This collection explores the many and varied connections between pacifism, politics, and feminism. Each of these topics is often thought about in academic isolation; however, when we consider how they intersect and interact with each other, it opens up new areas for exploration and analysis. Taking an intersectional feminist lens to pacifism, for example, enables us to re-conceptualize violence and what sorts of actions count as violent, while thinking about pacifism and political theory allows us to regard different physical and social areas as possible sites of (both feminist and non-feminist) resistance against war and political realism. And on a meta level, considering how and why we might link peace studies to gender studies brings out the distinctively political assumptions, alliances, and conclusions of both programs of study.

Having recognized that that “the future is female,”¹ the chapters gathered in this volume discuss a) how feminist analyses allow for and encourage the re-conceptualization of concepts and ideas once thought familiar from traditional ethical and political philosophy, and b) traditional political topics and issues through pacifist and feminist lenses. The chapters that focus on the former explore the possibility of “queering” such concepts as autonomy, violence, resistance, peace, religion, and politics, by engaging in detailed discussions of how we should think about these concepts in a historically, and still existent, patriarchal, racist culture. The chapters that focus on the latter bring feminist and pacifist sensibilities and arguments to bear on classic political questions such as when and how violence and war are justified, the appropriateness of various kinds of responses to climate change, and the correct way to engage with such topics and themes in educational, institutional settings.

It is no surprise that our world faces a number of seemingly intractable social and political problems, including oppressive violence of various kinds, militarism, climate change, academic stagnation, and widespread injustice. This volume takes as its hypothesis that the best way to understand, and begin to solve, such complex social and political phenomena is to approach them from several complementary disciplinary directions and analytical frameworks. Such global, interdisciplinary thinking encourages publicly engaged social and political philosophy of the sort found here, work that attempts not only to analyze the various conceptual issues involved, but also to provide practical pathways forward towards resolving, or at least ameliorating, some of our most deeply entrenched social and political problems.

In the first chapter, John Lawless argues that a feminist approach to autonomy can help draw out the ways in which violence, especially interpersonal violence, can undercut autonomy and thus political liberty. He points out that, contrary to traditional, atomistic understandings of autonomy, relational understandings of autonomy include not only having the ability to make choices about the direction of one’s life, but also having practical authority in some domains. And having practical authority, Lawless contends, depends on being embedded in relationships with others. Violence can subvert, distort, and destroy such relationships, and thus is a threat both to a person’s practical authority and, more broadly, to their autonomy or agency itself. Violence is morally significant, on this view, not only because it poses a threat to bodily security and reduces a person’s available options (as many traditional analyses of violence point out), but also because it threatens the structures of the interpersonal, social, and political relationships that are necessary for practical authority, agency, and, at the limit, political liberty. By inviting us to re-conceptualize autonomy, Lawless encourages us to reconsider what violence does, and how it alters those real, relational communities in which it occurs.

In his contribution to this volume, Barrett Emerick considers how we ought to understand and frame the phenomenon of silencing, that is, the act of preventing someone from communicating (broadly construed). He contends that, contrary to traditional conceptions of both violence and free speech, we should agree with the feminist and anti-racist activist’s claim that silencing is—at least sometimes—a form of violence. Following and expanding upon Vittorio Bufacchi’s view of violence, Emerick writes that violence is perhaps best analyzed as a violation of a person’s integrity. So, when silencing violates the integrity of the person who is silenced by diminishing their epistemic capacities, it becomes an act of violence; specifically, it becomes an act of epistemic violence. Following Miranda Fricker, Emerick understands epistemic injustice to be when someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower; either their testimony is not given the credibility that it warrants, or “some significant area of [their] social experience [is] obscured from collective understanding.” Since being a knower is essential to being a person, suffering epistemic injustice can sometimes, over time, diminish one as a person. When someone’s personhood is diminished due to suffering epistemic injustice, Emerick concludes, we should understand this violation as a form of violence. Emerick finishes by inviting us to consider whether such violent silencing is ever justified, given “the unjust meantime” in which we live.

