{"id":183,"date":"2019-08-27T11:20:58","date_gmt":"2019-08-27T10:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/whit\/?p=183"},"modified":"2019-09-03T15:51:26","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T14:51:26","slug":"sex-gender-and-the-canon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/whit\/2019\/08\/27\/sex-gender-and-the-canon\/","title":{"rendered":"Sex, Gender and the Canon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Professor Patricia Owens<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How and why are women absent\nfrom IR\u2019s canon of so-called \u2018intellectual greats\u2019? Here I\u2019d like to share some\npreliminary answers to this question, drawing on work with Kim Hutchings on\ncanonical women international thinkers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The intellectual identity\nand respectability of humanities and social science disciplines is formed\nthrough the creation of a canon of intellectual \u2018greats\u2019 and foundational\ntexts. One of the earliest such works in the history of international\nthought was published in 1929 by a Cambridge-trained classicist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nGrowth of International Thought<\/em> surveyed the development of \u2018progressive\ninternationalism\u2019 from the ancient Greeks to the League of Nations through an\nanalysis of figures such as Aristotle, Dante, Machiavelli, Luther, Grotius,\nRousseau, Burke, Kant, and Mazzini. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though its author was not seeking to establish a new\nacademic discipline but popularize liberal internationalist ideas (Sluga 2020),\nthe approach of surveying canonical thinkers was later adapted and extended in\nthe numerous studies of important thinkers by those seeking to establish a\ndiscipline of IR from the early 1950s (Morgenthau and Thompson 1950; Wolfers\nand Martin 1956). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Largely for pedagogical purposes, hundreds\nof exalted thinkers and their main works have been collected\nin anthologies and analyzed in edited volumes forming the intellectual basis of\nthe many eponymous schools of IR theory: Hobbesian, Lockean, Machiavellian,\nKantian, Grotian, Marxist, Weberian, Gramscian and Foucaudian. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author of The Growth of International Thought<\/em>, the first of this genre,\nwas not Alfred Zimmern, Gilbert Murray, Arnold Toynbee, or G. Lowes Dickinson,\nall well-known classical scholars in IR\u2019s intellectual history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was F. Melian Stawell (1929), a figure unknown to\nlater generations of IR scholars but who inaugurated a genre – surveys of \u2018men of large and capacious\nthought\u2019 (Thompson 1980: ix) – from which she and numerous other women\nintellectuals were effectively barred. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A recent\nstudy of eighteen surveys of canonical international thinkers<\/a>\nworking before the late twentieth-century, including several hundred cumulative\nreferences, there were nine to women. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In these works, which includes Stawell\u2019s text, only\nsix women receive some recognition as significant thinkers on international\nrelations: Susan Strange, Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Margaret Mead,\nSusan Sontag, and Virginia Woolf. This\ndoes not include a very\nbrief reference in Stawell\u2019s book\nto the biblical figure of Ruth, with Ruth is taken to\nforeshadow a liberal internationalist \u2018charm of foreign culture\u2019 (1929: 31).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why are\nwomen absent from IR\u2019s canon of \u2018serious thinkers\u2019 (Luard 1992: xiii)?\nOn what basis, with what stated criteria, do authors and editors select these\nthinkers and texts? Examining the rationale for selection in the\ntwenty-two such works, the most commonly cited criteria are influence,\ncomprehensiveness, representativeness, quality, and recurrent themes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generations of authors and editors have interpreted\nthese criteria to effectively exclude women from IR\u2019s\ncanon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most commonly cited criteria – influence – is construed\nin the narrowest of terms: prioritizing the influence of white men on other\nwhite men. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are\nmany explanations for why some thinkers appear to be influential to a variety\nof different audiences and at any given time. However, there is surprisingly\nlittle, if any, elaboration of\nwhat influence means in IR\u2019s canon. There is no discussion of the means\nthrough which influence is felt and on whom, or the temporality and politics of\ninfluence. Appeals to influence in surveys of IR\u2019s intellectual canon appear\nvague and, with one notable exception, avoid the basic question of why<\/em> some thinkers \u2018enjoy successive\nrevivals of interest\u2019 in particular contexts while others do not (Thompson\n1980: x). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the one volume that did offer an additional\nelucidation, \u2018canonical status represents a judgement about the quality<\/em> of\u2026 thought\u2019 (Brown et. al.