Pacifism, Politics, and Feminism

Front matter

Edited by $ehnifer BRILL | RODOPI

VALUE INQUIRY BOOK SERIES

Pacifism, Politics, and Feminism

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

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 academic isolation; however, when we consider how they intersect and interact with each other, it opens up new areas for exploration and analysis. Taking an intersectional feminist lens to pacifism, for example, enables us to re-conceptualize violence and what sorts of actions count as violent, while thinking about pacifism 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 assumptions, alliances, and conclusions of both programs of study.

Having recognized that that “the future is female,” 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 traditional ethical and political philosophy, and b) traditional political topics and issues through pacifist and feminist lenses. The chapters that focus on the former 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 social and political problems, including oppressive violence of various kinds, militarism, 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 desire 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.

© JENNIFER KLING, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004396722_002 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the cc By-NC 4.0 license.

several complementary disciplinary directions and analytical frameworks. Such global, interdisciplinary thinking encourages publicly engaged social and political philosophy of the sort found here, work that attempts not only to analyze the various conceptual issues involved, but also to provide practical pathways forward towards resolving, or at least ameliorating, some of our most deeply entrenched social and political problems.

In the first chapter, John Lawless argues that a feminist approach to autonomy can help draw out the ways in which violence, especially interpersonal violence, can undercut autonomy and thus political liberty. He points out that, contrary to traditional, atomistic understandings of autonomy, relational understandings of autonomy include not only having the ability to make choices about the direction of one’s life, but also having practical authority in some domains. And having practical authority, Lawless contends, depends on being embedded in relationships with others. Violence can subvert, distort, and destroy such relationships, and thus is a threat both to a person's practical authority and, more broadly, to their autonomy or agency itself. Violence is morally significant, on this view, not only because it poses a threat to bodily security and reduces a person’s available options (as many traditional analyses of violence point out), but also because it threatens the structures of the interpersonal, social, and political relationships that are necessary for practical authority, agency, and, at the limit, political liberty. By inviting us to re-conceptualize autonomy, Lawless encourages us to reconsider what violence does, and how it alters those real, relational communities in which it occurs.

In his contribution to this volume, Barrett Emerick considers how we ought to understand and frame the phenomenon of silencing, that is, the act of preventing someone from communicating (broadly construed). He contends that, contrary to traditional conceptions of both violence and free speech, we should agree with the feminist and anti-racist activist’s claim that silencing is—at least sometimes—a form of violence. Following and expanding upon Vittorio Bufacchi’s view of violence, Emerick writes that violence is perhaps best analyzed as a violation of a person’s integrity. So, when silencing violates the integrity of the person who is silenced by diminishing their epistemic capacities, it becomes an act of violence; specifically, it becomes an act of epistemic violence. Following Miranda Fricker, Emerick understands epistemic injustice to be when someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower; either their testimony is not given the credibility that it warrants, or “some significant area of [their] social experience [is] obscured from collective understanding.” Since being a knower is essential to being a person, suffering epistemic injustice can sometimes, over time, diminish one as a person. When someone’s personhood is diminished due to suffering epistemic injustice, Emerick concludes,

INTRODUCTION 3 we should understand this violation as a form of violence. Emerick finishes by inviting us to consider whether such violent silencing is ever justified, given “the unjust meantime’ in which we live.

Megan Mitchell, in Chapter 3, further broadens our understanding of violence by providing a unifying analysis of fragility, both white and male. She argues, from a feminist perspective, that fragility is a kind of failure of intellectual humility; it is a disposition to epistemic arrogance by whites and/or men with respect to racist and sexist oppression, respectively. As Mitchell notes, consciously or unconsciously, fragile agents mistakenly believe that their perspectives, with regards to these domains of oppression, are more reliable because they are white and male. This is part and parcel of understanding racism and sexism as ideologies that center whiteness and maleness, and that marginalize, Other, and otherwise denigrate other social identities. Such ideologies encourage a range of epistemic vices, including fragility. Fragile agents, due to their racist and/or sexist ideologies, believe that they enjoy a position of epistemic privilege with regards to racism and/or sexism. When such conscious or unconscious beliefs about their epistemic advantages in critically discussing and analyzing these domains are challenged, fragile agents respond inappropriately, often with epistemic and sometimes with physical violence. Thus, Mitchell concludes that fragility (both white and male) is objectionable at least in part because it is an epistemic vice, and reminds us that it is also, and perhaps more centrally, objectionable because it leads to epistemic violence—in the form of silencing—and physical violence against those marginalized on the basis of race and/or sex, and so functions to maintain white and male supremacy.

