What's in a question?

Last Thursday's salon paid tribute to the question...Probing, prodding and poking away at that most basic act of conversational seeking or questing; discovering in the process that the art of questioning is complex and full of nuance and, well, not so basic after all.

The evening opened with an exercise in the “yes-no question”...A quick round of that old party icebreaker - “What am I?” - reminding us of the challenges inherent in eliciting information when the only possible answer is a monosyllabic “yes” or “no.” Noting how such monosyllabic responses in the context of a dinner date or radio interview, say, can present a whole other set of challenges, we discussed the difference between questions that open up the conversational field and those that shut it down. For indeed, our exploration of the question centred largely around the role questions play in creating a “felicitous” exchange between people...Though just what makes for a good ol' chin-wag varied as much from one person to the next, as did our respective boundaries when it comes to what we consider to be an engaging question and what we consider to be downright rude.

If we agreed to disagree on what constitutes the “pleasurable” conversation and with it, the“good” question, we did find surprising consensus as regards the questions we considered to lead to a conversational dead-end. That cocktail party favourite - “What do you do?” - was almost unanimously dismissed as dull, lazy and - for women working in the home or in a job that didn't carry much social status or out of a job altogether - potentially deflating. For reasons of inappropriateness and intrusiveness, the question “What do you earn?” was equally on the dead-end list. That said, our probing of the “U-turn” question yielded a compelling array of personal strategies designed to detour round those dead-ends - amongst them, the boomerang, the back-pedal and the buffer! And as for the questions we dread being asked and at the other end of the interrogatory spectrum, love being asked...Well, if context proved to be a key determiner of when and where and in the company of whom we would entertain either, a consideration of Cicero's list of rules for conducting a good "ordinary" conversation - drawn up in 44BC, no less - highlighted how little the standard conventions around what constitutes good conversational etiquette have changed over the past 2000 years or so.

Stepping back even further in time than Cicero, we re-visited the 4th Century BC Athenian polis and "Socratic Questioning" - Socrates' method of philosophical interrogation that we have already experimented with in past salon evenings, but which we explored on this occasion for its efficacy in getting at the “true” nature of so-called “universals” such as beauty, courage, friendship and justice, as well as showing up the kind of authoritative answers that those in positions of power tend to use to shut down people and thinking. We also re-visited that other "Golden Age" of conversation - the salon culture of late 17th Century and 18th Century France - where an emphasis on stylistic twists and flourishes certainly seemed to be more in keeping with a theatrical performance than with a cozy heart-to-heart.

A discussion of Virginia Woolf's particular conversational style - "spinning off into fantastic fabrications while everyone sat around and, as it were, applauded" - raised the question of the ultimate purpose of conversation and with it, the observation that the etymological origins of the word itself - "to turn around (versare) together (con)" - might be more in keeping with a participatory activity than with a piece of entertainment. Bringing home the many ways that we can conceive of the act and art of conversation, this reflection also provided a fitting segue into our brief look at "women's language" and with it, the issue of the "tag question."

We first considered Robin Lakoff's suggestion that the tag question - literally, the question tagged on to the end of an affirmative statement such as "We're enjoying ourselves, aren't we?" - is a linguistic construction used by women to avoid conflict with others and to skirt around having to commit themselves to a firm position on any one issue. Against this notion of the "tag question" as an indicator of female tentativeness and uncertainty, we considered Jennifer Coates' more empowering interpretation: that is, as a strategy used by women when they talk amongst themselves to create a "collaborative floor" in which each person feels heard and valued, and through which participants hammer out a kind of shared world view. Here, the "tag question" has a facilitative function: no answer is expected but rather, it invites others to join in and it makes sure we are all on the same page - "Women make great conversationalists, don't they?"...Well, the time had come to find out.

Applying French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu's understanding of habitus as "the principle of regulated improvisations" to our experiments in creating good conversational habits, participants were assigned an opening question with which to launch a lively 2 minute exchange with the person sitting next to them. Some of the questions were drawn from "the world's most boring conversational openers" list - the idea here being to improvise away from an unpromising start so as to turn a potentially yawn-invoking conversation into a sparkling one. Other opening questions were sparkly from the get go, giving conversing partners the chance to strike out on an adventurous limb or to negotiate their way back to a place less conducive to conversational vertigo. As the sound of women's voices and laughter filled our Montreal salon, one could not help but feel that our celebrated Parisian salonniere precursor, Madame de Stael, would have approved. Conversation, in her view, was "a means of reciprocally and rapidly giving one another pleasure...A sort of electricity that causes sparks to fly."

