okay the more i'm thinking about this thread, the more names i'm coming up with, because the less constrained and strict the term "philosopher" even feels. bc this title comes with so much qualitative assessment and marginalizing baggage, the whole thing needs to be deconstructed https://twitter.com/juliusqueezeher/status/1303060520149422080

i guess this is a thread now lol. i did my MA thesis on the ethics of reading the autobiographical genre, and something huge i grappled with was "what counts as an autobiography?" bc, just like bestowing of the title "philosopher," determining whether something is an AB is often-

(or always) a value judgement. works written by intellectually marginalized groups (women, Black people, poor people, etc.) are relegated to other genres based on their identities that, though impt, are implicitly considered critically inferior. --

when a white man waxes on about his life and what it all means, he's a philosopher. when a woman does it, she's writing feminist lit. when a Black person does it, they're an activist. the problem is that "philosophy" has long been synonymous with--

"considering the white male (or otherwise elite) experience" as though that's the standard experience. i know none of this is revolutionary, but it just struck me that whom I'd consider a philosopher has drastically changed over the years

was dhuoda a philosopher? if augustine was, then hell yeah dhuoda was. what about sappho? james baldwin? virginia woolf? what are we doing when we create these generic strictures? indices are choices and we're not reading w/o a hermeneutic. we gotta think about our categories.

anyways, loved the original question that started this thread, love female philosophers, love thinking about this stuff. we don't philosophize/do scholarship in a vacuum bc we're always already in the world, so these things *really* matter.