Women Who Make a Fuss

The Unfaithful Daughters of Virginia Woolf

2021
Authors:

Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret
Translated by April Knutson

A vibrant call to reevaluate the heritage of women thinkers inside and outside the academy

Women Who Make a Fuss urges women to heed Virginia Woolf’s cry—Think We Must—and to always make a fuss about injustice, cruelty, and arrogance. Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret, along with a collective of women scholars, question their academic careers and reexamine the place of women and their role in thinking, both inside and outside the university.

Virginia Woolf, to whom university admittance had been forbidden, watched the universities open their doors. Though she was happy that her sisters could study in university libraries, she cautioned women against joining the procession of educated men and being co-opted into protecting a “civilization” with values alien to women. Now, as Woolf’s disloyal (unfaithful) daughters, who have professional positions in Belgian universities, Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret, along with a collective of women scholars in Belgium and France, question their academic careers and reexamine the place of women and their role in thinking, both inside and outside the university. They urge women to heed Woolf’s cry—Think We Must—and to always make a fuss about injustice, cruelty, and arrogance.

Isabelle Stengers is a Belgian philosopher who has authored or coauthored more than twenty-five books and two hundred articles on the philosophy of science.

Vinciane Despret works at the intersection of ethology and human psychology and is a fundamental thinker in the field of animal studies.

April Knutson is lecturer in French at the University of Minnesota.

Contents





PART ONE


WE WHO ARE AT THE UNIVERSITY



NOT IN OUR NAME



CREATING A “WE”



AS WOMEN?



TAKING UP THE BATON?



THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL



THE QUESTION OF INHERITANCE



TWO PLUS ONE




PART TWO



CONSTRUCTING THE QUESTION



AN INDUCTION, IT’S WORKING



LAURENCE, MAKING A PLACE FOR HERSELF?



FRANÇOISE, A FEMININE “GAY SCIENCE?”



LAURENCE, THE COURAGE TO RESIST



BERNADETTE, GIVING HERSELF PERMISSION


TO THINK



MONA, DON’T DENY



BARBARA, ANGER AND LAUGHTER



BENEDIKTE, DON’T FORGET



ÉMILIE, IT’S NO ONE’S PLACE



BENEDIKTE, THEY WANTED MORE



MARCELLE, NOTHING FORBIDS



EPILOGUE