We rounded up the evening with a cup of tea and a slice of Martha's Mocha Cake - a family favourite in Linnet's home growing up, yet one that raises a question in itself...Why Martha's Mocha when this plain white cake contains not a coffee bean nor cocoa bean to speak of? We never did find the answer, but then, neither did Socrates...A fitting end to an evening celebrating the question over the answer, the art of conversation over the act of information exchange.

Before we parted, Rona shared with our valued members and their friends - and we were pleased to welcome a number of new friends on this particular evening - the latest news about the wwp roadtrip coming up this summer. If you want to find out more about our route and schedule, make sure to check out details on our website. And if you want to come along to our next salon, entitled "Women Making Waves," it is happening on Thursday, March 8th...Can you think of a better way to celebrate International Women's Day?!

The Question

"To be or not to be, that is the question."

Except that it's not. Not on this occasion, anyway. No, what interests us at the upcoming salon on February 9th is the question of the question itself.

What kind of questions open up conversation and conversely (no pun intended) close it down? What kind of questions do you like being asked or perhaps more importantly, not being asked? How do politeness and the art of asking questions intersect? And what of a traditional etiquette rule that proposes that to ask any question is a breach of proper social conduct?

These questions and more will be explored as we turn the question - both as content and conversational form - inside out next Thursday evening. Is it too much to ask that you let us know if you'll be there? We hope not!

Stormy Weather for a Stormy Theme

It is perhaps fitting that blustery snow and freezing rain hit Montreal on the evening that our salon was devoted to the theme of anger. While the tempest raged on the outside, those intrepid wwp members who had managed to make it through the storm to join us for the first salon evening of 2012 found themselves warming up to the topic with a lively game of charades - using body language to convey the many sides and shades of anger (irritation, wrath, annoyance, distress, fury...the list is endless!) ; exploring the extent to which our bodies and minds are equally mobilized when it comes to expressing this most provocative of emotions.

For indeed, anger - as Rona was quick to point out - is an emotion that has elicited a wide range of philosophical enquiries and interpretations. And the jury is still out on whether an emotion is something that we can control or that controls us, that belongs to the realm of the rational or the irrational, that is purposive or disruptive. As for Rona's route into anger - the work of Robert Solomon - it took us through an emotional minefield that signposted anger as an "action" freely chosen in order to right a wrong and trigger a change. In other words, anger seen in this light is no cathartic release a la Freud. Rather, it is a process whereby we recognize the true cause of the anger we feel and then act upon it. In this way, emotions in general - and anger specifically - can be understood as something we do, not something that happens to us. Similar to a judgment, an emotion like anger can be "made" in a snap, but maintained for decades. If this suggests that there is a strategic element to an emotion - we are no longer "driven" by anger but rather, we "mobilize" anger to further our own purposes - what it also suggests is that in attempting to right the wrong through our anger, we don't necessarily always get it right!

Discussing how each of us "wore" our anger helped us to work through this idea of an emotion being "intentional" - something at once active, at once strategic. One of us wore her anger like lingerie - safely hidden away from public view. Another couldn't do anything to hide it, displayed as it was right up there on her face. Another wore her anger like a corset - the tightness of it squeezing irritatingly in on her, adding yet more fuel to the fire. For yet another, her anger was that sequined sparkly outfit that only came out sporadically, and invariably gave her a not unpleasant frisson. For another still, it was that itchy, ill-fitting garment in her cupboard - the fashion mistake, the don't-want-it-but-can't-quite-throw-it-out-either dilemma. As a face of calm, as a film of prickly impatience, as a pool of burning acid, as the protective shin and body pads worn to play ringette, as a kind of flyaway caftan in chaotic swirl, each of us wore our anger differently, and with varying end results. We were beginning to see our anger as not just an important element of our individual characters, but also as a tactical aspect of our very being in the world.

Turning to how women had historically used anger as a tactic in itself - for example, in the case of the militant branch of the first wave feminist suffrage fighters in early 1900s Britain - Linnet explained how the non-militant side of this movement, as led by the even-tempered and proudly "unemotional" Millicent Garrett Fawcett, had clashed with the hot-headed and decidedly "unladylike" Pankhursts leading the militants. Drawing on newspaper articles and cartoons from the time, Linnet built a picture of a nation and its institutions grappling with not only the issue at stake - the vote for women - but equally, with middle- and upper-class women acting in ways that did not conform to how society expected them to behave: that is, as "nice, polite, and dignified". This is not to say that both militants (the suffragettes) and non-militants (the suffragists) weren't angry; just that any outward expressions of anger, such as smashing windows and pushing their way through police barricades and tying themselves to railway tracks, deeply threatened the status quo - the very fabric of the nation. Importantly, these kinds of violent outbursts were seen by the non-militant Suffragists as threatening, too. For them, these acts served to undermine the goal both factions shared: lending credence, in their opinion, to the prevailing idea that women were too "irrational" (read "emotional") to handle having a vote; undoing, in their opinion, all the hard work that the non-militant societies had done to convince the government and the general public that women were "up" to the task of being "responsible" citizens deserving of the vote. The militants, for their part, maintained - and often rightly - that playing nice never got you anywhere; that without shaking up the status quo and creating these disruptions, the vote for women would never be won.

