1. Pragmatism and Feminism: Movements in Waves

2Why starting with women entering universities? The reason is quite plain and simple: because their secular confinement to the private sphere prevented women of all nations, races, and classes from gaining cultural centrality and acquiring shared theoretical and political tools that later would develop in an articulated and organized political and social movement. By the middle of the 19th century, they started to gain a political consciousness. They were not just aspiring to a room of one’s own (Woolf 1999): they wanted to go public. Without some degree of institutionalization and without the possibility to pursue a professional career, women had remained until that point invisible to research and scholarship, both as subjects and as objects of knowledge (García Dauder & Pérez Sedeño 2017).

3Feminism and pragmatism have thus this in common: they grew in the dialectic between academia and the environment, between theory and praxis. Charlene Haddock Seigfried beautifully summed up these coincidences in Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric, when she identified as one the principal traits of pragmatism the “[e]mphasis on the reciprocity of theory and praxis, knowledge and action, facts and values” (1996: 7): just as feminism, it pays attention to the specific conditions of knowledge production, particularly when they are oppressive against women and other minorities. Furthermore, the histories of both feminism, and pragmatism reveal that they are both committed to the ends of social emancipation and that their journey to their present re-evaluation was not linear. The relation of pragmatism to feminism, and vice versa, was also conflicting at many points. In many instances, it still is.

2. The Current Vitality of Feminist Pragmatism: Communities and Sisterhoods

[t]here were few pragmatists in SWIP [Society of Women in Philosophy] and no recognized feminist presence in SAAP [Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy]. I wanted to make explicit why pragmatism needed feminism to realize its own potential and why feminism needed to recognize the contributions of American pragmatists to recover its own academic and activist roots. (Seigfried 2022a: 16)

8Seigfried started her pragmatist investigation with a hypothesis to test: “IF there had been women who studied or interacted with the founding pragmatists, THEN they would have developed a philosophical approach out of their own experiences – a pragmatist feminism” (ibid.). The “pre-history” of her 1996 book is made of a series of encounters that helped the construction of new communities that could collectively contribute to this intellectual effort. The reason why Seigfried wanted the book to be a collective enterprise enlightens one of the most profound affinities between the two movements: their pluralist vocation. Pragmatism and Feminism are “especially diverse,” and “no one person or perspective could hope to represent all [their] variants” (ibid.). Just as we would not expect to have a single and unified perspective on pragmatist philosophies, so there is no single correct way to interpret Feminist philosophies and activism. Methodological pluralism makes it possible to expand the profound potential of sisterhood (hooks 1986) within internal micropower dynamics persisting in every relationships and, above all, to take a feminist posture authentically according to the evolving experience of each person’s life. This is in line with pragmatism’s own emphasis on lived experience as both the source and the very end of inquiry, and – as we will stress below – its emphasis on agency.

9The affinities between pragmatism and feminism are both methodological and thematic in a way that is difficult to disentangle and has significant implications. As Seigfried writes, quoting William James, “theory should begin at that point where ‘the practical life of every human being would begin’” (2022b: 341). The common theoretical-practical or experiential starting point implies a future-oriented perspective and a focus on our selection of experience. A pragmatist and neo-pragmatist leitmotif – extending from Addams and James to Rorty – is that widening the margins and depth of our experience allows us to widen our moral life. What would pragmatism and feminism be without the common goal of social change? New experience invites us to seek new and convenient intellectual responses to the challenges encountered by each new generation. But as Addams wrote, “every generation has its own test”: moral achievements cannot be judged by previous tests, or at least not exclusively. Moral life claims not to rest on what has been achieved but to move forward, never “thinking complacently that we have ‘arrived’ when in reality we have not yet started” (ibid.). The more societies move on, the more we (can) grow sensitive to unnoticed necessities. From this perspective, the third wave of feminism shows a renewed concern for agency and human dignity. Its politics of embodied engagement can fruitfully dialogue with the pragmatist conception of promoting social change through lived experience. If, to paraphrase Addams, the scope of our ethics coincides with the scope of our experience, then “[a]mong all the experiences to be had, those we choose ‘must ultimately determine our understanding of life […] and the scope of our ethics’” (ibid.).

10The title of the symposium, “Pragmatism and Feminism: Epistemological, Social, and Political Spaces of Resistance,” expresses this special issue’s primary intention to continue promoting efforts to build a more inclusive and never fully “complete” pragmatist community of inquiry. The focus on “resistance” aims to highlight how marginalized groups, including women, have been fundamental agents of social and political change despite their ongoing oppression. This consideration (evidenced by the individual contributions to this symposium) brings pragmatism and feminism together under the umbrella of agency: after all, as Cathy Legg beautifully and concisely summarized in the very opening line of the entry on “Pragmatism” in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, “Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that – very broadly – understands knowing the world as inseparable from agency within it” (Legg 2019). Both pragmatism and feminism do not stop at identifying systemic injustices, past and present: they mobilise agency to give us conceptual resources and practical tools to address them and change the world as a result. The hard-won contributions of women, non-binary and trans persons to all aspects of social and institutional life – including academia, and within it the professional world of philosophy – might have come as unexpected, and in some environments they still trigger surprise, if not outright rage or plain good old-fashioned attempts at perpetuating oppression. But we are here to stay. It is in this spirit that our symposium looks at pragmatist agency and resistance in the past, to shape strategies to orient social change in the future.