Megan Mitchell, in Chapter 3, further broadens our understanding of violence by providing a unifying analysis of fragility, both white and male. She argues, from a feminist perspective, that fragility is a kind of failure of intellectual humility; it is a disposition to epistemic arrogance by whites and/or men with respect to racist and sexist oppression, respectively. As Mitchell notes, consciously or unconsciously, fragile agents mistakenly believe that their perspectives, with regards to these domains of oppression, are more reliable because they are white and male. This is part and parcel of understanding racism and sexism as ideologies that center whiteness and maleness, and that marginalize, Other, and otherwise denigrate other social identities. Such ideologies encourage a range of epistemic vices, including fragility. Fragile agents, due to their racist and/or sexist ideologies, believe that they enjoy a position of epistemic privilege with regards to racism and/or sexism. When such conscious or unconscious beliefs about their epistemic advantages in critically discussing and analyzing these domains are challenged, fragile agents respond inappropriately, often with epistemic and sometimes with physical violence. Thus, Mitchell concludes that fragility (both white and male) is objectionable at least in part because it is an epistemic vice, and reminds us that it is also, and perhaps more centrally, objectionable because it leads to epistemic violence—in the form of silencing—and physical violence against those marginalized on the basis of race and/or sex, and so functions to maintain white and male supremacy.

In “Eight Dimensions of Resistance,” Tamara Fakhoury examines the concept of resistance, and argues that, contrary to traditional evocations of resistance to oppression as loud public activism and civil disobedience, resistance can take many forms. She contends that resistance can be violent, flagrant, morally devious, or dramatic and it can be quiet, covert, peaceful and even gentle. Fakhoury argues in favor of this more expanded notion of resistance, and provides a classificatory schema that identifies different instances of resistance to civilized oppressions. Civilized oppressions, she explains, are distinct from more blatant forms of oppression such as colonialism or slavery in that they do not explicitly rely primarily on state-sponsored or state-sanctioned violence to survive, but rather are maintained and supported by a variety of informal political and social norms and practices and psychological mechanisms. Thus, they produce distinctive challenges that require special forms, or modes, of resistance. Modes of resistance against civilized oppressions, according to Fakhoury, include not only well-known forms such as loud, social, public, and global activism of various kinds, but also quiet, personal, private, and local forms of resistance. Fakhoury concludes by encouraging theorists to take a closer look at the everyday modes and forms of resistance that she describes, and to incorporate them into more inclusive, realistic political theories of oppression, resistance, justice, and peace.

Jane Hall Fitz-Gibbon’s chapter explores the relationships between religion, violence, and peace. She argues that current understandings of religion paint the divine as male, with traditional masculine attributes of strength, power, and superiority, and that this understanding of the divine contributes to and legitimizes the use of violence within and across cultures and societies. A feminist re-imaging of the divine might, Fitz-Gibbon claims, de-legitimize violence, but only if it receives uptake in popular culture. While feminist theologies have engaged in the task of freeing God from its masculinist presentation, such work remains in the academy, for the most part, and has not permeated societies outside of academia. Fitz-Gibbon does not end on such a pessimistic note, however; she contends that a feminist image of God could, if popularized, lead to a re-conceptualization of religion, which could lead to religion becoming a true force for peace both within and across societies, and could encourage a more just and less violent world.

With my contribution, the volume switches gears from re-conceptualizing ideas and concepts once thought familiar from traditional ethical and political philosophy, to exploring traditional political topics and issues through pacifist and feminist lenses. For my part, I bring a feminist sensibility to bear on the question of whether, as Jeff McMahan argues, we should not integrate what he refers to as the “deep morality” of war into our military and international public policies and laws, because of the possible negative consequences of doing so. On the basis of feminist epistemology, I argue that McMahan is wrong to think that publicizing and legalizing the deep morality of war will have the negative consequences that he claims, because I disagree with his argument that combatants are highly likely to act in stupid, thoughtless, and brutish ways. Through a comparison with the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the United States, I argue that McMahan’s argument is epistemically biased, in that it reflects and incorporates stereotypical views of poor people. We would do better to think hard about how we conceptualize combatants, and to recognize in our arguments that the abilities to reason well and to act morally are not restricted to the upper echelons of society. I conclude by suggesting that moral and political theories ought to at least attempt to do things in the world, and so we should be wary of any theory that “argue[s] for a moral position and then contend[s] that the world should not strive to be moral.”