In comparing this example of a divided Feminist position over how best to be productively active and activist to parallel schisms that arose within the Second Wave Feminist movement some 60 years later, we opened up a lively discussion as to whether anger, or at least the question of who is permitted to get angry in our society, is a gender issue. It also paved the way to our look at the Manifesto - a literary form that was certainly used by the early Suffrage fighters in both camps to push their platform of social change into public view. A range of 20th century manifestos penned by women's groups from the Redstockings to the Radicalesbians were examined for their stylistic form and explosive content. The manifesto's particular etymology - from the Latin manu, meaning "hand," and festus, meaning "to strike", as in "to strike with the hand" - was brought home to us with a resounding slap as we encountered Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto (1967), and considered it from the perspective of both a "performative action" and a "strategy of excess." Emboldened by these explosive examples of textual doxa (or "opinion" - quite literally, "that which appears to me"), we broke into groups and took a stab at collaboratively crafting rousing manifestos out of wine women and philosophy's recently penned (and, we now realize, misnamed) 'manifesta for a new day' (see post below). In fact, our learning around the manifesto had taught us that what we wrote back in November was a "declaration"- a text that announces an organization's mission and goals, rather than punching it home as in the case of the manifesto. As for the results of this writing exercise, they were FANTASTICALLY ANGRY and MARVELOUSLY LIBERATING - everything that a good manifesto should be!

And speaking of manifestos, we marked the most famous one of all - Marx and Engel's 'Communist Manifesto' (1848) - by ringing in the Russian "Old" New Year with bubbly and blinis, and a hearty round of applause for three years of successful salon evenings in the company of our terrific and ever-inspirational membership. Rounding off the evening with tea and "Aggression Cookies" courtesy of Marianne, we reflected on some new directions that wine women and philosophy will be taking in the months to come.

We want to thank all of you who made the journey through a stormy winter's night to share this celebration with us - who would ever have thought that an evening devoted to anger could elicit so much hilarity and be so much fun. And we look forward to seeing all of you who couldn't make it at our next salon evening on the 9th of February, when we will be delving into the question of...The Question?!

Welcoming in the New Year Together with a Kick Start!

Hope you all had a good holiday and that you are ready for a new season of wine women and philosophy salon evenings.

Just a reminder about next Thursday's salon evening - January 12th at 7.30pm. The topic is 'anger' and the conversational form is 'the manifesto'...Now is that a way to herald in the new year or what?! If you have a chance please take a glance prior to the evening at wwp's manifesta - written last November in a spirit of productive pique! You will find it on our website under the menu title 'what we say.' We will very much appreciate your comments.

New members are always welcome and old members will be warmly welcomed back. We look forward to seeing you next Thursday.

Be it Resolved..."the bitch" versus "the good girl"

Last Thursday's salon evening saw us debating the question, What gets you further in life?... Being a "good girl" or a "bitch"? If the aim of the evening was to flesh out these two tropes commonly assigned to women, the use of the debate format allowed us to step, quite literally, into the shoes of each trope and give voice to their respective characters and concerns.

Rona began with a brief summary of the origins of debating. Introducing us to the process of "Socratic Questioning" and the workings of "Imaginative Empathy," she challenged us to spot the differences between debate and dialogue, and asked us to consider the merits and shortcomings of both. This included an opening question on how we felt about debate as a form...Memories of high school debating teams intermingled, here, with strong opinions about the value (or not!) of politicians going face-to-face before an election during a televised debate. It was decided that good debating should be well researched, entertaining, insightful and respectful. Linnet's discussion of the London Debating Societies that briefly flourished during the Age of Enlightenment helped to shed light on how these good debating qualities evolved within, and became synonomous with, a more inclusive "bourgeois public sphere" over the course of the 18th Century. Likewise, her discussion of women's gradual entry into these debating societies and her exploration of the part the societies played in helping the general public to hammer out a new understanding of gender roles and gender relations provided us with an insight into how women fit into the growth and development of the debate format.

