Aesthetics, Epistemics, and Feminist Theory

Abstract

Recent feminist analysts of aesthetics and analytic aesthetics in particular seem to have come to the conclusion that the redemption of formulated aesthetic theory from the feminist point of view is a difficult and recondite task.1 If analytic aesthetics now looks problematic, qua fruitful philosophical enterprise, its future appears bleaker still when the intersection of the androcentric nature of analytic philosophy and the larger feminist project, frequently articulated in other than analytic terms, is examined. In this essay I will assume that there is some future for analytic aesthetics, and I will not dispute the basic assumption that any portion of analytic theory is somewhat immiscible with feminist points of view. My concern, rather, will be to try to show what it is specifically in the nature of analytic theory, both aesthetic and otherwise, which renders it of dubious value to the feminist critique (at least on first blush). Although in the past feminist theorists have tried to characterize the androcentric nature of analytic philosophy on the whole in rather striking terms, it is not clear that these terms have been precise enough.2 Further, it is not clear that analytic modes are obviously unusable for feminist theory or for the development of a still nascent feminist aesthetics, although what one wants to say here is that this task is a terribly danger-fraught one.3 My goal here is twofold: first, to articulate what precisely it is about analytic aesthetics (or any portion of analytic theory, for that matter) that makes it a hindrance at least preliminarily to the development of feminist views. In order to do this I will need to examine a relatively uncharted area in the literature, that is the parallel between much of analytic aesthetic theory and analytic epistemology. The second portion of my task will run somewhat contrary to conventional wisdom: having delineated the most masculinist parts of analytic endeavors, I inquire if there is, indeed, any part of rigorously articulated analytic theory that could lend itself to the development of a feminist aesthetic.