Appropriateness of Combining Feminist and Anticolonial Approaches to Historiography of Philosophy

Abstract

Feminist research on historiography of philosophy has been actively conducted in the anglophone academic space and primarily regarding Western philosophy for several decades. These inquiries led to fundamental rethinking of the canon of history of philosophy, the development of feminist methodological reflections by historians of philosophy, and discoveries (recoveries) of names of women philosophers of the past. Meanwhile, anticolonial research (including, but not limited to decolonial and postcolonial theory), aimed at combatting the problematic assumption that philosophy is a Western phenomenon, is being conducted. Meanwhile in Ukraine, the canon of history of philosophy remains almost exclusively male, and the anticolonial perspective is not applied to history of philosophy, even though for a major part of its history Ukraine was not independent and was under control of empires. To overcome the androcentric bias in historiography of Ukrainian philosophy, I believe we need to combine the feminist perspective with the anticolonial perspective since we are talking about women who are also representatives of a colonial nation, and this double status of being women and being colonial affected their experience. However, feminist and anticolonial approaches remain largely methodologically isolated, which is what prompts this article and the need to research the levels of their developments and the prospects of combining them for historiography of philosophy. This article fulfils this goal by reviewing both feminist and anticolonial approaches to historiography of philosophy separately, and then looking at cases of their successful combinations outside historiography of philosophy, reviewing challenges and similarities, and outlining methodological reasons for combining them when it comes to historiography of philosophy.