3. Resisting: A Matter of Recovering the Past and Regaining our Future

11Sometimes the literature on the relationship between pragmatism and feminism addresses their relations in terms of the question: “Feminist-Pragmatism or Pragmatist-Feminism?” While wanting to account for the conceptual avenues that even just posing this question opens, we think that the two perspectives it presents are not at odds with each other when considered as ways of articulating possible modes of agency. Clara Fischer (2020) opts for Feminist-Pragmatism: Feminist-Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition, which draws upon the insights of both feminist and pragmatist theory and practice. It is fundamentally concerned with enlarging philosophical thought through activism and lived experience, and assumes feminist and pragmatist ideas to be mutually beneficial for liberatory causes. Feminist-Pragmatism emphasises the need to redress false distinctions, or dualisms, as these usually result in a denigration of one side in a confrontational opposition by another. Feminist pragmatists criticise such bifurcations as thought/action, mind/body, universal/particular, and they show how the skewed favouring of one over the other results in philosophical theories which are incapable of explaining our gendered existences, positions in society, different kinds of understandings, or learning experiences. Feminist pragmatists contribute to current debates in epistemology, social and political philosophy, philosophy of education, ethics, and metaphysics, and their work of resistance in consists precisely in reframing these debates.

12Judy Whipps and Danielle Lake (2020), on the other hand, choose Pragmatist-Feminism, which they define as:

a developing field of philosophy that emerged in the 1990s as a new approach to feminist philosophy. It utilizes and integrates core concepts of pragmatism, including its emphasis on pluralism, lived experience and public philosophy, with feminist theory and practice with a focus on social change.

13Here the emphasis on public philosophy, in combination with lived experience, is at the core of pragmatist feminists’ work of resistance: whether their focus is policy, political philosophy, philosophy of design, or aesthetics, the aim is to bring about social change starting from a sustained consideration of real-life situations and the lived experience of communities, as opposed to speculative scenarios modelled in the closed rooms of power. The differences between Feminist-Pragmatism and Pragmatist-Feminism are differences in perspective, but the agencies that animate them, and that they are animated by, are complementary. Moreover, both projects intersect in their historical and historiographical sensitivity (not at all a given in philosophy!), and in their recovery of the works of women philosophers living in the times of transcendentalism and classical pragmatism. This is once again, as much a scholarly pursuit as it is an articulation of agency and an expression of resistance. Because those women have stories that deserved to be told and listened to. Because in resisting they shaped philosophies that directly responded to the challenges of their times, influencing legislation and social policies, and contributing to shaping the democratic ideals we now hold as achievements. Because they constantly remind us, from the pages of books, journals, activist pamphlets and their own diaries that we need us to know where we come from, to decide where we want to go together in the future.

14For all these reasons we believe it is in fact productive to leave open the dialectics between pragmatism and feminism. The papers included in this issue experiment precisely with the agencies that both perspectives on the relationships between feminism and pragmatism mobilise, and try to draw conclusions that can help us navigate the challenges of our global word.

15It is in this spirit that this symposium contributes to the ongoing efforts to expand the genealogies of pragmatism by giving visibility to the theoretical and practical acts of resistance woven into the works of women advancing philosophy in a pragmatist tradition, construed in the broadest and most inclusive way. By going back to figures such as Jane Addams, Frances Perkins, Grace Abbott, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Victoria Welby, our contributors open new avenues of inquiry into their political, social and philosophical accomplishments, showing their ongoing relevance to philosophy as well as public life.

16Judy D. Whipps opens our symposium with the paper “Beyond Individual Rights: Grace Abbott’s Feminist Pragmatist Political Activism,” which seeks to expand the canon of classical American philosophy by focusing on the still little-explored work of Grace Abbott. The article offers historical and philosophical contributions, powerfully showing, through systematic historical research, Abbott’s involvement in the early twentieth-century U.S. legislative process aimed at supporting social rights for the protection of vulnerable social groups, particularly immigrants and children. The article adds a new important tile to the mosaic of feminist pragmatists’ political involvement, the philosophical and political underpinnings of their activism, and their promotion of democratic ideals and policies aimed at going beyond individual rights and caring for the community.

