Abstract In this paper, I define patriarchal bargains as a subset of oppressive double binds. They are situations in which an agent, under conditions of gender oppression, intentionally chooses the prudentially best option—complying with an oppressive norm—over the morally best option—resisting the norm—even though both options are “inextricably bound up” (Hirji 2021, 645). I then explore two frameworks to examine the bargainer’s responsibility for choosing the prudentially best option: forward-looking political responsibility (Young 2011) and backward-looking moral responsibility (Sangiovanni 2018). Forward-looking political responsibility shows some conceptual limitations in justifying why the bargainer is neither blameworthy nor liable for choosing the prudentially best option when she is aware of the implications of her choice and does not face unreasonable costs in forgoing the bargain. However, backward-looking moral responsibility faces two practical concerns: first, it risks diverting attention from the oppressive structures that constrain the bargainer’s moral agency; and second, it may be divisive and isolating by promoting negative emotions such as guilt and shame, which could discourage people from participating in collective struggles for social change.
Abstract This piece expresses an anger and frustration with the limits of modern European philosophy in relation to the spiritual. I question what theoretical comfort or liberatory potential can be provided by postmodernism, especially within feminist philosophy, in times of great violence and insecurity. I explore how the knower/known dichotomy places some researchers in a dual, sometimes contradictory, epistemological position as a ripple effect of the coloniality of knowledge. Ultimately, I ask what price we pay for knowledges that are ignored or dismissed in order to maintain the illusion of secular reason and the hegemony of European thought.
Recent prominent philosophical work has proposed that grief's formal object-that which all instances of grief are directed towards, and which distinguishes grief from other emotions-is the loss of significant life possibilities. This article challenges the "lost possibilities" account by examining cases of grief where possibilities are experienced as being different, disenfranchised, or diminished prior to the loss. We argue that individuals relate to possibilities differently, as exemplified by autistic grievers; that among marginalised grievers, such as LGBTQIA+ individuals, possibilities can be experienced as inauthentic or damaging, complicating one's sense of loss; and that the depth of one's grief does not always correspond to the extent of the futural possibilities lost, as illustrated by elderly grievers. Some of the most profound grief is suffered by those who have few possibilities to lose. We argue that accommodating these cases requires either adopting such an expansive notion of "possibility" that the approach risks becoming uninformative, or abandoning the claim that lost possibilities are grief's formal object and thus necessary to grief.
