Canon Fodder: Historical Women Political Thinkers

by Penny A. Weiss

This book is an exercise in the recovery of historical memory about a set of thinkers who have been forgotten or purposely ignored and, as a result, never made it into the canon of Western political philosophy. Penny Weiss calls them “canon fodder,” recalling the fate of soldiers in war who are treated by their governments and military leaders as expendable. Despite some real progress at recovery over the past few decades, and the now-frequent references to a few female thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah Arendt, and Simone de Beauvoir, the surface has only been scratched, and the rich resources of women’s writings about political ideas remain still largely untapped. Included here, and intended to further whet the palate, are figures from Sei Shōnagon, Christine de Pizan, and Mary Astell to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anna Julia Cooper, and Emma Goldman. Restoring female thinkers to the conversation of political philosophy is the primary goal of this book. Part I deploys a range of these thinkers to discuss the nature of political inquiry itself. Part II focuses on alternative approaches to and visions of core political equality, power, revolution, childhood, and community. While mainly an intellectual act of revival, this book also affects practical political life, because “remote and academic as they sometimes appear, debates about what to include in the canon ultimately touch almost students handed texts from lists of ‘great books’ to guide them . . . and citizens whose governments justify their actions with ideas from political texts deemed classic."

Genres: Feminism

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Ms_prue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Today I went to the State Library to practice performing my Serious Writer act and instead of doing that, I spent 4 hours on the least comfortable bench in the universe (it was the only place to sit not already being sat on by the maximum possible number of human beings) ruining my eyesight and spine with great joy because never have I ever read such a delightful, wide-ranging, informative and compassionate survey of women's intellectual work. There was a WHOLE CHAPTER on my old fave Sei Shonagon, and I was introduced to my soon-to-be new faves Christine di Pizan, Anna Cooper, Emma Goldman and so many more...
When I was little I had a book which I loved dearly and have never been able to find again, but it was a book of princess stories, and it was very possibly the most feminist thing I had ever read until I borrowed a copy of Anne Summer's Damned Whores and God's Police from my aunt in my 20s. Anyway, I feel Canon Fodder will be more or less my grown-up equivalent of that treasury, extremely re-readable, and the gateway to dozens of authors whose works will equally enrich me.