In “Eight Dimensions of Resistance,’ Tamara Fakhoury examines the concept of resistance, and argues that, contrary to traditional evocations of resistance to oppression as loud public activism and civil disobedience, resistance can take many forms. She contends that resistance can be violent, flagrant, morally devious, or dramatic and it can be quiet, covert, peaceful and even gentle. Fakhoury argues in favor of this more expanded notion of resistance, and provides a classificatory schema that identifies different instances of resistance to civilized oppressions. Civilized oppressions, she explains, are distinct from more blatant forms of oppression such as colonialism or slavery in that they do not explicitly rely primarily on state-sponsored or state-sanctioned violence to survive, but rather are maintained and supported by a variety of informal political and social norms and practices and psychological mechanisms. Thus, they produce distinctive challenges that require special forms, or modes, of resistance. Modes of resistance against civilized oppressions, according to Fakhoury, include not only well-known forms such as loud, social, public, and global activism of various kinds, but also quiet, personal, private, and local forms of resistance. Fakhoury concludes by encouraging theorists to take a closer look at the everyday modes and forms of resistance that she describes, and to incorporate them into more inclusive, realistic political theories of oppression, resistance, justice, and peace.

Jane Hall Fitz-Gibbon’s chapter explores the relationships between religion, violence, and peace. She argues that current understandings of religion paint the divine as male, with traditional masculine attributes of strength, power, and superiority, and that this understanding of the divine contributes to and legitimizes the use of violence within and across cultures and societies. A feminist re-imaging of the divine might, Fitz-Gibbon claims, de-legitimize violence, but only if it receives uptake in popular culture. While feminist theologies have engaged in the task of freeing God from its masculinist presentation, such work remains in the academy, for the most part, and has not permeated societies outside of academia. Fitz-Gibbon does not end on such a pessimistic note, however; she contends that a feminist image of God could, if popularized, lead to a re-conceptualization of religion, which could lead to religion becoming a true force for peace both within and across societies, and could encourage a more just and less violent world.

With my contribution, the volume switches gears from re-conceptualizing ideas and concepts once thought familiar from traditional ethical and political philosophy, to exploring traditional political topics and issues through pacifist and feminist lenses. For my part, I bring a feminist sensibility to bear on the question of whether, as Jeff McMahan argues, we should not integrate what he refers to as the “deep morality” of war into our military and international public policies and laws, because of the possible negative consequences of doing so. On the basis of feminist epistemology, I argue that McMahan is wrong to think that publicizing and legalizing the deep morality of war will have the negative consequences that he claims, because I disagree with his argument that combatants are highly likely to act in stupid, thoughtless, and brutish ways. Through a comparison with the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the United States, I argue that McMahan’s argument is epistemically biased, in that it reflects and incorporates stereotypical views of poor people. We would do better to think hard about how we conceptualize combatants, and to recognize in our arguments that the abilities to reason well and to act morally are not restricted to the upper echelons of society. I conclude by suggesting that moral and political theories ought to at least attempt to do things in the world, and so we should be wary of any theory that “argue[s] for a moral position and then contend|[s] that the world should not strive to be moral.”

In Chapter 7, Harry van der Linden considers the proposal that the UN Security Council (UNSC) ought to engage in military action against countries

INTRODUCTION 5 that are failing to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions in an adequate manner. This proposal rests on the idea that climate change is a “threat multiplier” that is likely to bring about significant future conflicts if it is not effectively stopped or ameliorated. Considering the shortcomings of the Paris Agreement, van der Linden argues that providing the UNsc with the authority to enforce climate change mitigation through military coercion remains a real political option. However, in light of feminist and pacifist critiques of just war theory, van der Linden goes on to claim that this option, while it might have good effects, is ultimately morally flawed and deeply antithetical to productively addressing climate change. Mitigation wars would be counterproductive, and in violation of international just war norms, policies, and laws. More broadly, he concludes that “war is not the answer” in order to avoid disastrous climate change. Instead, we should engage in massive nonviolent resistance against non-mitigating and inadequately mitigating countries, and should increase local and regional efforts to adopt green technologies, values, and ways of living.

