A foetus is not a person

As the referendum on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland fast approaches, misinformation and misunderstanding (both deliberate and unintentional) continue to circulate on a massive scale, both on social media platforms and on the forest of posters that line every road and street. The rhetorical weapons used by the Vote No campaign are subtle and powerful. Consequently, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish fact from mere propaganda, and sound argument from mere rhetoric.

Unsurprisingly, the stakes are high. For those seeking to remove the Eighth Amendment, the basic right to bodily autonomy for women and girls is at stake. For those seeking to maintain the status quo, the power to control, limit and punish women and girls – the basic aims of misogyny – seem to be slipping away. Emotions run high.

One clearly fallacious argumentative strategy used by the Vote No campaign is the use of various “slippery slope” arguments. For example, they argue that if abortion is legalized, then it will lead to terminations of all pregnancies with life limiting conditions; or that if abortion up to 12 weeks is legalized, then there is no guarantee that it won’t be extended to 20 weeks, or to 9 months, or indeed lead to the legalisation of infanticide.

There are a number of problems with these arguments. First, they are empirical, causal arguments: they tell us that if such-and-such state of affairs comes about, then a certain effect will follow. But we should only believe such arguments on the basis of empirical evidence: in particular, only if the relevant kind of state of affairs really has led to the relevant sort of effect in the past. And this evidence simply does not exist: there is no evidence that once the termination of pregnancy under certain circumstances is legalised in a jurisdiction, the effects claimed in the various slippery slope arguments come about.

Moreover, the first example above – that if abortion is legalized, then it will lead to terminations of all pregnancies with life limiting conditions – assumes that the only purpose of abortion is to terminate pregnancies with life limiting conditions. How does termination of pregnancies for reasons other than life limiting conditions fare based on this logic? A foetus’s life limiting conditions is not the sole reason for abortion, and prohibiting abortion in general in order to prevent termination of pregnancies with life limiting conditions makes no sense, since not all terminations are due to life limiting conditions of the foetus.

Furthermore – and this cannot be emphasised enough – abortion happens whether it is legal or not. So criminalizing abortion does not solve any problems – it simply creates more misery and suffering. Criminalizing abortion deprives women and girls of access to safe and legal abortion, and forces them to seek other unsafe means of terminating unwanted pregnancies.

This is an important point: the effect of legalising abortion is not to allow access to abortion where there was none, but rather to make abortion safe.

Finally, voting no to repeal the Eighth Amendment is actively deciding to take away a woman’s right to autonomy over her body. Since legalizing abortion is giving women the right to decide for themselves, neutrality is an expression of satisfaction with the status quo – which currently either forces women either to travel to seek termination, to go through the procedure illegally and unsafely, or forces (using the power of the State) women to carry pregnancy to full term.

Personhood: The Western Christian View vs dialogical views

Arguments about how Irish society’s most vulnerable (working class women, women of colour) are most affected by the lack of safe and legal abortion, or how the criminalizing of abortion in Ireland deprives women of their reproductive rights, are ongoing and familiar within the abortion debate.

What we want to address here is the (mis)conception (which is the basis of some anti-abortion arguments) that a foetus is a person with a right to life equivalent to that of a fully-fledged adult. This follows from the argument that life begins at conception, and that life guarantees personhood. It is a consequence of this line of thinking that as soon as conception occurs, there exist two independent lives (the foetus and the pregnant woman) with equal rights.

Even if we grant that life begins at conception, the idea of equating of life with personhood is a wholly misguided one, which has its roots in the Western Christian notion of a soul. A person, according to this doctrine, is a totally autonomous, self-contained entity that exists independent of others. This view is generally known as “individualistic” and to a large extent attributed to the 17th-century French philosopher, René Descartes. This conception of selfhood is not only problematic but on a closer inspection fails to provide logical support for the argument that a foetus is a person. A foetus is clearly not a totally autonomous and self-sufficient entity, and therefore cannot be granted personhood.

Alternatively, dialogical perspectives of selfhood provide a radically different view of personhood – one that views other people as imperative pillars of the self. According to dialogical perspectives, which stand in sharp contrast to the individualistic notion of personhood, we need and rely on others in order to construct and sustain our sense of self. We are inextricably inseparable from those around us, and continually develop and change through intersubjective interaction with others. Our self-knowledge comes from others and continually develops through our daily intersubjective interactions with others and our environment. As the Russian intellectual Mikhail Bakhtin put it:

“Within my own consciousness, my “I” has no beginning and no end. The only way I know of my birth is through accounts I have of it from others; and I shall never know my death, because my “self” will be alive only so long as I have consciousness – what is called my death will not be known by me, but once again by others. While the birth and death of others appear to be irreversibly real.”

Without others, the very core of our existence is threatened and solitary confinement is a grim and harrowing example of this. With the view of a person as a process (rather than an entity) continually developing and changing and interdependent with others, we might then grant a foetus some status of personhood but one that is not on a par with a fully-fledged adult and, furthermore, one that is entirely dependent on others (the pregnant woman or girl to be specific) for its existence and identity.

The idea of a continually changing self (which is dependent on others for its existence) can be troubling, especially since it seems to remove the apparent total autonomy that we typically take for granted, especially within individualistic cultures.

In non-individualistic cultures – where others are seen as pivotal constituents of the self, communal values are prior to individual ones, and we are before I am (or as the Kenyan-born philosopher John Mbiti put it ‘I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am’) – the collective comes before the individual. Responsibility, for example, is distributed among every member of the community, and not something that is left up to individual parents.

