Female philosophers and 'collective forgetting'

[DomesticatedZombie]

An interesting essay.

aeon.co/essays/why-are-women-philosophers-often-erased-from-collective-memory

'Despite women excelling in the philosophy of science, one quickly gets the impression that women thinkers in the history of philosophy must have worked almost exclusively on topics in ethics and feminism. Looking at the women routinely vanishing to the margins of my field, a question began to form in my mind: when conceived of as a lineage of women thinkers, what would the philosophy of science have looked like today? '

Fascinating!
I have read similar arguments in other disciplines, though the points about lineage here are better made.

As an aside, in literature the erasure of female authors seems to take place by the generation coming right after them, by those who never met the author. I think that allows stereotypes to replace actual thinking.

I am wondering if cultural tendencies to react against what's just preceded might affect that to an extent, nepeta? Why we need to reinvent the bloody wheel so frequently.

@DomesticatedZombie

I am wondering if cultural tendencies to react against what's just preceded might affect that to an extent, nepeta? Why we need to reinvent the bloody wheel so frequently.

That is an interesting thought. It could well be the case, but then I would expect the same to apply to the famous men of the previous generation?

I thought more about that lineage question.

If female scientists etc. had less power, they would get fewer students wishing to work with them, and as those students later become the next generation of scientists, the women in the previous generation will not develop the same lineage as the men, standardising for the quality of work.

The most exceptional women would develop some lineage, but perhaps not as much as equally exceptional men?

I work on research into erased women writers from several centuries ago. What is extraordinary is the overt & explicit condemning of women's work, everywhere. Whenever people do the "We're all equal now" I remember that a) my grandmother was in the first cohort of women to be "allowed" to graduate with Oxford degrees, and b) there is a centuries long tradition of picking out women as women, and commenting on their writing in the light of their sex, and the assumptions that the female sex is inferior to the male in every way.

It is instructive, confronting the hatred of women because they are women, when it's there, plainly, in the archival documents. And it converts my students into angry feminists too! Which is good.

Your work sounds really interesting, ExMachina.

Thanks @DomesticatedZombie I'm not feeling the joy at the moment ... universities are difficult places to be at present (and I'm spending far too much time on here as a displacement activity which makes it worse).

But I remember all the wonderful writing & thinking that women do over the centuries and I perk up occasionally. And seeing my students' responses to reading Mary Wollstonecraft & Virginia Woolf makes it worthwhile.

Thanks for posting this. Fascinating to read the comments on the blog, too. Guess what the first one is about?

@WagnersFourthSymphony

Thanks for posting this. Fascinating to read the comments on the blog, too. Guess what the first one is about?

Oh FFS. I thought it might be something like that, then I thought I was being unfair, so clicked to check and ... It was that.

Fascinating, thank you.

Oh FFS. I thought it might be something like that, then I thought I was being unfair, so clicked to check and ... It was that.

Hmm, is that the comment that's now been deleted by the Moderators on the thread in the OP? Dammit, I've missed it. Any précis possible?

I'd like to know the comment, too!

@ExMachinaDeus By co-incidence I've just read a description of a letter Virginia Woolf wrote to Vita Sackville-West as 'one of those skittish, opinionated letters in which the author specialized'. Ffs.

Yes Woolf's letters may have been 'skittish' but they are also beautiful, remarkable, and so world-enlarging.

I don't suppose she was an easy person to know & I'm sure I would have annoyed her terribly if I ever met her (you know, in that "Invite 12 famous people to your dinner party" way), but I always feel my mind is enlarged by reading her writing.

The first comment I can read says "but men get forgotten too..."

Just adding this article, which seems relevant:

aeon.co/essays/a-rescue-mission-on-behalf-of-women-philosophers