William C. Gay, in “Pacifism, Feminism, and Nonkilling Philosophy: A New Approach to Connecting Peace Studies and Gender Studies,” discusses the conceptual connections between pacifism and feminism, and points out that the various stereotypes that plague those domains hamper their uptake in educational, institutional settings. In particular, although peace studies and gender studies are not wedded to pacifism and feminism, respectively, many people take them to be, and so are less open to such studies than perhaps they should be, given the reality of our violent and oppressive world. Gay suggests that integrating the new approach of nonkilling philosophy could provide practical and even more radical ways of advancing, and possibly uniting, peace studies and gender studies. This is especially the case because, although nonkilling philosophy incorporates important aspects of both pacifism and feminism, it is not dogged by the same negative stereotypes. Nonkilling philosophy rejects essentialist doctrines of human nature as essentially or intrinsically violent, and argues in favor of “conflict transformation,’ whereby people transition from negative conflict management or elimination to working through their conflicts with others nonviolently, via cultivating linguistic and behavioral habits of nonviolence and peace. It is thus committed to the mutual recognition and empowerment of all humans in the quest for a more just and peaceful world. Nonkilling philosophy is an interdisciplinary approach that is more radical in scope, Gay claims, than either pacifism or feminism, and is more feasible in its implementation; so, he concludes, we should adopt it as an essential element of both peace and gender studies.

In the final chapter of the volume, David Boersema makes the case that the arts, although they have been, and continue to be, used to support violence and oppression, can be a tool for peace building and justice. Intrapersonally, Boersema points out that the process of making art can be transformative for the artist. Making art can not only encourage the nonviolent release of negative emotions, such as resentment, fear, and anger, but also can inspire the artist to see the world, and its potential, differently. The process of art-making can lead the artist to feel empowered, and can engender hope, love, and fellowfeeling, all of which are important attitudinal components of peace building. Interpersonally, Boersema notes the social aspects of art-making, whereby artists working together and in the same space learn to respect their different points of view, empathize with each other, and collaborate in creation rather than destruction. Also at the interpersonal level, the experience of encountering art as a product can lead audiences to empathize with the artist, and can help audiences learn to interpret the world, and its meanings, through the eyes of another. This is essential to peace building, as peace is predicated on the elimination of oppression and injustice, which itself is predicated on those in power coming to understand, to the extent possible, the experiences and positions of those who are oppressed. Boersema reminds us that we should not be fooled by art’s sometime association with the “irrational feminine,’ and ultimately concludes that art, both as process and product, can foster the creation of a more peaceful world.

By taking up new approaches and embracing the possibility of conceptual paradigm shifts, Pacifism, Politics, and Feminism attempts to both identify and make progress on the persistent questions and issues that arise at the intersection of pacifism, politics, and feminism. It is both significant and unique, being one of the first book-length treatments of this intersection from a philosophical perspective. The main goal of the book is to further scholarship on these important issues, and to inspire new work that explores the deep and often subtle interplay between pacifism, politics, and feminism. The book should be of interest to scholars and students of these, and other related, domains. And, given contemporary social and political circumstances, the book may also be of relevance to activists and others who would like to better understand the interrelations between gender, violence, and peace, and who would like to think about the possibility of creating a more just, and more peaceful, world.

Chapter 1

Violence and the Boundaries of the Community: A Relational Approach to Autonomy

John Lawless

A concern for individual autonomy lies at the foundation of liberal political theory.! This concern emerges from our conceptions of ourselves as agents — as the authors of our own stories, and not simply members of the audience. Traditionally, moral and political philosophers have characterized agency as a power to choose the goals that one pursues. In this respect, agents differ from mere matter, which simply drifts along in the current of causes and effects; and from mere instruments, which may have purposes, but which receive these purposes from the agents that define and use them. However, moral and political philosophers have also recognized that human agency is fragile. People tend to share an intuitive sense that certain conditions — say, addiction or coercion — foist certain goals upon us, and so render us the unwilling playthings of alien forces. While these conditions may not deprive us of our agency entirely, they do compromise our abilities to make choices that are robustly, authentically our own. A concern for autonomy is a concern for uncompromised agency. However, many feminist philosophers have argued that autonomy is a distinctively masculinist ideal. That is because autonomy has long been thought to require a kind of rugged individualism that stands at odds with women’s lived experiences and concerns. On the most unabashedly individualist approaches, for instance, the fully autonomous agent could not make it one of her central projects to care for others, because in her devotion, the caregiver would become a mere prop supporting another person’s agency. She could not make it a guiding principle that her projects fit harmoniously with others, because in doing so, she would allow other people’s goals define her own. To be sure, she might sacrifice her own autonomy in order to fit herself within caring relations with others, but this would be a sacrifice. Autonomy, so

1 Perhaps we might say more precisely that a concern for liberty lies at liberalism’s foundations. But liberals often cast liberty as an aspect of autonomy, one compromised by essentially interpersonal threats to autonomy: interference, coercion, or domination. A concern for liberty, on this approach, emerges from a more fundamental concern for autonomy. See John Lawless, “Agency in Social Context,” Res Philosophica 94, no. 4 (2017): 3-7.