In Ethiopia, for example, where I grew up, the manifestation of the sentiment ‘the collective before the individual’ can be seen in the values placed around abortion and child-rearing. While less emphasis is put on the status of the foetus (and the decision mainly left up to the grown adult – the pregnant woman or girl –  who is not equated with a foetus) more emphasis is put on the responsibility of each member of the community in raising a child. If, for example, an adult sees a school child skipping school, responsibility to advise that child and send them back to school is assumed. Members of that community are active participants in the upbringing of all children. This is in stark contrast to more individualistic cultures, where people make it their business to monitor pregnant bodies during pregnancy and (in the Irish case) force women or girls to carry pregnancy to full term, but take little or no responsibility for a baby when it has been born.

Coming back our point about abortion and the implication of the idea of personhood as a process that continually develops with complete dependence on others (gradually becoming less dependent) is that the foetus, being the early stage of the process, in not a person similar to that of a fully-fledged adult.

The response that is often raised by the anti-abortionists to this is that “when does a foetus become a person?”, “at what point does transformation from foetus to a person occur?”

This unfortunately is an ill-framed and irrelevant question, philosophically speaking. Personhood is a process that develops over time through intersubjective dialogical relationships with others. Not an all-or-nothing entity that either exists or doesn’t. Not something you have or don’t have. Looking for a specific time when a foetus becomes a person is therefore misguided.

The anti-abortion argument that a foetus has a right to life in the same sense that a pregnant woman or girl has then lies on philosophically erroneous conceptions of personhood. Given that personhood is a process of continual development that is sustained in interaction with others, it is a mistake to think that the foetus (which is considerably less developed and immensely dependent on the pregnant women) is a person in the same way – and to the same degree – that the pregnant woman or girl is.

This blogpost is co-written by Abeba Birhane, Cognitive Science PhD candidate at University College Dublin and Dr. Daniel Deasy, Lecturer in Philosophy at University College Dublin.

Afrofeminist epistemology and dialogism: a synthesis (work in progress)

Embodied, enactive and dialogical approaches to cognitive science radically depart from traditional Western thought in the manner with which they deal with life, mind and the person. The former can be characterised as emphasising interdependence, relationships, and connectedness with attempts to understanding organisms in their milieu. Acknowledgements of complexities and ambiguities of reality form the starting points for epistemological claims.  The latter, on the other hand, tends to strive for certainty and logical coherence in an attempt to establish stable and relatively fixed epistemological generalisations. Individuals, which often are perceived as independent discreet entities, are taken as the primary subjects of knowledge and the units of analysis.

Collins’s proposed black feminist epistemology, hereafter “Afrofeminist epistemology”, opposes the traditional Western approach to epistemology as well as the largely Positivist scientific view inherited from it.  As such, it is worth drawing attention to the similarities between Black feminist thought and dialogical approaches to the cognitive sciences. In what follows I seek to reveal a striking convergence of themes between these two schools of thought. In so doing, I intend to illustrate that the two traditions – cognitive sciences, especially the dialogical approach to epistemology, and Afrofeminist epistemology, particularly, the type proposed by Patricia Hill Collins (2002) – can inform one another through dialogue.

General characterization of classic Western approach to epistemology and the Cartesian inheritance

The classic Western approach to epistemology tends to be monological; meaning it tends to focus on individuals and their cognition and behaviour. When relationships and interactions enter the equation, individuals and their relations are often portrayed as distinct entities that can be neatly separated. Dichotomous thinking — subject versus object, emotion versus reason – persists within this tradition. Ethical and moral values and questions are often treated as clearly separable from “objective scientific work” and as something that the scientist need not contaminate her “objective” work with. In its desire for absolute rationality, Western thought wishes to cleave thought from emotion, cultural influence and ethical dimensions. Cognition, evaluation and emotions are treated as if they are entities that shouldn’t be contaminated. Abstract and intellectual thinking are regarded as the most trustworthy forms of understanding and rationality is fetishized.

In the classic Western epistemological tradition, abstract reasoning is taken to be the highest cognitive goal, and certainty as a necessary component for knowledge.  Since the ultimate goal is to arrive at timeless, universally applicable laws, establishing certainty is pivotal for laying the foundations. Although there are historical antecedents leading up to and contributing towards what is generally regarded as Western tradition – in particular, Plato in his dialogues Meno and Phaedo – Descartes represents the pinnacle of Western thought (Gardiner 1998, Toulmin 1992). The subject as autonomous and self-sustaining entity or a Cartesian cogito, which we have inherited from Cartesian thinking, remains prevalent in most current Western philosophy as well as in the background assumptions of the human sciences. The way the individual self is taken as the unquestioned origin of knowledge of the world and others is a legacy of this tradition (Linell 2009).

Black feminist criticism of dominant approach and the proposed alternative

Contrary to the classic Western epistemological tradition, in Afrofeminist epistemology ethical and moral values and questions are inseparable from our enquires into knowledge. Similarly, knowledge claims and knowledge validation processes are not independent of the interests and values of those who define what knowledge is, what is important and worthy of study, and what the criteria for epistemological justification are (Collins 2002). Such definitions and criteria are guarded fiercely by the institutions and individuals who act as the ‘gatekeepers’ of the classic Western epistemological tradition. This traditional Western epistemology, Collins points out, predominantly represents Western, elite, and white, male interests and values. In fact, a brief review of the history of Western philosophical canon reveals that knowledge production processes and the criteria for knowledge claims have predominantly been set by elite, white, Western men.

