Reviewed by Samantha Brennan
University of Western Ontario

There is a tradition within feminist philosophy of arguing for the legitimacy of personal experience as part of academic theorizing. Christine Overall’s book fits into this scholarship and those who care about the role of personal history in intellectual work will want to read A Feminist I for the arguments it presents for the importance of including experiential accounts in philosophical writing. But the best way to prove that something can be done, or that it is important that it be done, is not to offer arguments in the abstract. The best of such proofs take the form of demonstrations. Christine Overall’s book is just such a demonstration concerning the use of personal history in theory.

Overall is probably best known by feminists for her work on reproductive ethics (see, e.g., Overall 1987 and Overall 1993). This new book concerns Overall’s experiences as a feminist teacher of philosophy, as a person who has experienced a disabling illness, and as someone who came to academia from a working class background. But most of all, it focuses on her life as a feminist academic. The book begins with a declaration that many readers of this newsletter will recognize and likely endorse for themselves. "I am a feminist," writes Overall. "Feminism is the heart of who I am, not only as an academic, but as a citizen and an individual" (15). But what does it mean to be a feminist and an academic? What are the experiences of women who choose and succeed in academic careers?

Many feminist professors will recognize familiar patterns and behaviors in Overall’s description of her work as an academic. In the chapter on role muddles (chap. 2), Overall recounts the many challenges that confront those of us who try to perform as university researchers and teachers in ways that conform to feminist principles. What is a role muddle? Overall defines a role muddle as "a set of discontinuities, contradictions, and ambiguities generated by conflicting expectations arising from socially incompatible roles" (31). Role muddles arise in a variety of contexts, but Overall focuses on those that confront her as a feminist academic (31). There are many examples in the book, but one in particular stands out for me. Overall tells a story of being asked to give a talk to a feminist group in another city. The circumstances were such that she really had to decline. And yet, Overall feels that she was rebuked, as a feminist, for failing to be always available. I think this feeling of being pulled in many different directions (by feminist and non-feminist undergraduates, graduate students experiencing stress and exhaustion in their own work, university committees which require a woman’s perspective, and the community groups who need the expertise of, and the credibility conferred by the involvement of, professors) will strike a common cord with almost all feminists involved in academic work.

By way of solution, Overall usefully details some of her strategies for responding to role muddles. These include the recognition of fallibility and importance of listening, seeking to disaffiliate (where possible) from privilege, caring about other women, and rethinking notions of what is and is not politically required by feminist convictions (52-55). I think the most important lesson Overall draws from her discussion of role muddles concerns our treatment of other feminists. She urges us to reject overly narrow definitions of feminism and to be wary of being drawn into struggles against other feminists: "Instead of attacking each other, or wallowing in self-conscious guilt, we can direct our anger and our power at the conditions and institutions that create the competition and constraints that generate feminist role muddles" (55). I think this is sound advice but I do worry about shutting down debate between and among feminists. There is a difference between attacking and arguing, and sometimes it’s important to argue with people with whom you share enough common assumptions to make the argument fruitful and interesting. For some of us, some of the time, that will mean arguing with other feminists. But the topic of how to argue well with political allies is another topic for feminist self-reflection and shared critical discussion.

The middle chapters of A Feminist I share a common theme. Chapters Three and Four could make the beginning of a book in their own right on the subject of the ethics of teaching. Overall relates her experiences teaching in a variety of contexts and draws some tentative conclusions about the ethics of teaching as a feminist. In Chapter Three, "Women and Men in Education," she makes the case for the importance of listening as a skill to be cultivated in students in order to facilitate better communication between male and female students. Overall also writes about the issues of classroom culture and the responsibility the instructor bears for seeing to it that there is a non-sexist atmosphere in the classroom. And she deals in this chapter with the very real responsibilities non-sexist men have for changing our institutional practices. Chapter Four will be of interest to anyone who has had the experience of teaching the same class twice and having it turn out very differently. Overall’s experiences teaching an upper level philosophy and feminism class contain much fodder for thought and discussion. In fact, I thought that these chapters might be useful as assigned readings for a course offered to graduate students on the art and practice of university teaching. They would likely generate lively discussion and focus student attention on issues of feminist pedagogy.

Other sections of A Feminist I deal with other aspects of her experiences as a feminist academic. The account of coming to academia from the working class—what Overall calls the "phenomenology of a working class academic" (111)—forms the basis of Chapter Five. Like Overall, I was the first person in my family to attend university and I continue to struggle with some of the issues presented in this chapter. Because of this I found Overall’s description of her history interesting; but I also found myself wanting to hear more about strategies to deal with the on-going issues of fitting together a working class past and an academic career.

Overall also writes about her experiences as a person who experienced a disabling illness. The focus of this chapter concerns the pressure for a disabled person to "pass" as non-disabled when this is possible. Overall draws analogies between ageism and ableism in this regard, for both the old and the disabled experience pressure to pass as young and as well. These two different pressures interact and in her own case, Overall suffered both forms of pressure. She writes, "When I was suffering the worst pains and incapacities of my arthritis, I was subjected to punishment for being more disabled than my chronological age would usually predict. To be relatively young (or young-ish looking) and disabled is difficult for others to tolerate" (162).

Is anything missing from A Feminist I? Well, I wanted to hear more about Overall’s experiences connecting family with university life. She mentions her family ties in the book, but she doesn’t use them as a source of the rich reflection one finds elsewhere in the book. I think that balancing family relationships with the demands of work is a frequent source of conflict for women who pursue academic careers. I would have liked to hear more from Overall about the ways in which she combined family and career. Given the lengthy discussions of other role muddles, this area of potential conflict seemed overlooked. Also, Overall’s discussion of the skills she learned through "re-evaluation counseling" went by much too quickly for me. I understand from reading the book that Overall is advocating a form of active listening, particularly as a tool for teachers and their students. However, since re-evaluation counseling is not a technique with which I am familiar, I found that there was not enough detail inthe book for me to see clearly what it is and what it has to offer feminists. I did wonder about how power imbalances might affect the quality of classroom listening and whether there were important differences between being listened to and being heard. Of course, one of the difficulties in raising criticisms of this book relates to the main question it raises. How do personal experiences fit into theory? How, if at all, can we critically engage with the experiences of others?

The first and last chapters are the most theoretically interesting, since they take up questions concerning the nature of the enterprise in which Overall is engaged. In Chapter Eight, "Personal Histories, Social Identities, and Feminist Philosophical Inquiry," she defends the use of personal history and social identities in philosophical writing. Much of the case for using personal experiences will be familiar to feminist readers and Overall acknowledges the work of others in her arguments. After quoting Marilyn Frye on the connection between the absence of privilege and a certain kind of knowledge, she writes: "This feminist recognition of the relationships between philosophy and the persons who philosophize constitutes a prima facie case for the explicit invocation of personal history and social identity within philosophical inquiry, especially feminist philosophical inquiry" (178). However, Overall also recognizes the potential dangers presented by the use of experience in feminist theorizing, and in this final chapter, she discusses these dangers and some useful ways of deflecting them.

Works Cited

Overall, Christine. 1987. Ethics and Human Reproduction: A Feminist Analysis. London: Allen & Unwin.