© JOHN LAWLESS, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004396722_003 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the cc BY-NC 4.0 license.

understood, might find a natural home in domains like business, law, politics, or war — domains governed by impersonal rules and defined by competition and conflict. But it stands at odds with the ideals that we associate with traditionally feminine pursuits: ideals of care, mutual dependence, and trust.

For some, the fruit of this critique is a deep skepticism of autonomy as a moral and political ideal, and the rejection of those liberal moralities built upon its foundation.” For others, though, the critique only reveals the weakness of overly individualist conceptions of agency and of autonomy. And feminist philosophers have been at the forefront of developing alternative, relational conceptions. These conceptions do not only emphasize the compatibility of autonomy with human relationships. More radically, relational approaches to autonomy aim to reveal the extent to which autonomy is possible only for those embedded in caring, respectful relationships with others. These approaches teach us that, if we aim to promote individual autonomy, we must not build walls between people, but must foster the conditions in which these relationships might flourish. The feminist critique of liberalism, then, transforms from a critique of autonomy (full stop) into a critique of the “atomist” conception of autonomy on which liberalism, at least in certain forms, seems to depend.?

Of course, there are a number of routes by which to unearth autonomy’s relational bases. As Natalie Stoljar and Catriona Mackenzie put the point, “relational autonomy” is an umbrella term that gathers together a wide variety of approaches.* My goal in this chapter is not to catalogue them, but to focus on what I take to be a relatively unnoticed thread in this rich tapestry, and to identify the lessons that we can learn from this approach about the moral significance of violence. In particular, I argue that agency does not simply involve a capacity to decide the direction one’s life takes, but involves also practical authority in some domains. Certain choices belong to particular agents, and not to others. Our practical authority emerges from our relationships with others, relationships that the use of violence threatens to distort, or even to destroy.

The chapter has four parts. In Section 1, I sketch a traditional approach to agency, and identify some of the species of non-autonomous behavior that

2 See, for instance, Lorraine Code, “Second Persons,” in What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 71-109.

3 Jennifer Nedelsky first coined the term “relational autonomy,’ and she has been among its most influential advocates. See, for instance, Jennifer Nedelsky, Law’s Relations: A Relational Theory of Self, Autonomy, and Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

4 Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stoljar, “Introduction: Autonomy Refigured,” in Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self, ed. Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stoljar (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 4.

this approach makes comprehensible. In Section 2, I characterize the connections between agency, practical authority, and interpersonal relations, and I illustrate the ways in which attention to these connections adds nuance to our conceptions of non-autonomous behavior. In Section 3, I focus in particular on the ways in which violence threatens people’s agency, arguing that it influences the structures of our relationships with one another, threatening at the limit to undermine our practical authority altogether.

1 Autonomy as Mastery

In this first section, I sketch a general approach to autonomy that I will call “the mastery approach.” In later sections, this approach will provide a backdrop against which we will clarify the core insights that relational approaches advance. The mastery approach proceeds by distinguishing the person from the world around her. We lose agency to the extent that those things that are not us define our paths for us, pushing us in directions that we have not chosen for ourselves. Conversely, we enjoy autonomy when we enjoy mastery over the things that are not us. This has three dimensions: self-mastery (that is, mastery over potentially rebellious elements within one’s own psychology), mastery in one’s relations with other people, and mastery over the world at large.®

We enjoy self-mastery when we do not suffer psychological conditions that disrupt our perceptual, cognitive, or deliberative capacities — those capacities that jointly constitute the psychological capacity to choose from the options available to us. When we suffer conditions like phobia, addiction, mania, or compulsion, we are, in S.I. Benn’s phrase, “inner-impelled,’ finding ourselves dragged along undesirable paths by forces rooted within our own minds. “Kleptomaniacs do not decide to steal,” Benn writes. “[I]ndeed, they may decide not

5 It is not my intention in this section to pin the mastery approach on any particular thinkers. After all, those who develop relational approaches to autonomy invoke (something like) the mastery approach for two distinct purposes: first, to indict individualist biases in traditional moral and political thought; and second, to construct a foil against which to develop their own positive approaches. I take the second strategy in this chapter, because my primary goal is not to reveal the flaws in any particular thinker’s conception of autonomy, but to reveal some overlooked dangers that attend the use of violence. Nonetheless, I do believe that the mastery approach is at the very least implicit in many contemporary approaches to autonomy (and especially in many contemporary approaches to liberty — see note 1). Proving the point, unfortunately, would require exegetical efforts that lie beyond the scope of the chapter. See, though, Lawless, “Agency in Social Context,’ in which I argue that prominent conceptions of freedom as non-interference (or non-vulnerability to interference) at least implicitly rely on something like the mastery approach.

to, but steal all the same. Reminding a compulsive handwasher that he washed his hands only moments ago will not stop him washing them again.” Conditions like addiction, mania, and compulsion disrupt the connections between the agent and her behavior, making her less responsible for her behavior than she would be in their absence. We appropriately attribute the kleptomaniac’s theft, not entirely to Aer, but at least in part to her kleptomania.

