ABSTRACT
Feminists have long criticized a phenomenon variously labelled ‘male science’, ‘male theory’, or ‘male rationality’, arguing that such forms of structured thought are inextricably linked with traditional sexualized—and sexist— categories of dominance and oppression. The subject/object division, for instance, essential to certain conceptions of objectivity, is cast as homologous with the male/female opposition. Science, philosophy, rationality—call it what you like—constantly re-enacts the Cartesian mind/ body divide in its most basic methodological moves, so feminists claim. Always and everywhere the rational, active, masculine intellect operates on the passive, objectified, feminized body. To be intellectual—to think? — under patriarchy, the argument goes, is willy-nilly to take up a position marked as masculine. If one doesn’t, one has no option but to embrace the other side of the tedious series of homologous patriarchal oppositions, where irrationality and thoughtlessness is equated with femininity, the body, object-being, emotionality, and so on. In this paper, I want first to examine certain problematic aspects in current feminist critiques of the subject/object and mind/body split, and then to sketch out a somewhat different approach to these problems.
