Sympathy and Solidarity: and Other Essays (Feminist Constructions) by Sandra Lee Bartky

Sympathy and Solidarity: and Other Essays (Feminist Constructions) Reviews

• 
  Annie

  First reviewer, how exciting!
  
  Sympathy & Solidarity doesn’t quite compare to Femininity & Domination, but still worth 5 stars easy. I connected the most with the essays “In Defense of Guilt” and the titular “Sympathy and Solidarity”- the two centered on engaging with Foucault were, to me, comparatively dry and uninspired. The rest fell somewhere in between.
  
  One of my favourite things about Bartky is the way she infuses her work with the emotion that drove her to organize it-- and refuses to apologize for it. For instance, in the essay “In Defense of Guilt” she wonders how the (inherently gendered) phrase “a bleeding heart liberal” has become pejorative; isn’t compassion a virtue to the (typically) conservative Christian right wingers who say it dismissively? It reminds me of a Brigid Brophy quote that I love, concerning animal rights specifically and how female vegetarians are often accused (by men, always by men trying to demonstrate how rigorously detached and unaffected they are, as if that proves logicality) of “Bambi-morality” and “sentimentalism,” but which can be applied to ethics generally:
  
  “To assert that someone other than oneself has rights is not sentimental. Not that it would be the gravest of sins if it were. ‘Sentimentalist’ is the abuse with which people counter the accusation that they are cruel.”
  
  Yes.
  
  Bartky, being v anti-Cartesian, also refuses to fall into the typical detachment, almost dissociation, of philosophers from their own writings. She doesn’t write as simply “a philosopher” but as Sandra Lee Bartky- believing that her own experiences and her own visceral and emotional reactions to things, having come together to produce the philosophy she’s describing, have a very necessary place in the philosophy itself- very Humean (insert obligatory joke about how it’s also very human). Which really resonates with me, both logically and instinctively.
  
  Bartky is never extreme and therefore never disengages the reader but also is never pandering or concessionary or apologetic (I think she’s a fantastic choice for introducing feminist writing to family members who sneer at the idea, if like me you have them- even those who would like to accuse her of being “hysterical”- what an annoying word- won’t find any toeholds). She articulates things you’ve sort of always had in the back of your mind, but could never put into words. She gives you space to get angry about things you didn’t know you were allowed to get angry about. It’s really quite exhilarating.
  
  Of course, she also shoves your own hypocrisy in your face and won’t let you retreat back into your own smug comfort, but then when she’s done she gives you the space to wallow in your guilt like a healing spring, because she knows it’s an important step in change. Basically Bartky unsettles you and makes you feel uncomfortable- and what, precisely what is philosophy for, if not to do that?
  
  Some tidbits to keep you warm at night:
  
  “To stand in solidarity with others is to work actively to eliminate their misery, not to arrange one’s life so as to share it”
  
  "What [feminists of color] are demanding from white women & what women demand from men is...more than the mere acquisition of knowledge. What they are demanding... is a knowing that transforms the self who knows, a knowing that brings into being new sympathies, new affects as well as new cognitions and new forms of intersubjectivity."
• 
  Nichole

  Just read ch. 8, "Race, Complicity and Culpable Ignorance."