Why do these psychological conditions count as threats to our capacities for choice? On the mastery approach, an agent enjoys “self-mastery” only if her choices manifest her true or authentic desires or values. For instance, Harry Frankfurt has argued that there must be a kind of coherence between her “first-order” desires — that is, the desires that motivate her — and her “second-order” desires — that is, her desires about which desires should motivate her.” A person’s second- (or higher-) order desires establish the boundaries between those desires that constitute her “self” from those that do not: When a person enjoys coherence between her first- and second-order desires — that is, when she is motivated by all and only those desires that she wants to motivate her — she “identifies” with the choices she makes. Self-mastery, then, requires that agents identify with their own actions, seeing themselves in their works. In contrast, the non-autonomous agent suffers motivations that she repudiates. While these motivations may be internal to her own psychology, they are at the same time alien to her. The kleptomaniac, for instance, may not identify with her yen to steal, and yet find herself unable to quell the motivation. Since she is unable to resist a motivation with which she does not identify, she does not fully direct her own life.

Interpersonal threats to agency include individual interactions, like coercion; or persistent relationships, like the relationship between the slaveholder and the slave. These interactions and relationships often involve limitations on people’s options. For instance, when the gunslinger offers you a choice between your money or your life, she narrows your range of options quite radically, taking away (for instance) the option of continuing on your way safely and in full possession of your valuables. However, something sets essentially interpersonal phenomena like coercion or subjugation apart from the mere limitation of one’s options. In particular, coercion and subjugation suffice to transform one person into an instrument of another person's agency. Those who coerce or subjugate us act through us. Even though we might physically hand our valuables over to a gunslinger, it would be more accurate to say that

6 S.I. Benn, “Freedom, Autonomy, and the Concept of a Person,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 76 (1975): 116.

7 Harry G. Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” in Free Will, ed. Gary Watson, Second Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 322-36.

the gunslinger takes the valuables from us. Her threats of violence make us passive in the interaction. Slavery (on this approach) aims to drive the phenomenon to its extreme, transforming the enslaved into the animate property of the slaveholder.

How does this transformation occur? On the mastery approach, we enjoy autonomy within those domains in which our choices are decisive. Through coercive interference in another person’s choices, the coercing agent effectively brings her victim into a space within which Aer choices, and not her victim’s, are decisive. In denying the pedestrian the option of continuing down the street in full possession of his valuables, the gunslinger brings the pedestrian’s activities into her domain, and so gains a share of responsibility for his ensuing activities. The gunslinger’s agency effectively cannibalizes her victim’s.

Mastery in one’s relations with others, then, requires that no one else interfere in one’s activities,’ or (on more sophisticated views) that no one have a capacity to interfere in your activities without your (at least tacit) consent.’ And all else equal, the broader the domain within which one suffers no interference in one’s activities, the more autonomous one is. At first glance, this might seem a strictly negative ideal: Our autonomy seems to require only that no one else enjoy mastery over us. However, if those who are able to withstand others’ attempts to interfere in one’s activities are (ceteris paribus) more autonomous than those who are not, then the pursuit of autonomy transforms into a pursuit of power. Mastery in one’s relations with others seems to require mastery over others. As Berlin puts the point, “freedom for the pike is death for the minnows.”!0

Finally, in addition to intrapersonal and interpersonal threats to agency, some argue that generic constraints on our options might in themselves count as threats to our autonomy, whether they are the products of intentional interference in our activities or not. The idea here is that we often thwart others’ attempts to hold us responsible for some state of affairs by pointing out to them that no alternative was available to us: We could not choose otherwise. This suggests that, for some possibility P, if we could not choose between P and not-P, then we cannot be held responsible either for P or for not-P. On this basis, we might find it tempting to represent limitations on our options as

8 Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays, ed. Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), 191-242; Benn, “Freedom, Autonomy, and the Concept of a Person.”

9 Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 184-6.

10 Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,’ 196. On versions of liberalism that adopt this kind of approach, equality appears as an exogenous concern, one requiring equal distributions of freedom.