Engenderings

When philosophers claim not to be sure if the floor beneath their feet is real, if they have a body, or if other people have minds, what are they really worrying about? In "Engenderings", Naomi Scheman argues that the concerns of philosophy emerge not from the universal human condition but from the conditions of privilege. Her book attempts to decipher the encoded privilege in philosophers' pictures of "our" relations to the world while exploring pictures accountable to a different "us". Scheman draws on explorations of subjectivity in novels, films, Shakepearean drama, pedagogy, and visual arts. She examines the ways in which epistemological concerns interest with aspects of the self: values, the emotions, the body. The interconnection of cognition with emotion, the body and the social context emerges as a dominant theme of the book. Resisting simple conclusions, Scheman explores the grey areas in established positions to produce various insights. She criticizes the difference-denying rhetoric of western philosophy, and the privileged perspective of academic feminists such as herself, who have been shaped as much by race and class advantages as by gender.