Subject Area: Philosophy
This course can also be studied in the following specialisation: Women's and Gender Studies

We often understand philosophy ideally to represent a neutral, disinterested point of view: as purely rational, untainted by partiality or prejudice, and detached from the social and political confines that cloud objectivity. In recent decades, however, theoretical feminism and postcolonial theory have built a case that this view of philosophy ignores the particularity of the philosopher's perspective, which is most usually white and male. This course introduces students to critical literature addressing the question of how social situation, such as race and gender, is expressed in modes and styles of philosophising. By making a claim to be neutral, does philosophy exclude certain positions marked by social difference? If philosophy is traditionally ‘masculine’ and ‘white,’ then (how) can women and non-Europeans be accommodated by philosophy? Does conventional Western philosophy reflect the ‘whiteness’ and ‘maleness’ of its practitioners? And how have philosophers historically represented racial and sexual otherness?