17Susan Petrilli’s “Significs, Pragmatism and Mother-Sense. Welby’s Conversations with Peirce and Others” introduces the life and deeds of Victoria Welby, a figure only lately recovered in the conventional genealogies of pragmatism. Welby’s correspondence with Peirce, which started with his review of What is Meaning? (1903/1983), becomes Petrilli’s stepping stone to unearthing Welby’s original contributions to pragmatism via the power of conversation. Welby’s specific approach to studying sign and meaning (significs) is oriented by what she calls “mother-sense,” which she discusses in correspondence, and identifies a modality of generating sense shared by all humanity. As Petrilli states, “[m]other-sense belongs to the properly human which presupposes a disposition for otherness, participative co-implication, and responsibility.” This form of sense speaks for a broader capacity for knowledge that cannot be merely intellectualistic but always embraces “caring for the other, participation and co-implication with the other, commitment to action and transformation, the propensity for inventiveness and imagination.” Petrilli acknowledges Welby’s feminist engagement with “the individual as a concrete singularity inexorably interrelated with the other, the human other and the nonhuman other.” 

18Federica Castelli’s article “Love, Politics, and Public/Private Porosity: Women of Hull House” addresses significant questions about feminism that have rarely been explored in feminist pragmatist literature. The author constructs an interesting dialogue between Hull-House women and contemporary feminist and queer theories. In particular, Castelli focuses on a pluralistic construction of love intertwined with the challenge of dichotomies as “home/street, public/private, domestic/political, and productive/reproductive labor.” The author situates relationships and experiences of love in a concrete urban context and makes a compelling argument that this connection with the city matters in showing how these relationships were shaped by its politics, negotiated in response to it, but also contributed to reshaping the very urban and sociopolitical environment in which they flourished.

19Hull-House is also the focus of Marija Antanavičiūtė’s “Jane Addams’s Feminist Pragmatism in International Political Thought: Hull House as a Site of International Social Ethics.” Antanavičiūtė focuses on Addam’s still overlooked contributions to feminist international normative theory. The neglect of Addams’ contributions in this area are particularly surprising, given her extensively studied work with migrant communities, her pacifist thought (for which she earned a Nobel Prize) and her international humanism. Focusing on Addams’ social ethics, and particularly on the significance of social settlements within it, Antanavičiūtė shows that Addams’ insights about the value that normative plurality brings to associative life in ethnically diverse communities crucially hinges on Hull House as a site for ethical deliberation. International normative studies have traditionally considered the state as such site, or focused on the individuals that enact “universal” norms. Hull House offers a radically different perspective on what such sites might entail, and how they are constitutive of the collective processes that are conducive to creating the type of social connections instrumental to normative deliberation.

20Marta Vaamonde Gamo explores the “Aesthetic Pragmatism and Feminism of Jane Addams.” Vaamonde Gamo makes a convincing case for the crucial role of art practices in Hull House, upon which Jane Addams builds an innovative feminist aesthetics. In her reading, Addams’s aesthetic theory is an essential part of the pragmatist tradition. The author traces Addams’s early thinking on the necessity to democratize art and then develops a sustained study of how artistic practice – particularly the performative arts – was embedded in Hull House. She highlights the social and cooperative character of Addams’s aesthetics; the importance of art’s social and educational function; its relevance for social change; and its commitment to pluralism. In particular, Vaamonde Gamo reads the performative character of art at Hull House in light of the concept of mimesis in its transformative sense and shows a nuanced view of art as both a critique of industrialization and a means of bringing creativity back into industrial production.

21Lastly, in “On the Borderlands of Madness: Narrative Tactics of Resistance in C.P. Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper and Disability Justice,” Àger Pérez Casanovas brings pragmatism and feminism in a productive dialogue with the literature on Disability Justice and activist movements such as Mad Pride. Pérez Casanovas focuses on Gilman’s now classic short story to unravel the potential of storytelling as a channel for agency and an instrument of resistance against the oppressive consequences of the medicalization of mental illness. At the same time, Pérez Casanovas’ historical analysis also carefully and yet critically presents some of the tensions and ambiguities that were distinctive of the historical context of late nineteenth century America and had a lasting impact on disability movements themselves, particularly discourses around eugenics. From this systematic analysis and contextualization of Gilman’s short novel, Pérez Casanovas offers productive insights on forging new alliances between pragmatism and Disability Justice movements, compellingly showing that The Yellow Wallpaper can be deployed as a foundation to develop strategies of resistance that can be actively coopted by activist movements to challenge current psychiatric discourses.

22The novel contributions in this symposium are a testament to the innovative perspectives that Pragmatist-Feminist/Feminist-Pragmatist approaches can disclose in all areas of philosophy, and the bridges they can build – starting from lived experiences – with areas of social life that still demand change. In a time where “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion” work risks to turn into an empty ticking-box exercise, we were fortunate to work with pragmatists authors whose research shows that if we want to make that work meaningful, we need to approach it collectively as a way of life. That way of life, our contributors show, has a long history – and pragmatism was at its centre all along.