\n2002: 3, emphasis). Influence is a proxy for excellence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On this basis, Brown, Nardin, and Rengger sought to\nexplain why there were no women among their fifty thinkers; the only explicit\nattempt to justify women\u2019s exclusion from IR\u2019s canon identified in our survey.\nIn their words,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because\nthe relevant criteria can change on the basis of current fashions\u2026 the fact\nthat all the writers\u2026 are white male Europeans might, or might not, be regarded\na legitimate criticism. Nonetheless, \u2026[s]ome thinkers clearly have produced\nmore significant work than others and it seems right that this should be\nrecognized in an informal way, always assuming that the canon is never fixed\nonce and for all, and is always open to revision in the way that\u2026 in recent\nyears \u2026the names of Wollstonecraft and Nietzsche have been added (2002: 3). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women were\nexcluded from the largest collection of international political thought then\navailable because they wrote nothing of significance to the history of\ninternational thought. Women\u2019s thought is not significant or influential\nbecause it lacks quality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This assumption is wrong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only does it yield an overlapping and predictable\nlist of \u2018great\u2019 male thinkers made influential by repetition. It sustains IR\u2019s\ncontinued ignorance of women\u2019s international thought, either by denying its\nexistence or denigrating its substance. Significance and influence are a\nproduct of the way in which authors and texts are taught and read as much as if\nnot more than the character and quality of the authors and texts themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canonical status is not\na product of a neutral application of the stated selection criteria, but of the\ngendered and raced politics of expectations surrounding intellectual greatness\nand influence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Valuations of influence and intellectual\nquality, who counts as a serious thinker, is intimately connected to questions\nof gender and race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our findings confirm the feminist\nhistoriography in other fields: historical women\u2019s exclusion from\ndisciplinary canons is always more than accidental; it is constitutive (Smith\nand Carroll 2000). This literature also\nsuggests a variety of responses to the gendered and\nracialized formation of IR\u2019s canon, ranging from exposing the processes\nthrough which diverse historical women were marginalized (Weiss 2009);\nrecovering and analyzing women\u2019s thought (Broad\nand Green 2009); and reconstituting the disciplinary canon itself\n(Pollock 1999). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Birthed by Florence Melian Stawell\u2019s The Growth of International Thought<\/em>, the existing study of canonical thinkers in IR is the study of the passage of ideas between fathers and sons, brothers, male friends and rivals. Like Political Theory, IR\u2019s existing canon accounts only for \u2018constitutive relations of descent and influence between men\u2019 (Nye, 1994: xiv).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Typified in Thompson\u2019s (1994) Fathers of International Thought<\/em>, the obsession with the eponymous\nschools – Hobbesian, Lockean, Kantian – is openly patrilineal. IR\u2019s \u2018great\ndebates\u2019, to extend Carroll\u2019s analysis<\/a>,\nare \u2018fratricidal struggles\u2026 between loyal sons and followers\u2019 battling to\n\u2018inherit and sustain the privileges and ruling power of the fathers\u2019 (1990:\n138, 150). If influence is proxy for quality and based on descent through a\nwhite male line, then women and non-white men can never legitimately enter the\ncanon of IR\u2019s intellectual greats. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is confirmed, rather than contradicted, by the\nsix historical women who have made it into IR\u2019s canon: Arendt, Woolf, Sontag,\nMead, Strange, and de Beauvoir. All European or North American, White or\nAshkenazi Jewish, they appear as either anomalous and extraordinary, feminist,\nor inventors of their own field. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Joanna Russ observed in a different context, these\n\u2018women burst into the official canon as if from nowhere – eccentric, peculiar,\nwith techniques that look odd and preoccupations that don\u2019t \u201cfit\u201d\u2019 (1983: 122).\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To prioritize the descent of ideas through a white\nmale line produces an inaccurate, incomplete and distorted account of IR\u2019s\nintellectual heritage. Women have been excluded on\nfalse grounds. The interpretation of the stated criteria is not neutral but\ndeeply gendered and racialized. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result is that both the exceptional and mediocre\nwork of white males is celebrated and canonized and work of even the most\nexceptional women is ignored, marginalized and\/or demeaned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the appropriate response to the all-male,\nall-white, and Western-centric canon is to abandon thinking through canons of\n\u2018master\u2019 thinkers. Indeed, there are serious risks in elevating certain\ncharismatic and \u2018great\u2019 figures, privileging the already privileged with access\nto the means of intellectual production. It reproduces problematical\nassumptions about the heroic character of intellectual work. Singling out\nparadigmatic thinkers and engaging in lengthy discussions of their texts does\nlittle to account for the informal intellectual work of figures who are \u2018canon-adjacent\u2019\nor \u2018wives of the\ncanon\u2019, women collaborators who were central to the production of the \u2018great\u2019\ntexts and men (Forestal and Philips 2018: 588<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what then is at stake in the canonization of\npreviously noncanonical thinkers and works if there are problems with the very\nidea of an intellectual canon? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Leverhulme Project on Women and the History of\nInternational Thought is less interested in debating who is or is not inside\nthe IR canon than in initiating a discussion about the history and accepted\nform of canonical and noncanonical work.\nWe think this is especially important in a discipline such as IR which has not\nalways taken the history of thought as seriously as it might. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We continue to invest in the terminology of exemplary\n– canonical – thinkers because it is intellectually and pedagogically\nindispensable to the reproduction and evaluation of theoretical ideas. But\ngiven the arbitrary way in which canons can form the historicity of the canon\nmust be taught as and with the canon; evaluations of intellectual work must be\nproperly contextualized, and our model of serious intellectual work should be\ndramatically transformed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The very\nexistence and the nature and form of canonical women\u2019s intellectual work calls\ninto question several of the basic assumptions on which IRs existing canon, and\ntherefore its disciplinary identity, has been built. To notrecover and analyse canonical women international\nthinkers would be to leave these assumptions\nin-tact and miss out on the new research agendas engagement with their thought\ncan provoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Broad,\nJacqueline, and Green, Karen (2009) A\nHistory of Women’s Political Thought in Europe, 1400\u20131700 <\/em>(Cambridge:\nCambridge University Press).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown, Chris, Terry Nardin, and Nicholas Rengger\n(eds.) (2002) International Relations in\nPolitical Thought<\/em> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carroll,\nBerenice A. (1990) \u2018The Politics of “Originality”: Women and the\nClass System of the Intellect\u2019, Journal of Women’s History<\/em>, Vol.2, no.2,\npp. 136-163<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forestal,\nJennifer and Menaka Philips (2018) \u2018Gender and the \u201cGreat Man\u201d: Recovering\nPhilosophy\u2019s \u201cWives of the Canon\u201d\u2019, Hypatia<\/em>,\n33(4): 587-592<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morgenthau, Hans J., and\nKenneth W. Thompson (eds.) (1950) Principles\nand Problems of International Politics: Selected Readings<\/em> (New York: Alfred\nKnopf) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nye,\nAndrea (1994) Philosophia: The Thought of\nRosa Luxemburg, Simone Weil, and Hannah Arendt <\/em>(London: Routledge) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pollock,\nGriselda (1999) Differencing the Canon:\nFeminism and the Histories of Art <\/em>(London: Routledge)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russ, Joanna (1983) How to Suppress Women\u2019s Writing <\/em>(London: Women\u2019s Press)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sluga,\nGlenda (2020) \u2018From F. Melian Stawell to E. Greene Balch: International and internationalist <\/em>thinking at the gender\nmargins, 1919\u20111947\u2019 in Patricia Owens and Katharina Rieztler (eds.) Women\u2019s\nInternational Thought: A New History <\/em>(Cambridge University Press\nforthcoming)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith,\nHilda L., and Bernice A. Carroll (eds.) (2000) Women\u2019s Political and Social Thought: An Anthology<\/em> (Bloomington:\nUniversity of Indiana Press)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stawell, Francis M. (1929) The Growth of International Thought <\/em>(London:\nButterworth)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thompson,\nKenneth W. (1980) Masters of International\nThought<\/em> (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thompson,\nKenneth W. (1994) Fathers of\nInternational Thought: The Legacy of Political Theory<\/em> (Baton Rouge:\nLouisiana State University Press)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weiss,\nPenny A. (2009) Canon Fodder: Historical\nWomen Political<\/em> Thinkers<\/em>\n(University Park: Pennsylvania University Press)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wolfers, Arnold and Laurence W. Martin (eds.) (1956) The Anglo-American Tradition in Foreign\nAffairs: Readings from Thomas More to Woodrow Wilson<\/em> (New Haven: Yale\nUniversity Press)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Professor Patricia Owens How and why are women absent from IR\u2019s canon of so-called \u2018intellectual greats\u2019? Here I\u2019d like to share some preliminary answers to this question, drawing on work with Kim Hutchings on canonical women international thinkers. The…<\/span><\/p>\n

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