Scholars like Karen Warren (2009) have cogently argued that the history of classical Western philosophy has, for centuries, almost exclusively consisted of elite, white, Western European men giving the illusion that Western white men are the epitome of intellectual achievement. Women’s voices and perspectives were diminished, ignored, and systematically excluded from the canon. In her ‘recovery project’, Warren finds that women philosophers nonetheless have made important contributions throughout the history of philosophy and that you find them when you go looking for them. This, to a great extent, remains the case not only in philosophy, but also in much of the rest of the academic tradition. A brief look at any philosophy curricula would reveal that white European male philosophers and their views remain dominant and definitive.

Traditional approaches taken as the “normal” and “acceptable” ways to theorise and generalise about people’s lived experiences means that any other approaches to theorising about groups of people that are not aligned with canonical intellectual currents (often white European male) are dismissed as “anomalies”. For Collins, it is indisputable that different people experience reality differently and that all social thought somewhat reflects the realities and interests of its creators. Political criteria influence knowledge production and validation processes in one way or another.  Collins asserts, in studying Black women’s realities, the typical perspectives on offer have either identified black women with the oppressor, in which case Black women lack an independent interpretation of their own realities, or have characterised Black women as less human than the oppressor, in which case Black women lack the capacity to articulate their own standpoint. While in the first perspective independent Black women’s realities are seen as not their own, in the latter, it is seen as inferior. For that reason, the traditional epistemology is inadequate to capture and account for the lived experiences of black women – hence Collins’ proposal for an Afrocentric feminist epistemology which is grounded in black women’s values and lived experiences.

Black women’s lived experiences are different in important ways. The kind of relationships Black women have, and the kind of work they engage in are notable examples that demonstrate the differing realities and lived experiences. Intuitive knowledge, what Collins calls wisdom, is crucial to the everyday lives and survival of black women. While wisdom and intuitions, as opposed to abstract intellectualizing, might be excluded as irrelevant, and at best, less credible as far as the traditional epistemologies are concerned, they are highly valued within black communities:

“The distinction between knowledge and wisdom, and the use of experience as the cutting edge dividing them, has been key to Black women’s survival. … knowledge without wisdom is adequate for the powerful, but wisdom is essential to the survival of the subordinate.” (Collins 1989, p. 759)

The desire for complete objectivity and universally generalisable theories in the dominant Western tradition has led to a focus on abstract analysis of the nature of concepts like ‘knowledge’ and ‘justification’, with little to no grounding of complex lived experience. Its portrayal of reason and rationality in direct contrast with emotions – the former to arrive at pure, objective knowledge –  has led to dichotomous thinking, thus blinding us to continuities and complementarities. Consequently, “reason” has been privileged over emotions. This in turn has impeded emotional and bodily knowledge, what Foucault (1980) calls ‘subjugated knowledge’ often expressed through music, drama, etc., as less important. However, ‘subjugated knowledge’ is crucial and is part of a way of life and survival for black communities. Such knowledge, grounded in concrete experiences and recognised through connectedness, dialogues and relationships, is what is of real value for Black women.

That knowledge claims should be grounded in concrete, lived experience rather than abstract intellectualising is crucial to Collins’s Afrocentric feminist epistemology. Collins’s Afrocentric epistemology prioritizes wisdom over knowledge and has, at its core, black women’s experiences of race and gender oppression. Black women have shared experience of oppression, imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and apartheid as well as roots in the core African value system prior to colonization. The roots of Afrocentric epistemology can be traced back to African-based oral traditions. As such, dialogues occupy an important place. Dialogues, so far as the Afrocentric epistemology is concerned, are an essential method for assessing knowledge claims.

This Afrocentric epistemology, grounded in the lived experience of black women, that employs dialogues as a way of validating knowledge claims, stands in a stark contrast with that of the Eurocentric epistemology. Connectedness rather than separation is an essential component of the knowledge validation process. Individuals are not detached observers of stories or folktales, but rather active participants, listeners and speakers and part of the story. Dialogues explore and capture the fundamentally interactive connected nature of people and relationships.

Ethical claims lie at the heart of an Afrocentric feminist epistemology, in contrast to the classical Western epistemology that considers ethical issues as separate from and independent of ‘objective scientific investigations’. Afrocentric feminist epistemology is about employing emotions, wisdom, ethics and reason as interconnected and equally essential components in assessing knowledge claims with reference to a particular set of historical conditions.

Dialogical criticism to dominant approach and its alternative

The dialogical approach to cognitive science – inspired by Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin’s (1895 – 1975) thinking and further developed by dialogists such as Per Linell (2009) – objects to the dominant Western epistemological approach. Dialogical theories which have roots in the Bakhtin Circle, a 20th century school of Russian thought, have had a massive influence on social theory, philosophy and psychology. At the centre of dialogical theories lies the view that linguistic production, the notion of self-hood, and knowledge are essentially dialogic. Dialogical approaches are concerned with conceptualizing and theorizing human-sense making and they do so based on a set of assumptions some of which stand in stark opposition to traditional Western philosophy and science. These assumptions include: individual selves cannot be assumed to exist as agents and thinkers before they begin to interact with others and the world; our sense-makings are not separable from our historical antecedents and current cultural and societal norms and value systems. The interrelation between self, others and the environment are there from the start in the infant’s life and the awareness of self and others co-develop over time; they are two sides of the same process. Classical Western philosophy and science has tried to reduce the world to rational individual subjects in attempt to establish stable universals. The origin of knowledge of the world and of others is the discreet individual person. So far as dialogical approaches go, most traditional Western epistemological approaches are rooted in Cartesian individualism and are monological – meaning, that they only encompass individuals and their cognition and environments. Groups and societies are nothing but ensembles of individuals:

