Sally Haslanger | |
|---|---|
.jpeg) Haslanger in 2013 | |
| Born | 1955 (age 70–71) |
| Spouse | Stephen Yablo |
| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (2018) Carus Lecturer (2011) SWIP Distinguished Woman Philosopher Award (2010) |
| Education | |
| Education | Reed College (BA) University of Virginia (MA) University of California, Berkeley (PhD) |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic philosophy,feminist philosophy,critical theory,social constructionism |
| Institutions | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Main interests | Metaphysics,epistemology,feminist theory,political philosophy,critical race theory |
| Notable works | Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique (2012) |
| Notable ideas | Social construction of race andrace |
Sally Haslanger (/ˈhæsləŋər/;[1] born 1955) is an Americanphilosopher and the Ford Professor ofPhilosophy in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology.[2]
Haslanger earned her Ph.D. in philosophy from theUniversity of California, Berkeley in 1985. She has taught atPrinceton University, theUniversity of Pennsylvania, and theUniversity of Michigan, Ann Arbor.[3] Haslanger is known for her work onsocial andpolitical theory,feminism, andphilosophy of gender andrace.[4]
Haslanger graduated fromReed College in 1977 with a BA in philosophy, and earned her Ph.D. in philosophy in 1985 from theUniversity of California, Berkeley.[3]
Haslanger was selected as the 2011Carus Lecturer by theAmerican Philosophical Association.[5] TheSociety for Women in Philosophy named her a 2010 Distinguished Woman Philosopher, citing her as one of the "best analytic feminists" in the United States.[5] Haslanger was president of the Eastern Division of theAmerican Philosophical Association and in 2015 was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts & Sciences.[6] In 2018, she was awarded aGuggenheim Fellowship.[7] She co-edits the online publicationSymposia on Gender, Race and Philosophy.[8]
Haslanger held the 2015 Spinoza Chair of Philosophy at theUniversity of Amsterdam.[9] In 2023, she gave the Walter Benjamin lectures hosted by theHumboldt University in Berlin.[10]
She is married to fellow MIT philosopherStephen Yablo.[11]
Haslanger has published inmetaphysics,feminist metaphysics,epistemology,feminist theory,ancient philosophy, and social andpolitical philosophy.[4] She writes that much of her work has focused on persistence through change; objectivity and objectification; andCatharine MacKinnon's theory ofgender. She has done work on thesocial construction of categories often considered to benatural kinds, particularlyrace and gender.[11][12] A collection of her major papers on these topics appeared asResisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique (Oxford University Press, 2012), which won theAmerican Philosophical Association's Joseph B. Gittler Award in 2014. This prize is given for an outstanding scholarly contribution in the field of the philosophy of one or more of the social sciences.[13]
One of Haslanger's most influential notions is her analytic definition of "woman". Her definition is as follows:
S is a womaniffdf S is systematically subordinated along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.), and S is "marked" as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction.[14]
The definition has been criticized, including by Haslanger herself - who no longer stands by this definition completely, on the grounds that it marginalizestrans women (Katharine Jenkins)[15] and that it excludes theQueen of The United Kingdom (Mari Mikkola [de]).[16]
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