Cartesianism, Feminism, Coloniality: Rethinking Gender Formation from Astell to Lugones

Abstract

This essay will examine both Mary Astell’s proposal for women’s education as a protofeminist project and Descartes’ meditations on rationalism and the mind-body duality to understand how Astell’s project functions as liberatory in her immanent approach to the Cartesian method. I argue that while Astell uses Descartes’ rationalist philosophy to justify the rational capacities of women, Descartes’ philosophy may in principle be used to justify the further subjugation of women and colonized peoples through the separation of mind and body. In addition, I will employ Maria Lugones’ “Coloniality of Gender” to further evaluate the historicity of the claims made by Astell and her use of Descartes. Through Lugones, I contend that the gender dichotomy, a colonial imposition, is essentialized by Astell through the logic of modernity. I, thereby, show the necessity of a decolonial analysis for undoing the presuppositions of a colonial logic with the purpose of abolishing the gender binaries imposed by coloniality.