“Individuals alone think, speak, carry responsibilities, and other individuals at most have a casual impact on their activities and stances.” (Linell 2009, p. 44)

Dialogism[1], in contrast, insists that interdependencies, co-dependencies, and relationships between the individual and the world are most fundamental components in understanding the nature of selves and furthermore, of knowledge. The term intersubjectivity captures this concept well:

“The term “intersubjectivity”—or what Hannah Arendt calls “the subjective in-between”—shifts our emphasis away from notions of the person, the self, or the subject as having a stable character and abiding essence, and invites us to explore the subtle negotiations and alterations of subjective experience as we interact with one another, intervocally or dialogically (in conversation or confrontation), intercorporeally (in dancing, moving, fighting, or competing), and introceptively (in getting what we call a sense of the other’s intentions, frame of mind, or worldview).”  (Jackson 2002, p. 5)

Cultures and societies are typically conceived as objective, stable structures so far as Western epistemologies go. Dialogism by contrast conceives cultures and societies as dynamic, living and partly open, with tensions, internal struggles and conflicts between majorities and minorities and different value systems. “Knowledge is necessarily constructed and continually negotiated (a) in situ and in sociocultural traditions, and (b) in dialogue with others; individuals are never completely autonomous¹ as sense-makers.” (Linell 2009, p. 46) The individual is not a separate, discrete, fixed and stable entity that stands independent from others, but rather one that is always in dynamical interactions with and interdependent with others. Knowledge claims and knowledge validation processes need therefore to reflect these continual tensions and dynamic interactions.

Concluding remarks: drawing similarities between dialogical approaches and Afrofeminist epistemology

So, what are the implications, if any, of drawing these commonalities between Afrofeminist epistemology and dialogical approaches to epistemology, and their common refutation of traditional Western epistemology? Collins has described Afrofeminist and Western epistemological grounds as competing and at times irreconcilable:

“Those Black feminists who develop knowledge claims that both epistemologies can accommodate may have found a route to the elusive goal of generating so called objective generalizations that can stand as universal truths.”  (Collins 1989, p.773)  

The synthesis and incorporation of dialogism with Afrofeminist epistemology is, in a sense, not the discovery of that elusive finding into “objective generalization” or “universal truths” that satisfy both epistemologies. Rather such synthesis, I argue, is a means towards epistemological approaches that aspire to embed Afrofeminist values and dialogical epistemological underpinnings to our understandings of personhood and knowledge. Such epistemological approaches acknowledge that knowledge claims, knowledge validation processes and any scientific endeavours in general are value-laden and cannot be considered independent of underlying values and interests. A move towards epistemological approaches that acknowledge the role of the scientist/theorist which Barad (2007) captures concisely:

“A performative understanding of scientific practices, for example, takes account of the fact that knowing does not come from standing at a distance and representing but rather from a direct material engagement with the world.”   (Barad 2007, p. 49)

Connectedness and relationships rather than disinterested, disembodied, and detached Cartesian individuals form a central component of analysis. Great emphasis is placed on extensive dialogues and not to become a detached observer of stories. In so doing, individual expressiveness, emotions, the capacity for empathy and the fact that ideas cannot be divorced from those who create and share them need to be key factor for this epistemology. Such is an epistemological approach that aspires to embed Afrofeminist values and dialogical underpinnings.

Knowledge is specific to time and place and is not rooted in the individual person but in relationships between people. Individuals exist in a web of relations and co-dependently of one other, negotiating meanings and values through dialogues. As Bakhtin, pioneer of dialogism has emphasized, we are essentially dialogical beings, and it is only through dialogues with others that we come to realise and sustain a coherent – albeit continually changing –  sense of self. Reality is messy, ambiguous, and complex. Any epistemological approach that takes the person as fully autonomous, fixed, and a self-sufficient agent whose actions are guided by pure rationality fail to recognise the complexities and ambiguities of reality, time and context-bound nature of knowledge. At the core of this proposed Afrofeminist/dialogical approach to epistemology is an attempt to bring values as important constituent factor to the dialogical, intersubjective embodied, in a constant flux person and the epistemologies that drive from it.

[1] It is important to note that individuals do not disappear in dialogism, rather, the individual is a social being who is interdependent with others, “not an autonomous subject or a Cartesian cogito.” (Linell 2009)

Bibliography

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. duke university Press.

Collins, P. H. (1989). The social construction of black feminist thought. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 14(4), 745-773.

Collins, P. H. (2002). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge.

Foucault, M. (1980). Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected essays and interviews. Cornell University Press.

Gardiner, M. (1998). The incomparable monster of solipsism: Bakhtin and Merleau-Ponty. Bakhtin and the human sciences. Sage, London, 128-144.

Jackson, M. (2012). Lifeworlds: Essays in existential anthropology. University of Chicago Press.

Linell, P. (2009). Rethinking language, mind, and world dialogically. IAP.

Toulmin, S. E., & Toulmin, S. (1992). Cosmopolis: The hidden agenda of modernity. University of Chicago Press.

Warren, K. (Ed.). (2009). An unconventional history of Western philosophy: conversations between men and women philosophers. Rowman & Littlefield.

