Der Wirklichkeit widerstehen: Soziale Konstruktion und Sozialkritik

by Sally Haslanger

Was heißt es, eine Frau oder ein Mann, schwarz oder weiß zu sein? Hierauf geben feministische und antirassistische Theorien scheinbar widerstreitende Antworten: Während die einen diese Kategorien als sozial konstruiert begreifen, sofern unter sie zu fallen bedeutet, in bestimmten sozialen Beziehungen der Unterordnung zu stehen, denken andere sie als objektiv, sofern unter sie zu fallen für Menschen reale Konsequenzen zeitigt, denen sie sich schwer entziehen können. In dieser Sammlung bahnbrechender Aufsätze entwickelt die Philosophin Sally Haslanger eine sozialkonstruktionistische Theorie sozialer Arten, die diesen beiden Erfordernissen gleichermaßen Rechnung trägt.

Genres: Philosophy, Feminism, Nonfiction, Sociology, Race, Gender, Politics

283 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 31, 2012

About the author

Sally Haslanger is Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Reviews

[Emily Jayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book thoroughly unpacks an overused concept, social construction, especially as it pertains to gender and race. I would say it is a necessary read if you want to be confident in your use of the term in an academic context. It is, however, a collection of separately published papers on similar themes. So if you read it front to back like I did, you might find it repetitive at times.

[Thomas Wright · Rating 1 out of 5]

Caveat that I only read in depth Haslanger's essay "Feminism in metaphysics: Negotiating the
natural".

The reason being that it is truly an awful piece of scholarship. Her criticism of Butler for one is a non-starter (and I would love a good criticism of Butler's philosophy) that can be easily refuted by anyone who reads the first thirty (even ten) pages of Bodies That Matter charitably, something that was clearly beyond Haslanger's intellect. I mean can anyone explain to me her demarcation between "things" and "individuals" that it is actually substantive?

Even in that distinction a concept of "reference" is still invoked so I have no idea really what Haslanger's criticism of Butler is. It appears to be it is that Butler confuses the act of referring with the object itself but then Haslanger still has to invoke the act of referring to explain how we refer to the object at all. It is this mediation which allows for objectvity that her critique rests but how such mediation actually allows for this glossed over in a few examples both conrete and abstract. Concrete examples (the telephone gives you the voice directly) are good and all but they are just that, concrete examples; it does not explain what mediation of itself consists and why it would allow us to grasp something unproblematically objectively. The abtract examples of coherentism, evidential support are also just proffered without any analysis and as if analytic epistemology was not a complete dead-end. Coherentism has never escaped skepticism and no one has never provided an adequate concept of evidence that would allow for types of evidence to emerge in the development of sciences (or even for the ones we have now).

Secondly her proposed model of objective types (at least in this essay) or, in other words, scientific sets is so half-baked that it is typical of the deference analytic philosophy has for what it thinks science is, i.e. the explainer of everything, as if physics disproved John Keats. But too many philosophers are convinced they know what a "set" actually is (or scienence for that matter) because they encounter so often. For my part, like the concept of number, I have no clue what a set is (nor science).

The arguments in this essay, in the end, really only end up appealing to authorities and are not at all convinving.

Again though, my (intense) dislike was mainly for that essay so take my (salty) limited perspective with some salt.

[FluffyNyctea]

Please stop please analytic philosophers I beg you, stop yapping!!! Y’all can turn the most interesting issues into the most horrifying arguments…

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really really enjoyed reading someone who takes critical theory seriously and writes with analytic rigor, Haslanger is truly one of the goats.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

manchmal scheint es so zu sein, als hätten sie in der analytischen Philosophie gestern Abend fix angefangen, ein bisschen zu lesen