In Chapter 7, Harry van der Linden considers the proposal that the UN Security Council (unsc) ought to engage in military action against countries that are failing to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions in an adequate manner. This proposal rests on the idea that climate change is a “threat multiplier” that is likely to bring about significant future conflicts if it is not effectively stopped or ameliorated. Considering the shortcomings of the Paris Agreement, van der Linden argues that providing the unsc with the authority to enforce climate change mitigation through military coercion remains a real political option. However, in light of feminist and pacifist critiques of just war theory, van der Linden goes on to claim that this option, while it might have good effects, is ultimately morally flawed and deeply antithetical to productively addressing climate change. Mitigation wars would be counterproductive, and in violation of international just war norms, policies, and laws. More broadly, he concludes that “war is not the answer” in order to avoid disastrous climate change. Instead, we should engage in massive nonviolent resistance against non-mitigating and inadequately mitigating countries, and should increase local and regional efforts to adopt green technologies, values, and ways of living.

William C. Gay, in “Pacifism, Feminism, and Nonkilling Philosophy: A New Approach to Connecting Peace Studies and Gender Studies,” discusses the conceptual connections between pacifism and feminism, and points out that the various stereotypes that plague those domains hamper their uptake in educational, institutional settings. In particular, although peace studies and gender studies are not wedded to pacifism and feminism, respectively, many people take them to be, and so are less open to such studies than perhaps they should be, given the reality of our violent and oppressive world. Gay suggests that integrating the new approach of nonkilling philosophy could provide practical and even more radical ways of advancing, and possibly uniting, peace studies and gender studies. This is especially the case because, although nonkilling philosophy incorporates important aspects of both pacifism and feminism, it is not dogged by the same negative stereotypes. Nonkilling philosophy rejects essentialist doctrines of human nature as essentially or intrinsically violent, and argues in favor of “conflict transformation,” whereby people transition from negative conflict management or elimination to working through their conflicts with others nonviolently, via cultivating linguistic and behavioral habits of nonviolence and peace. It is thus committed to the mutual recognition and empowerment of all humans in the quest for a more just and peaceful world. Nonkilling philosophy is an interdisciplinary approach that is more radical in scope, Gay claims, than either pacifism or feminism, and is more feasible in its implementation; so, he concludes, we should adopt it as an essential element of both peace and gender studies.

In the final chapter of the volume, David Boersema makes the case that the arts, although they have been, and continue to be, used to support violence and oppression, can be a tool for peace building and justice. Intrapersonally, Boersema points out that the process of making art can be transformative for the artist. Making art can not only encourage the nonviolent release of negative emotions, such as resentment, fear, and anger, but also can inspire the artist to see the world, and its potential, differently. The process of art-making can lead the artist to feel empowered, and can engender hope, love, and fellow-feeling, all of which are important attitudinal components of peace building. Interpersonally, Boersema notes the social aspects of art-making, whereby artists working together and in the same space learn to respect their different points of view, empathize with each other, and collaborate in creation rather than destruction. Also at the interpersonal level, the experience of encountering art as a product can lead audiences to empathize with the artist, and can help audiences learn to interpret the world, and its meanings, through the eyes of another. This is essential to peace building, as peace is predicated on the elimination of oppression and injustice, which itself is predicated on those in power coming to understand, to the extent possible, the experiences and positions of those who are oppressed. Boersema reminds us that we should not be fooled by art’s sometime association with the “irrational feminine,” and ultimately concludes that art, both as process and product, can foster the creation of a more peaceful world.

By taking up new approaches and embracing the possibility of conceptual paradigm shifts, Pacifism, Politics, and Feminism attempts to both identify and make progress on the persistent questions and issues that arise at the intersection of pacifism, politics, and feminism. It is both significant and unique, being one of the first book-length treatments of this intersection from a philosophical perspective. The main goal of the book is to further scholarship on these important issues, and to inspire new work that explores the deep and often subtle interplay between pacifism, politics, and feminism. The book should be of interest to scholars and students of these, and other related, domains. And, given contemporary social and political circumstances, the book may also be of relevance to activists and others who would like to better understand the interrelations between gender, violence, and peace, and who would like to think about the possibility of creating a more just, and more peaceful, world.