 

ክርስትና እና እንስታዊነት ሆድና ጀርባ በሲራክ ተመስገን

የእንስታዊነት (Feminism) እንቅስቃሴ በመሰረታዊነት ሴቷን ከወንዱ እኩል በኢኮኖሚ፣ በማህበራዊ እና በፖለቲካው መስክ ተሳታፊ እንድትሆን ማስቻል ነው። ሴቷ በፆታዋ ብቻ የሚደርስባትን መገፋት ለማስቀረት መንቀሳቀስ ነው። የእዚህ መገፋት እና አባታዊ ስርዓት በአለም ላይ መዘርጋት ክርስትና ትልቅ አስተዋፅኦ አለው ብዬ አምናለሁ። ለእዚህም ነው ብዕሬን ያነሳሁት። እንግሊዛዊው የባይዎሎጅ ሊቅ ሪቻርድ ዳውኪንስ ብዙ በተነገረለት ‘The God Delusion’ በተባለው ድንቅ መጽሀፉ ላይ የብሉይ ኪዳኑን አምላክ እንዲህ ሲል በምሬት ይገልፀዋል፡

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully”

ፕሮፌሰር ዳውኪንስ ይሄን ሲል ግን እንዲሁ በባዶው አይደለም፤ ለእያንዳንዱ ስያሜው ከብሉይ ኪዳን መጻህፍት ጥቅስ እያጣቀሰ እንጅ፡፡ እኔም ‹‹ይሄንን ኢ–ሰብዓዊ የሆነን አካል በአምላክነት የተቀበለ ሰው ስለ መብት ሊያወራ አይገባም ›› የምለውም በመጽሃፉ የተጠቀሰው ባህርይ እጅግ ከሰብዓዊነት የራቀ በመሆኑ ነው፡፡። በዚህ ርዕስ የማነሳው የሴቶች መብት እና የእንስታዊነት (Feminism) ጉዳይም የመጽሐፉ ዋነኛ ተጠቂ ናቸው፡፡ በመጽሐፍ ቅዱስ ሴቶች ከብሉይ ኪዳን እስከ አዲስ ኪዳን ድረስ ሴቶች ተጨቋኝ ሆነው የቀረቡበት ጥራዝ ነው። አብነት እየጠቃቀስኩ ላስረዳ፡፡

የብሉይ ሴቶች

በብሉይ በእግዚአብሔር ተወዳጅ ከሆኑ ነገስታት አንዱ ንጉስ ዳዊት ነው። ይህ ሰዉ ወሲብ በጣም ይወድ ነበረ። ብዙም ዕቁባቶች ነበሩት። ሴቶችንም እንደግል ንብረቱ ቆጥሮ በአንድ ቤት ዘግቶ፣ ከማንም ሳይገናኙ እንዲሞቱ የማድረግ ስልጣን ነበረው ዳዊት (2ኛ ሳሙኤል 20:3)፡፡ በአመት ሶስት ጊዜ በሚደረገው የቂጣ በዓል፣ የመኸር በዓል እና የመክተቻ በአል ወቅት በእግዝአብሔር ፊት ለዕይታ የሚቀርቡት ወንዶች ብቻም ነበሩ (ዘጸአት፣ 23:14–17)፡፡ በሙሴዎ ዓለም የተፈጥሮ ኡደቶች (ወሊድም ሆነ የወር አበባ) ለሴት ልጅ የመርከስ ምልክት ነው። እንደዚህም ሆኖ ወንድ ከወለደች 7 ቀን የረከሰች ነች። በአስገራሚ ሁኔታ ሴት ከወለደች ዕጥፍ ቀን የረከሰች ነች መባሏ ነው (ዘሌዋውያን 12: 1–5)፡፡እግዜሩ ለሰው ልጆች ዋጋ ማውጣቱ ሲገርም ሴቶች ከወንዶች ያነሰ ዋጋ ያለቸው መሆኑ ይበልጥ ያስቃል። በብሉዩ ዓለም ከአምስት አመት ሴት ልጅ ይልቅ የአንድ ወር ወንድ ህፃን በዋጋ ይበልጣል (ዘሌዋውያን 27: 1–7)፡፡ ይባስ ብሎም ሙሴ በአምላኩ ሕዝቡን እንዲቆጥር ሲታዘዝ ሴቶች እንደሰው አይቆጠሩም ነበረ (ዘኁልቆ 3:15)፡፡ በዚህ አያበቃም እግዚአብሔር ለሙሴ በሰጠው ህግ መሰረት አንድ ሰው ቢሞት ወንዶች ልጆቹ ብቻ የንብረት ወራሾች ይሆናሉ። ሴቶች ልጆች ወራሾች የሚሆኑት ሟች ወንድ ልጆች ከሌሉት ብቻ ነው (ዘኁልቆ 27:8–11)፡፡ ድንግልና ሳይኖራት ያገባች ሴት በድንጋይ ተወግራ እንድትሞት ‹የእግዚአብሔር ህግ› ያዛል (ዘዳግም22:13–21)። በተቃራኒው ወንድ ድንግልና ከሌለው ይቀጣ የሚል ህግ ግን የለም። በአጠቃላይ የብሉይ ኪዳን ዘመን ተብሎ በሚታወቀው ጊዜ ሴት እቃ ( ) ነች እንጅ ሰው አልነበረችም፡፡ አዲስ ኪዳኑስ ምን ይላል;

