TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘Not enough’
T2 - Certainty and Doubt in Exploring the Grammar of ‘Woman’
AU - Kronqvist, Camilla
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH. All rights reserved.
PY - 2024/7/29
Y1 - 2024/7/29
N2 - Danièle Moyal-Sharrock and Constantine Sandis have suggested that our sense of being ‘women’ (and ‘men’) can be elucidated by thinking of it as an animal certainty. The suggestion is helpful in resisting the notion that ‘being woman’ can be modelled either on the idea of indubitable first-person knowledge of one’s inner self or of a third person’s unquestionable knowledge of one’s body. One’s being woman is manifested in one’s ways of acting and reacting; it constitutes a mode of being, which cannot be given further justification. Nevertheless, I argue that the emphasis on certainty may render the possible doubts an individual may entertain about being a woman at different stages and in different contexts of their life opaque. It may also obscure the philosophical analysis of what thinking of certainty with Wittgenstein may offer to the understanding of ‘woman’, since for him the exploration of meaningful and impossible forms of doubt always ran parallel to his thinking on certainty. Considering everyday examples of certainty and doubts in being a woman, I therefore discuss the dialectic between certainty and doubt in the constitution of being ‘a woman’, giving special attention to the significance of second person assertions and comments for the first person’s experience of being or not being a woman or not being ‘woman enough’.
AB - Danièle Moyal-Sharrock and Constantine Sandis have suggested that our sense of being ‘women’ (and ‘men’) can be elucidated by thinking of it as an animal certainty. The suggestion is helpful in resisting the notion that ‘being woman’ can be modelled either on the idea of indubitable first-person knowledge of one’s inner self or of a third person’s unquestionable knowledge of one’s body. One’s being woman is manifested in one’s ways of acting and reacting; it constitutes a mode of being, which cannot be given further justification. Nevertheless, I argue that the emphasis on certainty may render the possible doubts an individual may entertain about being a woman at different stages and in different contexts of their life opaque. It may also obscure the philosophical analysis of what thinking of certainty with Wittgenstein may offer to the understanding of ‘woman’, since for him the exploration of meaningful and impossible forms of doubt always ran parallel to his thinking on certainty. Considering everyday examples of certainty and doubts in being a woman, I therefore discuss the dialectic between certainty and doubt in the constitution of being ‘a woman’, giving special attention to the significance of second person assertions and comments for the first person’s experience of being or not being a woman or not being ‘woman enough’.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85200133966&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1515/witt-2024-0009
DO - 10.1515/witt-2024-0009
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85200133966
SN - 1868-7431
VL - 15
SP - 125
EP - 143
JO - Wittgenstein-Studien
JF - Wittgenstein-Studien
IS - 1
ER -