Gender and Political Theory Week 1: Foundations
Virginia Woolf Writing
● Virginia Woolf as a pioneer of modernism and significant innovator of the english language
● Stream of consciousness technique
● We can see the emotional and psychological background of the characters and learn their motives
● Highlights the “Private Sphere” and interpersonal relationships
● 1942 writes of the obstacles to women’s success- they have to hide that they have a mind of their own and
cannot talk freely about their desires
A Room of One's Own Reading
● Control,ownership,power,entitlement of man to write about women
● Write women how they want them to be in the male lense
● Ability to objectify
● The relationship between Self and Other is central to all sources of human relations
● For one to claim that they are the subject of the norm, there must be someone to deem the “other”
● Those who write men as the superior, Napoleon for example, need women.There is a need to keep women
powerless as the constitutive other so they can deem inferiority upon women
● There is no power for one without the oppression of another
Agora film Notes
● Shows the power dynamics in religious conflict
● Men choose violence while the woman values the teachings and the students
● Hypatia never gives up on the pursuit of knowledge, even when there is accusations and calls for death
upon her
● Kepler theory of the planets is taught in Public school and yet the film shows how his discovery comes
several hundred years after Hypatia’s initial breakthrough
Wendy Brown Reading
● Critique of the Misogynistic and Racist texts of our past
● How gender is a human affair rather than a natural affair, gender as a societal concept
● Capitalism and emergence of liberal doctrines empower suffragist movements
● Women are still unable to become real actors in society due to the foundation of such systems
● Critique of liberal feminism why do you want a piece of the broken system rather than working to reshape
it to help find a systematic solution
● Individual vs Systemic change (pg. 4)
● Different ways Feminists talk about and critize historical thought: Observing injustice, Changing language,
Acknowledgement of inherent injustice and working to change the system at the root
Feminist Theory and Canon of Political Thought
● Critique if the past feminist work and that of Canonical thinkers by Linda Zerilli
● What is a woman’s place in society and how these texts erase existence
● Recognition that to combat the absence of women in core texts, one cannot simply just try to add them, but
rather understand that women will never be able to git into a system designed to oppress them and with that
the entire framework must be reshaped
● The social contract vs sexual contract keeping women in the “private” life rather than the public/political
sphere
● Critique of Intersectionality begs the question of whether feminism needs to be focused on a “subject”
● Are women a universal group to make claims about? No as this is ignoring the intersection of race and class
as well as Trans Women
● How to make political demands without having a subject in which to base these claims off of?
Barbara Smith Black Feminst Critique Reading
● Intersectionality at the forefront
● Critique of the absence of BIPOC literature by White women
● Talks of the power in the practice of naming: Black Women Studies
Virginia Woolf Writing
● Virginia Woolf as a pioneer of modernism and significant innovator of the english language
● Stream of consciousness technique
● We can see the emotional and psychological background of the characters and learn their motives
● Highlights the “Private Sphere” and interpersonal relationships
● 1942 writes of the obstacles to women’s success- they have to hide that they have a mind of their own and
cannot talk freely about their desires
A Room of One's Own Reading
● Control,ownership,power,entitlement of man to write about women
● Write women how they want them to be in the male lense
● Ability to objectify
● The relationship between Self and Other is central to all sources of human relations
● For one to claim that they are the subject of the norm, there must be someone to deem the “other”
● Those who write men as the superior, Napoleon for example, need women.There is a need to keep women
powerless as the constitutive other so they can deem inferiority upon women
● There is no power for one without the oppression of another
Agora film Notes
● Shows the power dynamics in religious conflict
● Men choose violence while the woman values the teachings and the students
● Hypatia never gives up on the pursuit of knowledge, even when there is accusations and calls for death
upon her
● Kepler theory of the planets is taught in Public school and yet the film shows how his discovery comes
several hundred years after Hypatia’s initial breakthrough
Wendy Brown Reading
● Critique of the Misogynistic and Racist texts of our past
● How gender is a human affair rather than a natural affair, gender as a societal concept
● Capitalism and emergence of liberal doctrines empower suffragist movements
● Women are still unable to become real actors in society due to the foundation of such systems
● Critique of liberal feminism why do you want a piece of the broken system rather than working to reshape
it to help find a systematic solution
● Individual vs Systemic change (pg. 4)
● Different ways Feminists talk about and critize historical thought: Observing injustice, Changing language,
Acknowledgement of inherent injustice and working to change the system at the root
Feminist Theory and Canon of Political Thought
● Critique if the past feminist work and that of Canonical thinkers by Linda Zerilli
● What is a woman’s place in society and how these texts erase existence
● Recognition that to combat the absence of women in core texts, one cannot simply just try to add them, but
rather understand that women will never be able to git into a system designed to oppress them and with that
the entire framework must be reshaped
● The social contract vs sexual contract keeping women in the “private” life rather than the public/political
sphere
● Critique of Intersectionality begs the question of whether feminism needs to be focused on a “subject”
● Are women a universal group to make claims about? No as this is ignoring the intersection of race and class
as well as Trans Women
● How to make political demands without having a subject in which to base these claims off of?
Barbara Smith Black Feminst Critique Reading
● Intersectionality at the forefront
● Critique of the absence of BIPOC literature by White women
● Talks of the power in the practice of naming: Black Women Studies
