantly pursuing projects that oppression for-
bids one from pursuing.
Jane Hall Fitz-Gibbon
has a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies and is a Visiting Scholar in the Center
for Ethics, Peace, and Social Justice at SUNY Cortland. She is the co-author of
six books, and her latest book, Corporal Punishment, Religion and United States
Public Schools, was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2017. She is the abbess
of an ecumenical religious community based in Ithaca, NY.
William C. Gay
is Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. With-
in Concerned Philosophers for Peace, he has served as President, Executive
Director, Newsletter Editor, and “Philosophy of Peace” Book Series Editor. He
has published seven books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters
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Notes on Contributors VII
on issues of violence, war, peace, and justice. He also serves on the editorial
boards of the journals The Acorn: Philosophical Studies in Pacifism and Non-
violence, Philosophy and Social Criticism, and the Journal of Globalization
Studies.
Jennifer Kling
is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Colorado
Springs. Her research focuses on moral and political philosophy, particularly
issues in war and peace, self- and other-defense, international relations, and
feminism. She is the author of articles in Journal of Global Ethics and The
Routledge Handbook of Pacifism and Nonviolence, and is the author of War
Refugees: Risk, Justice, and Moral Responsibility (forthcoming from Lexington
Books).
John Lawless
is Visiting Assistant Professor at Davidson College, and received his doctorate
in 2016 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research fo-
cuses primarily on agency as an object of political concern, and on the related
concepts of autonomy, liberty, paternalism, and oppression. In new work, he
is developing a novel approach to the rule of law, built around unappreciated
connections between law and agency’s social dimensions. His publications
include “Gruesome Freedom” in Philosophers’ Imprint and “Agency in Social
Context” in Res Philosophica.
Megan Mitchell
is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Stonehill College in North Easton, MA,
where she teaches and writes on issues of race, gender, and political philoso-
phy. She is the author of “The Dimensions of Diversity: Teaching Non-Western
Works in Introductory Philosophy Courses” in Dialogue: Canadian Philosophi-
cal Review.
Harry van der Linden
is Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at Butler University. He is the author of
Kantian Ethics and Socialism and has edited or co-edited several books, includ-
ing Rethinking the Just War Tradition. His most recent articles (posted at http://
works.bepress.com/harry_vanderlinden/) are on the concepts of violence, hu-
manitarian intervention, preventive war, combatant’s privilege, U.S. military
hegemony, and just military preparedness (jus ante bellum) as a new category
of just war theory. He edits the Radical Philosophy Review and has served as
treasurer of the Radical Philosophy Association since 1998.
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Introduction
Jennifer Kling
This collection explores the many and varied connections between pacifism,
politics, and feminism. Each of these topics is often thought about in academ-
ic isolation; however, when we consider how they intersect and interact with
each other, it opens up new areas for exploration and analysis. Taking an inter-
sectional feminist lens to pacifism, for example, enables us to re-conceptualize
violence and what sorts of actions count as violent, while thinking about paci-
fism and political theory allows us to regard different physical and social areas
as possible sites of (both feminist and non-feminist) resistance against war and
political realism. And on a meta level, considering how and why we might link
peace studies to gender studies brings out the distinctively political assump-
tions, alliances, and conclusions of both programs of study.
Having recognized that that “the future is female,”1 the chapters gathered
in this volume discuss a) how feminist analyses allow for and encourage the
re-conceptualization of concepts and ideas once thought familiar from tradi-
tional ethical and political philosophy, and b) traditional political topics and
issues through pacifist and feminist lenses. The chapters that focus on the for-
mer explore the possibility of “queering” such concepts as autonomy, violence,
resistance, peace, religion, and politics, by engaging in detailed discussions of
how we should think about these concepts in a historically, and still existent,
patriarchal, racist culture. The chapters that focus on the latter bring feminist
and pacifist sensibilities and arguments to bear on classic political questions
such as when and how violence and war are justified, the appropriateness of
various kinds of responses to climate change, and the correct way to engage
with such topics and themes in educational, institutional settings.
It is no surprise that our world faces a number of seemingly intractable so-
cial and political problems, including oppressive violence of various kinds, mil-
itarism, climate change, academic stagnation, and widespread injustice. This
volume takes as its hypothesis that the best way to understand, and begin to
solve, such complex social and political phenomena is to approach them from
1 This slogan began as part of the 1970s feminist separatist movement, but has since evolved
to evoke many different feminisms. In its current iteration, it references the need and de-
sire to have more women and non-binary persons positioned in the public sphere, to
re-conceptualize what it means to be in a position of public authority and/or power, and
to re-think our social and cultural concepts of, among others, gender, sex, and sexuality.
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