The pure coincidence of the publications brought to the surface what might seem, over twenty-five years later, also to be a coincidence: Thus, in 2008, the traces of two research paths that were very unlikely to meet were published, and their conjunction is striking: on the one hand, we have the series of classes given by Michel Foucault between 19 at the Collège de France, under the title The Government of Self and Others 1 and, on the other hand, we have the seminars conducted by Cornelius Castoriadis between 19 at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), in the context of his vast cycle ‘what makes Greece’, entitled The City and Laws. An outline appears, in the background of their preoccupations and intellectual trajectories, which we could call, following Frédéric Worms, a specific ‘moment’ in which political history and the history of thought are mixed. This documentary dimension is sharper still when there appear together works undertaken in the same period by two thinkers between whom, at the time, no debate took place, and who appear to have been totally unaware of each other. Lastly, the reunion of women pragmatists should lead to the adoption of some resolutions to correct gender bias in research, teaching and cooperation analogous to other associations of women philosophers.The delay involved in the publication of lectures or seminars has strange effects: what comes late and in a different time to its own is research and words which were caught up – more so than the books – in the historical circumstances of their elaboration and the text that is finally published, with the reflections of the author and the remarks of the audience, carries something of the historical situation that produced it. As an output and lasting legacy of the meeting, we plan to create a virtual archive of women currently engaged in research on pragmatism, which will strengthen cooperation and facilitate communication between scholars. The conference will also promote mentoring, networking, and sharing good practice between women working on any aspect of the pragmatist tradition, broadly construed. The aim of this conference is thus to celebrate the past and current work of women researching and advancing philosophy in a pragmatist tradition and highlight their ongoing contributions to specialist academic research as well as public discourse. However, women keep being less quoted, less considered and held less creditable as subjects or objects of knowledge as their male peers. Women represent almost half of the community of professional philosophers. One century later, the situation is only slowly changing. For those women, to pursue an academic career or to live as public intellectuals was at best a challenge, if not an impossibility. Jane Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Alice Hamilton, Mary Parker Follett, Anna Julia Cooper, Ella Flagg Young, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, Christine Ladd-Franklin, Mary Whiton Calkins, Florence Kelley, Victoria Welby and many others are only just resurfacing in the literature, after having been cast into oblivion for decades. The genealogy of pragmatism pays less attention to the works of those women who contributed to the movement. Unfortunately, pragmatism is not an exception to this current trend. Women have been and continue to be underrepresented in the history of philosophy.
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