CFP: Feminist Metaphilosophy, ed. by Valentina Bortolami and Giovanna Miolli

‘Metaphilosophy’ emerged in the late 1960s as a discipline aimed at investigating the nature of philosophy. General metaphilosophical topics include philosophy’s aims, missions, methods and objects, as well as philosophy’s relation to other disciplines and society, broadly understood. Within contemporary debates, a special attention has been given to the prescriptive dimension of metaphilosophy, which invites normative answers to questions such as ‘What should philosophy be?’, ‘How should philosophy proceed?’, ‘Why should we pursue philosophy at all? What is its value?’.

The conversation around normative-prescriptive outlooks emphasises (meta)philosophy’s critical and transformative import, bringing to light its potential to forge new conceptual tools, uncover undeclared presuppositions, and question current situations and conditions.

With a few exceptions, feminist philosophies – which robustly integrate theoretical analysis and refinement of concepts with activist, transformative work – have received little attention within contemporary metaphilosophical debates.

This special issue of Verifiche devoted to “Feminist Metaphilosophy” contributes to filling this gap by intersecting major questions of contemporary metaphilosophy with feminist philosophical perspectives.

In particular, this volume aims to address the following issues:

1. What are feminist philosophies, what is their relation with mainstream philosophy on the one hand, and other anti-oppressive theories or projects on the other?

The following questions may help develop this analysis:

• What are feminist philosophies, what are their scope and aims?
• What are the causes, meanings, and consequences of the marginalisation of feminist philosophies within academic environments?
• What are the advantages as well as the difficulties of occupying a marginalised position? Does a marginalised condition imply a particular creative and productive potential? Is it desirable to bring feminist philosophies to the center of mainstream academic debate, or would it be more useful for them to maintain a marginal position within academia?
• What role feminist philosophies (and “academic feminism”) should play in relation to both feminist movements and philosophical inquiry? Do feminist philosophies always coincide with academic feminism?
• Is it possible to do feminist philosophy, or should feminist thinkers rather reject the very notion of philosophy (e.g., because of its history and its sexist implications)? Should feminist thinkers refuse to get involved in philosophical inquiry, or should they reform it?
• Is it desirable for thinkers engaged in anti-oppressive projects (e.g., against racism and ableism, as well as sexism) to do feminist philosophy, or would it be preferable to dismiss the feminist framework (e.g., because of issues related to colonialism and racism) and to develop new projects and forms of thought concerning sex, gender, sexuality, race, class, etc.?

2. What does it mean to do feminist philosophy?

In this regard, the following questions can be explored:

• What are the methodologies adopted by feminist philosophers? To what extent are such methods different from those of non-feminist scholars?
• What is the relationship between feminist thinking and other past and present philosophical traditions?
• What kind of relations do feminist philosophies have, or should have, with feminist actions and feminist theories?
• What is, or should be, the prescriptive contribution of feminist philosophies in redefining philosophy’s scope, mission, value, and impact on non-philosophical areas?

3. What is the relation between feminist philosophy and other disciplines?

The following issues may be tackled:

• What is the impact of feminist philosophy (widely conceived) on the work of scholars involved in other disciplines (social sciences, life sciences, science and technology studies, etc.)?
• How may disciplines other than philosophy influence feminist philosophy and contribute to its development?
• How can feminist philosophers contribute to the pursuit of an anti-sexist, anti-racist scientific research practice?

Manuscripts must be no longer than 50.000 characters. Papers should be in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Before sending your contribution, please consider the Guidelines for authors and this sample.

Full papers should be received by 31st March, 2021.

A committee will review all papers. Notifications regarding acceptance will be made via email.

Email a copy of your paper, as an attachment, in Microsoft Word (.doc), Rich Text Format (.rtf), or Adobe Portable Document Format (.pdf) to the editors: Valentina Bortolami (valentina.bortolami@gmail.com) and Giovanna Miolli (giovanna.miolli@gmail.com). Please include the following information:

(1) Paper’s title

(2) Author’s name

(3) Short biography (affiliation, research interests, recent publications, etc.)

(4) Author’s email address

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