Well... one might argue that, at least since Descartes, doubt in general is a prerequisite to philosophical "performance", if that is indeed what we are engaging in when we do philosophy...
certainly it's an aspect, I guess.

Too much self-doubt is crippling though, indeed.

I agree, Barnaby. I was positing to my professor that the absolute ideas surrounding gender cannot be trusted in all cases. I just lacked any critical basis for my middle ground, and that article makes the points that level the field of that particular instance for me. it was a bad night.

i think you're right on, Barnaby, in that you find something useful in both approaches. I feel that way, too, so I won't take one singe approach in the classroom like feminist pedagogy, for instance. That is what i meant by using the term universal. perhaps i should have expressed myself more clearly. sorry about that. I meant that i'll do whatever is appropriate for each rhetorical situation in the classroom since teachers must remain flexible to be effective over time. i'll not exclude gender, but it won't be used as the foundation for my approach.

it is cool that we both want to validate opposing truths. isn't that at the heart of feminism? :) i'm seeing figure eights. weeeeee.

Hey B ~

>>What makes me uneasy about this material from Butler is my sense that she is not arguing for a middle ground, she is arguing against a putative extreme. In my view, it simply makes no sense on intellectual grounds to deny the transactional validity of 'male' or 'female'.

I can't really say I've read enough of Butler to be able to argue her theory but it seems to me that you are discussing the epistemological relevance/need for universals, and I believe her emphasis was on the political repercussions/contexts of universals. Her arguement against 'universals' was not in denying their role and utility - but the specific outcomes and power relations that result from using categories that were once thought of as 'natural'. I think it comes down to looking at the same thing from different intellectual traditions and questions: Philosophy (how do we understand social reality?) and Sociology (how does our understanding of social reality influence our place in the world?).

On a different thread - a man's not a man unless he lives in a cave...

"Cambridge, MA - Two years ago this month, Alan Lowenstein, associate professor of philosophy at Harvard University, came to a fateful conclusion. "I suddenly realized that the oppression of western technology extended to my own life," he explained. "That's when I got rid of my computer, threw away my Brooks Brothers suits, changed my name to Grok and moved into a cave."

A passionate critic of Euro-American "linear thought," Grok is one of a growing number of college professors around the nation who have relocated to caves, mud huts and makeshift sweat lodges to demonstrate their disdain for western culture and technology. For Grok, 44, the move to a cave was a natural step in his intellectual progression.

"My dissertation at Columbia synthesized the seminal works of Jacques Lacan, Derrida, and Michel Foucault," says Grok, referring to the influential French deconstructionist philosophers. "I was able to prove, conclusively, that conclusiveness is not conclusive."

The 1988 dissertation, entitled "Beyond the (Dis)Integration of Post-Modern Post-Toasties Pair 'o Dimes and Paradigms: Look at How Clever I Am," created a stir in academic circles and landed Lowenstein a prestigious teaching position at Harvard. From there, he honed his cutting-edge research.

"I began to deconstruct everything I could get my hands on," says Grok. "The Old Testament, Shakespeare, Dick and Jane, a 1967 J.C. Whitney catalog, the Boston phone book, you name it. I showed how everything is a lie, that everything could be deconstructed. Well, except Deconstruction, obviously."
When he earned tenure in 1991, Grok decided to broaden his philosophical research. "I realized that deconstructing literature was overly limiting. It was clear that other fields of inquiry could benefit from deconstruction."

It was then that Grok published a series of influential articles in which he deconstructed the sciences. "I initially showed that the so-called 'scientific method,' so treasured by the self-appointed high priests of science, was nothing but a bizarre ritual of the industrialist phallocracy," said Grok. "From there, it was a short intellectual leap to disprove the reality of the periodic tables, gravity and algebra."

Read the rest of it here: iowahawk.typepad.com/