Prof. Hilde Lindemann’s recent review of Chris Meyers’ The Fetal Position: A Rational Approach to the Abortion Issue (Prometheus, 2010) exhibits a breathtaking plain-spoken approach to the concern feminists philosophers sometimes raise, as to how to go about writing a review of a book which omits notice of feminist contributions to a field:
It is written, he says, neither for good ole Mississippi boys who equate abortion with baby-killing, nor for “my left-wing feminist pals in my old college neighborhood of North Chicago. In short, fanatics on either side are not likely to find this book tolerable” (p. 13). His left-wing feminist pals would seem to include feminist philosophers of any stripe, as none of their arguments appear anywhere in the book. Work on abortion that dismisses thirty years’ worth of feminist scholarship as fanaticism, however, cannot be taken seriously.
Yikes. I just looked at his department’s website
– Calif State U at Bakersfield. Perhaps we should send a letter of sympathy to his feminist colleagues.(The Chris Meyers at Bakersfield is a different philosopher altogether; see Tim’s comment below.)
Go Prof Hilde Lindemann!
This review was a classic for many reasons, though I agree that this was one of the better excerpts.
By the way, I think this is a different “Chris Meyers” from the one at CSU Bakersfield.
Excellent.
I second Monkey’s remark wholeheartedly.
That is a great example of how to review a problematic book.
When I first skimmed this entry I thought the subtitle read “A RELATIONAL approach” rather than “Rational” approach. I was stunned that Meyers could have written such a book without including any feminist work.
In the review Lindemann writes:
This work is very interesting to me. I am aware of Margaret Olivia Little (1999) Paper, “Abortion, Intimacy, and the Duty to Gestate,” that addresses this theme.
Can anyone suggest similar works? Lindemann seems to suggest there are a number and I would love to read them if anyone has citations they could share.
Tim – I checked and you are right; they are different. I altered my comment.
The quoted statement is symptomatic, I think, of a worrying broader trend in learned circles. This is the trend of immediately dismissing a broad range of views as “extreme” as a part of one’s own rhetorical strategy (presenting oneself as the “impartial/objective” moderate). It’s a gruesomely bad rhetorical strategy that has nothing to do with the merits of a particular debate.
Sam Harris’ criticism of “leftist unreason” in his book The End of Faith, where he viciously strawmans Noam Chomsky, is probably the best example of this strategy at work.
Just to be clear, I don’t know if Meyers employs the strategy frequently (I’m not familiar with the entire book). It’s just that the part above is a rather obvious example of it.
Dear All of You,
Thanks so much for these kind words–I’ve never written a review that was quite so unrelenting, and was feeling funny about it. Your reaction puts the heart back into me.
Bakka: I was thinking primarily of Maggie Little’s work on abortion–not just that one paper, but the bits and pieces I’ve read of the book-in-progress she’s been writing for the last 15 years or so. But I did publish a paper in Hypatia last year that is in sympathy with what she’s doing: “‘But I Could Never Have One’: The Abortion Intuition and Moral Luck.” Special Issue in Honor of Claudia Card. Hypatia 24, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 41-55.
I had a minor quibble with what is otherwise a fine review. The dismissal of the link between falling crime rates and abortion is far too quick. The link is and should be controversial, but the debate is an empirical one, not one that can be dismissed in this way. Donohue and Levitt present evidence, they don’t simply argue crime fall, abortion fell, therefore….
As I say, a minor quibble. It is breathtaking that a book on this topic – of all topics – should simply ignore feminist work.
It seems to me that not just the author but also the publisher needs to be taken to task for this incredibly irresponsible piece of work. The contact listed for humanities books at Prometheus is the editor-in-chief, Steven L. Mitchell: slmitchell@prometheusbooks.com
Bakka, I’ve found related and interesting arguments in Amy Mullins’ work (Reconceiving Pregnancy and Childcare) and in Eva Kittay’s works such as Love’s Labor.
If he’s not the Bakersfield guy, who is he? Poor, poor Bakersfield guy.