ሴቶች በአዲስ ኪዳን

ከብሉይ ኪዳኑ የጭካኔ ዘመን አንፃር እየሱስ ክርስቶስ አብዮተኛ ነበረ ማለት ይቻላል። በአይሁዳውያን ዘንድ ሴቶችን ዝቅዝቅ የማድረግ ባህልን ሲጠቀም አይታይም። ሴቶችንም ያስተምርም ነበረ። በተዘዋወረባቸው ቦታዎችም ሁሉ በቋሚነት አብረውት ይከተለት ነበረ። እንደ ወንዶቹ ይፈውሳቸውም ምሳሌ ያደርጋቸዋልም። ይልቁኑ የክርትና መሰረት ነው ተብሎ ከሚነገርለት ከቅዱስ ጳውሎስ አስተምህሮ ነው አዲስ ኪዳኑ በሴቶች ላይ ሲጨክን የሚታየው፡፡ ጳውሎስ በ1ኛ ቆሮንቶስ 11:3 ላይ «ነገር ግን የወንድ ሁሉ ራስ ክርስቶስ፣ የሴትም ራስ ወንድ፣ የክርስቶስም ራስ እግዚአብሔር እንደሆነ ልታውቁ እወዳለሁ» ብሎ ሴትን በደረጃ ከወንዱ አውርዶ ያስቀምጣታል፡፡ አልፎም ለሴት ልጅ የፀጉር አቆራረጥ ህግ ያፀድቃል። ሴትም ለወንድ ሲባል የተፈጠረች እንደሆነ በግልፅ እና በጉልህ ይናገራል። ሚስቶች የባሎቻቸው ባሪያ እንደሆኑ እና ያለምንም ማመንታት ለባሎቻቸው እንዲገዙ ደንግጓል (ኤፌሶን 5:22–23)፡፡ ሴቶች ህዝብ በተሰበሰበበት ቦታ መናገር አይፈቀድላቸውም። ማወቅ የፈለጉት ነገር እንኳን ቢኖር በቤታቸው ባሎቻቸውን እንዲጠይቁ ነው እግዜሩ የሚያዘውይመክራል ጳውሎስ (1ኛ ቆሮንቶስ 14:34–36)፡፡ ሴቶች እንዲያስተምሩ አይፈቀድላቸውም። በወንድ ላይም መሰልጠን አይችሉም (1ኛ ጢሞቴዎስ 2:11–15)፤ በማለትም ‹ወንድ ወደ ችሎት፤ ሴት ወደ ማጀትን›› ጳውሎስ ይሰብከናል፡፡ ሲያጠቃልልም ሴቶች ደካሞች መሆናቸው በ1ኛ ጴጥሮስ 3:7 ላይ ይነግረናል ቅዱስ ጳውሎስ፡፡ እዚህ ላይ ነው ጥያቄው፡፡ ይሄን የመሰለ ሴቶችን እንደሰው እንኳን ለመቁጥር የሚግደረደር የጭቆና መሳሪያ ተይዞ ስለ ሴቶች መብት ማውራት እንዴት ይቻላል? መብትስ ምንድን ነው? ራስን መቃረን ደሞ በሽታ ነው። ይህን የሃይማኖት የጭቆና ህግጋት እና ትዕዛዝ አውልቀው ሳይጥሉ ‹እንስታዊት ነኝ› ማለት ለእኔ ለእንቅስቃሴው ስድብ ነው። እነደጳውሎስ ምክር ስጥ ብባልም እንደዚህ የመጽሃፉ አማኒያን ራሳቸው ‹የሴት መብት ተከራካሪ› ብለው የሚጠሩ ሰዎች ከእንስታዊነት እንቅስቃሴ ላይ እጃቸውን ቢያነሱ ሸጋ ነው ብይ ነኝ፡፡ “You can’t have your cake and eat it” እንዲሉ፤ ወይ ሽልጦውን ወይ ሆዳችንን ነው ጥያቄው፡፡ ለነገሩ እንደ ኤልዛቤት ስታንተን ያሉ ሴቶች ‘The Woman’s Bible’ ብለው ማሻሻያ ለማድረግ መነሳታቸው፤ የዚሁ የመጽሃፉ ጨቋኝነት ቢያማራቸው አይደለምን?

 

Western philosophy has historically seen only what its “illusions” permitted it to see

“Philosophy’s attachment to its illusions of gender neutrality functioned like Narcissus’s self-perception of himself when he looked at his image in the lake: he saw only what he wanted to see. Analogously, canonical Western philosophy has historically seen only what its “illusions” permitted it to see.” Karen Warren, 2009. 

When the issue of the absence of women and underrepresented groups in philosophy, or any other male-dominated discipline in general, is brought to attention, the reason for women’s absence is often attributed to the individuals themselves. ‘There aren’t many women in philosophy because it is not a subject that most women are attracted to’ or that ‘the Western philosophical canon almost exclusively consists of white males because there simply weren’t other voices’ or that ‘women didn’t write or take part in the philosophical debates of their times’. This simply is not true. As far as Western philosophy  (I presume as well as other domains) is concerned, one would find that women’s voices were systematically excluded or ignored from the canon. This is evident as when you go looking for them, you find voices and perspectives that have been diminished in important ways. This is in fact what Warren did in her “recovery project”. She rediscovered names, lives, texts, and perspectives of women philosophers from the 16th B.C.E. on. She then went beyond recovery, to an “inclusion project”: a gender inclusive account of the history of Western philosophy. The result, an anthology (An Unconventional History of Western Philosophy: Conversation Between Men and Women Philosophers) of the history of Western philosophy that accounts works of both women and men philosophers.

