Amy Allen, POS, Ch. 7

1. With respect to the account of gender vis-à-vis Benhabib here, the interpretation was that Benhabib’s view takes there to be an unengendered core self that precedes the self, whereas Allen’s view is that the self is always already constituted as gendered (at least in modernity, &c., &c.). There was a worry that gender here is monolithic, rather than hegemonic. Do you (could you?) accept that gender is inherently multiple? Is it multiple as personal identity (identification)? Is it multiple as social identity (ascription)?

2. There were questions about the status of normativity in the book, and the concerns driving the questions about normativity that are emphasized. We cobbled together a rough and working typology of questions about normativity (noting that not everyone agreed on this):
1. Meta-theoretical account of normativity. An account of the structure and status of normativity. This is going to be a philosophical or meta-theoretical or methodological account. Within the frame of an account or conception of ‘what normativity is’ (in a largely formal sense) we can then ask questions about the norms (in a largely contentful or substantive sense) themselves…
2. Normative Big Questions.
i. Questions about, say, Freedom and Equality. These questions about which it’s not useful to engage in rational debate. These are (per definition) always intertheoretic or intervocabulary or inter-episteme.
3. Normative little questions.
i. Questions of this or that harm, or this or that oppression. Questions about norms that are zones of conflict in our contemporary cultural configuration.
ii. Genealogy is useful here, Pragmatism is useful here, Critical Theory is useful here, Analytic Naturalism is useful here, Anthropology is useful here, and so are other styles of inquiry.