Chris Meyers, if my googling has led me right, was at the University of Southern Mississippi. Was – his job was axed. So maybe he has already suffered enough.
Google led me here:
http://philosophyteachers.org/aapt-members/content/2-tenured-philosophers-lose-jobs-university-southern-mississippi
Hmm. Maybe we need to know more about the quality of the people being let go before we get all up in arms about these cases.
I’ll tread lightly here since I haven’t in fact read the book, although I found Hilde’s review completely convincing.
Prometheus press is not a very respected philosophy press, for what it’s worth.
(the review of the book is both devastating and well-done.)
Have any of y’all read ‘Pornography, Sex, and Feminism’ by Alan Soble, published 2002 (also by Prometheus)? I read it after being astonished at Soble’s argument from the book as described in the SEP entry on feminist perspectives on objectification thinking, surely no one actually argues that some women and men simply are not good for anything but sex! As it turns out, he does in fact argue this — and goes further still! That Kantian notion of inherent human dignity that many feminist philosophers employ? A principle insufficiently grounded in reason and thus is without force; a mere illusion of “unmodified feminism”. The differentiation of negative versus positive forms of objectification, and the concomitant notion that sex and sexual relations should be based on “equal sexual consideration”? Nonsense, for apparently that sex admits of objectification at all means one cannot fruitfully think of that being done in a harmful manner. (That you might want to consider your sexual partner’s erotic interests in addition to your own also manages to take the ‘joyful spontaneity’ out of sex for Soble, apparently.) Such a sampling is in addition to his strange barbs against other academics regarding their institutional affiliation or his just-plain-dismissive attitude. [I have worried that I am perhaps being too hard on Soble or not being charitable enough... but as this book seems to have been released and not reviewed in any philosophy publications at all since its appearance in 2002, I am lead to believe it is not taken very seriously by other, actually-qualified philosophers in this area, feminist or otherwise.]
Suffice to say, I am not so surprised a book such as this was put out by Prometheus if they have something of a track record for this sort of incendiary foolishness.
Sorry for the long, only-peripherally-related rant, by the way.
Thanks Dr. Lindemann and profbigk! I will certainly look at those papers. I am excited to hear that Little is working on a book!
Matt: This strategy of posing oneself as a moderate between extremes is examined by Barbara Herrnstein Smith in “Scandalous Knowledge.” Her arguments address the science wars, but may apply more generally, and perhaps to the abortions debates.
Susan Sherwin’s “Abortion through a Feminist Ethics Lens” is also an excellent contribution to this area.
Thanks for the recommendations!
@Adult Child I haven’t read the Soble book you mention. I’ve read some of his Philosophy of Sex book, which I thought was quite useful. I’m somewhat surprised to hear what you say about the Porn volume. Thanks for your views. I intend to take a look at the volume some time.
Monkey: Yeah, I was surprised too! I had come across an anthology that he edited on the same subject at a used bookstore a while ago, and it seemed very intriguing and less… reactionary + cavalier. (Alas, I did not buy it at the time.) I’m not sure what was up with this more recent work, although I am not familiar with anything else he’s written so perhaps it’s an exception or something. It was very strange to read, to say the least. I might have expected something like this to be published in, say, the ’70s or ’80s where it surely would have been not uncommon but…. not so much in the 2000s! Silly me.
Oh, ah, if you’re not familiar with other stuff Soble’s written, then his essay, “Bad Apples,” will put some of his cavalier approach into perspective:
Philosophy of the Social Sciences 29 (3):354-388
Holy ****, profbigk.
For a chapter of my dissertation, I spent January-April this year up to my eyeballs in critiques (written by philosophers) of literature theory, feminist philosophy, and other folks who reject the ideal of value-free science. I argued that many of these critiques are based on a certain fear of corrupted science, and that contemporary arguments against the value-free ideal didn’t have the resources to assuage those fears.
Identifying that fear in a dozen different articles and books required a certain amount of close reading. And it’s right here in the freakin’ abstract.