In this distinctive work, the first book in any language to include women philosophers among their historical male counterparts, Warren pairs women philosophers with canonical male contemporaries. Primary texts of “philosopher pairs” address topics or positions that when taken together, constitute a conversation. This project dissolves the add-women-and-stir-philosophy problem – a pertinent problem that arises when attempts are made to add women philosophers whose claims, positions, and methodologies are in conflict to that of the canon, creating what might seem “more like an explosion than a mixture”. The common practice is to avoid this attempt to integrate the works of women philosophers into the canon all together and develop a distinct “women’s philosophy or philosophy by women”. Examples of such include, ecofeminist philosophy, feminist ethics, feminist epistemology, and feminist philosophy of science. Warren, in this exceptional anthology, successfully manages to integrate the works of women philosophers into the canon whilst avoiding the add-women-and-stir-philosophy problem.

Given that there are material that are inclusive of both women and men, any curricula that fails to include women philosophers is outdated and inaccurate. At least, that’s Warren’s position. Now, whether the availability of material that have recovered and included the works of excluded and ignored women has had any significant impact on any philosophy curricula is another question.

The absence of women and underrepresented groups is not news to many, especially to those in philosophy. The exclusion of women from mainstream collections is indisputable. Take a look at these three randomly selected common textbooks/anthologies used in (political) philosophy: 1) A History of Modern Political Thought by Ian Hampsher Monk, 2) Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present by David Boucher & Paul Kelly, and 3) Western Philosophy: An Anthology by John Cottingham. Of these three (~600 pages long) anthologies, you’d find only one women philosopher mentioned (in Cottingham) – Judith Jarvis Thomson. And the philosophical work included in this anthology, unsurprisingly, is one that deals with abortion and rights.

This is depressing indeed but nonetheless, a poignant indicator that “rediscovery” and “inclusion” projects carried by the likes of Warren are of crucial importance in the long and slow journey towards fair representations in philosophy.

Black feminist epistemology – Collins

Should experiences of Black women be the grounds for knowledge claims when studying and theorising about Black women? I imagine many would say yes, however, as Patricia Hill Collins points out, that hasn’t been the case. We often have two inadequate perspectives on offer for studying consciousness of an oppressed group. Either these groups identify with the oppressor, in which case they lack an independent interpretation of their own oppression, or they are seen as less human than their oppressors, in which case they lack the capacity to articulate their own standpoint. In the first case, independent consciousness is seen not as their own, while in the latter, consciousness of the oppressed group is seen as inferior. In ‘The social construction of black feminist thought’ Collins argues for the need for an alternative epistemological stance that reflects Black women’s standpoints.

Collins rejects both perspectives and asserts that Black women have been neither passive victims nor willing complies of, what she calls, the dominant ‘Eurocentric masculinist epistemology’. She traces its origins in Western elite white male structures of knowledge foundation, where Black women’s experiences with work, family, motherhood, and sexual politics have routinely been distorted or excluded from traditional academic discourse and from what counts as valid knowledge. This exclusion from the mainstream epistemology has led to what Collins calls ‘subjugated knowledge’ – expressions of experience through other forms such as music and dance.

For Collins, as for many feminist standpoint theorists, ‘all social thought reflects the interest and standpoint of its creator’ and political criteria influence the knowledge validation process. Knowledge is evaluated by a community of experts that represent the standpoint of the groups from which they originate. Credibility is thereby maintained as defined by the group from where the basic knowledge is drawn. This  alienates alternative standpoints as anomalies. Since Western structures of knowledge foundation have been controlled mainly by elite white men*, the dominant epistemologies reflect interests and views of that group while other views are systematically distorted.

This dominant, white male controlled knowledge validation process, which Collins closely associates with positivist** epistemology, suppresses Black feminist thought on the grounds that it is not credible research – for new knowledge claims must be consistent with existing bodies of knowledge that the dominant group accepts true. Thoughts that challenge the inferiority of Black women are unlikely to be generated. Such thoughts reveal the white male controlled academic community’s inadequacies and its lack of familiarity with Black women’s reality. Expressing an independent Black feminist consciousness, therefore, becomes problematic, as it is a threat to the established interpretation of reality.

Black women who achieve academic credentials face pressure from multiple sides. They must navigate between two conflicting epistemologies – representing white male interest on the one hand, and Black female interest on the other. These scholars must constantly translate and move back and forth between these two frameworks. Those who accept such institutional assumptions are rewarded, but often at a personal cost and those that challenge such assumptions face the risk of being ostracized.

Given that ‘reality is experienced differently by different groups’ is at the heart of Collins’s argument, it is no surprise that she rejects positivism as an appropriate epistemological framework to study Black women’s experience. Positivist approaches, in their strive to produce objective generalizations, fail to acknowledge that researchers have values, experiences, and emotions. She asserts, “genuine science is unattainable unless all human characteristics, except rationality, are eliminated from the research process”. I am sympathetic to Collins’s position on positivism. The very idea of “genuine science”, not only whether it is attainable, is questionable – well, at least as far as humans are the centre of enquiry. In its desire to be objective and value-free, science often makes the scientist invisible. As ideal as this may sound, it is an unobtainable utopia. There is no such thing as ‘a view from nowhere’ and science and scientists are not immune from this. The methods the scientist chooses to investigate certain phenomena (and by implication those she chooses to ignore) and the way research questions are framed, for example, affect the kind of knowledge produced. Instead of making the scientist invisible and attempt to eliminate human characteristics from the research process, science might be better-off acknowledging that science is a human endeavour. As such, passions, values, and situatedness in certain historical and cultural discourse, among many other factors, are likely to play a role in our findings. That doesn’t mean that our findings are simply invalid or flawed rather, we need to be mindful of these factors and underlying assumptions.

Since the traditional epistemological stance is not helpful in articulating Black women’s consciousness, Collins proposes an alternative way of producing and validating knowledge claims consistent with Black women’s criteria – based on the lived experiences of Black women. Black women’s lived experiences, for Collins, are more credible and believable than those who merely read or think about such experiences. These experiences that Black women share and pass on become a collective wisdom and form the basis for Black women’s standpoint. These knowledge claims rest in the women themselves and not a higher authority. Collins mentions institutional support, such as the Black church, for articulating these lived experiences. 

It seems reasonable to view Black women’s concern as more of an experiential one and less of an intellectual endeavour that could be contemplated from afar, given that Black women do live and experience oppression on a daily basis. However, given that institutions such as the church have their own values and ethical agendas, those that refuse to conform to those values and ethical guidelines are likely to be excluded and discriminated against. The obvious example is ideologies in opposition to LGBTQI people.

Collins puts forward dialogues as a method for assessing knowledge claims. Emphasis needs to be placed on extensive dialogues in communities rather than thought in isolation. For Collins, connectedness rather than separation is an essential component of the knowledge validation process. I think, Bakhtin would further agree that the fact that dialogues are missing from the modernist conception of the self reflects the lingering Cartesian residues in our modernist epistemologies. In its desire for epistemological certitude and logical coherence to establish absolute certainty, Western metaphysics roots knowledge in the solitary subject contemplating an external world in a purely cognitive manner as a disembodied observer at the expense of embodied dialogism. It is by adopting a dialogical world view that we are able to assess and evaluate our own existence and construct a coherent self-image. The lack of dialogues in our modernist epistemologies and by extension the metaphysical assumptions of positivist epistemologies further support Collins’s criticism of positivism.

Finally, Collins identifies three key groups that women scholars who want to develop Black feminist thought need to assure in order to be credible. They must be personal advocates for and be willing to engage about their findings with ordinary Black women, they must also be accepted by Black women scholars, and they must be prepared to confront Eurocentric masculinist political and epistemological requirements. There arises a dilemma as the criteria of one groups’ credibility may not necessarily transfer to another. A dilemma, I imagine many Black women in academia experience. 

*Collins makes a careful qualification that it is not necessarily individual men that benefit from such institutional structures.  

**Collins emphasises that neither all positivist aspects are bad nor all non-positivist frameworks automatically better.

Men #mansplain feminism to me

I recently got into some Twitter exchanges regarding Ethiopian feminism. Seeing a bunch of men telling women that they can’t be both religious and feminists despite those women arguing otherwise, started it. Let me clarify things in a bit more detail here. Not only are you mistaken, as there are plenty of remarkable Muslim feminists, the arrogance in your tone is unbearable.  The real irony was though you failing to see the privileged standpoint which you are speaking from. A privilege that grants you to think that your opinion on feminism should be more trustworthy than the experience and say of women who live sexism and misogyny every day. I am not at all religious but one doesn’t need to be religious to see how wrong-headed it is for men to alienate and exclude women from feminism based on faith. Especially, when those women are declaring themselves feminists and providing justifications (note that they needed to) why it works for them. Do you think they need your approval to qualify as a feminist because you have problems with letting go of authority? Why should women feel they need to fit your definition of feminism to call themselves one? Do you think they need men like you to think for them and tell them what feminism is or should be? Telling a woman that she can’t be both religious and feminist is like the oppressor telling the oppressed what oppression means. If you think women need your approval and validation as they explore what feminism means to them, it is a sign that you have failed to grasp the kind of patriarchal society we live in and you are likely to be part of the problem.

I am not advocating for any strand of feminism here. Neither am I trying to define what feminism is nor who should be categorised as a woman and why. My issue is you belittling and demeaning women for saying what kind of feminism works for them and what feminism means to them. It doesn’t matter what level of education you have, or how enlightened your knowledge of feminism might be (although I highly doubt most men who think they should be in charge defining feminism know much about it at all), telling a feminist what feminism is or should be, defeats the very essence of what feminism stands for – namely women thinking and deciding for themselves. You wanting to be the central voice here not only gives you complete authority, which feminism is trying to shift, it also disregards and invalidates women’s experiences.

Do you find the idea that women can think and decide for themselves and that your input comes second indigestible? That might be because it has been the accepted norm (thanks to patriarchy) for your voice to be the dominant and authoritative one. You wanting to take the upper hand and explain what feminism is to women is an indictment of your unquestioned and taken for granted privilege as a man. It takes one to critically reflect on societal structures and one’s place in such structures to be aware of one’s own privilege.

If you think feminists central focus should be the protection of your freedom of speech, then you’ve got it all wrong. And if you can’t see why your rights aren’t the centre of attention in the feminist’s agenda, then you really are blinded by your male privilege in which case you urgently need to scrutinise those privileges.

If you truly want to contribute to the whole movement, learn to critically analyse your place as a man in society and carefully listen to what women have to say. Your knowledge is no good if it is dismissive of women who live to experience sexism every day. There can only be a common ground for discussion of your contribution to feminism when you first believe and accept that women are capable of leading their own movement and are the primary role-players as far as feminism goes.

Finally, this is aimed at those men who think that their knowledge of feminism is far superior to women’s lived experiences and say on feminism. If you are not one of them, then this post doesn’t concern you and you are most likely to agree with me here. If you are, I hope you find this post somewhat helpful in terms of clarifying issues – absent in the restricted Twitter exchanges.