And then, it was time to start debating! The first exercise was designed to prep the group for the forthcoming debate, and took the form of a socratic questioning session done in pairs. The idea was to help each other find clarity in our views as they related to the evening's debate question. Through this exercise we were able to start building a characterization of "the good girl" and "the bitch" as tropes, and of our respective conceptions of what getting "further in life" might look like. On returning to the group, and after a brief feedback session that revealed people's process of questioning as well as their rough character sketches, Rona randomly split the group into good girls and bitches for the debate. Before setting off, Linnet helped the good girls to get into character by reading them an excerpt from the 1851 edition of The Etiquette Book for Ladies. Meanwhile, the bitches were getting a good dose of 'bitchspeak' courtesy of the bitch manifesto by Jo Freeman.

Each group was given 10 minutes to prepare a platform of 3 strong points supporting their argument that either bitches, or good girls, get further in life. After each side presented their platform, there ensued a lively, hotly contested, and at times, hilarious, round of open debate. The crossfire round completed, Rona asked members of each group to consider a point that had been made over the course of the evening that made them think about the good girl or the bitch differently, or that challenged their own preconceived idea about either one of these tropes. Here is a taste of what debaters presented as arguments to suggest that their trope got further in life, and the kind of rebuttals that came back at them...


Argument: Good Girls are well liked, helpful, always asked to the party again and again, and in fact, will be the first in line to help set up that party and clear it away...Small wonder they get all those invitations! Good Girls get on in life because they are easy going and diplomatic, and people will always be ready and willing to help them out because they don't ruffle any feathers.

Rebuttal: The good girl is suppressing her true self and lives in the shadow of others. Though she pretends to be so nice and accommodating, she is in fact as manipulative as the next person - doing good in order to get on. She never becomes her own person, so busy is she helping others to become their own persons. She is dull and uninteresting, so why would anyone even want her at their party?!


Argument: The Bitch lives in the moment, she doesn't care what people think of her, she has no time for convention, she gets on by being fiercely herself, and because it's impossible to ignore her. Leave it to the co-dependent good girl to concern herself with getting on "further" in life, sneers the bitch. For the bitch, there are no limits when it comes to life...She IS life, and she is making it happen all around her on her own terms.


Rebuttal: the bitch doesn't care who she steps on to get on...she is mean, aggressive, egotistical and insensitive. People do not like her, are not prepared to help her, and she is - whether she is prepared to admit it or not - as effected by people's opinion of her as is the good girl.


Linnet finished the debate with a question to the whole group about which of the tropes was more true to herself, and which was the more revolutionary. From the discussion that followed it became clear that both tropes were reactive tropes - each struggling to find a way through a generally constrictive status quo and each, as a result, becoming defined by her positioning in relation to the status quo. One always beavering away within the limits of convention...The other always fighting against those limits and spilling outside of them...In the end, we decided, it was the bitch who probably made the greatest headway when it came to challenging the status quo, though whether she managed to shake things up for other women in so doing was a question we found ourselves pondering as the evening drew to a close.

This is fitting, given that our next salon evening - on January 12, 2012 - is all about challenging the status quo through the literary genre known as the manifesto...A conversational form, if you like, that is at once a rousing call to action, at once an eloquent account of an individual's or collective's beliefs and goals. Looking at the manifesto will give us an opportunity to pry open the prickly subject of women and their anger. It will also provide us with the perfect opportunity to look at wine women and philosophy's very own manifesta - if you want to get a head start, you can find it on our website!

Making New Links

Remember back in March when, to mark the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, we posted a call to action on this blog - urging wwp members and friends to use this year to bring to light the story of a woman who came before us, and whose life might run the risk of being lost to history if we didn't do something concrete to mark and record that life? Out of this call to action came the inauguration of the wwp Philosophy Club and our first six-week series connected to it, entitled The Invisible Matron. When the series drew to a close at the end of May, the lives of 9 hitherto uncelebrated extraordinary women had been recuperated by partipants and brought into dialogue with our philosophical discussions around voice, liminality, and the aging female body.

On a more personal note, and in that same post, Linnet spoke of a personal project that she was undertaking in the hope of finding out more about three shadowy female relatives in her family - one of whom was her paternal grandmother who had lost contact with her father back in 1930 when he was just two years old. Beyond knowing her name, Linnet knew nothing of this woman and had never even seen a photograph of her. Six months later, the photograph of a beautifully flapperesque Hylda Louise sits on Linnet's mantelpiece, and the pieces of her grandmother's colourful life are slowly falling into place. Among these pieces is the discovery of two half-siblings that Linnet's father never knew he had. Linnet is travelling to England next week to meet one of them, and will no doubt know a lot more about her grandmother by the time she returns. At wine women and philosophy we speak a lot about things we can do to open the door to more imaginative futures...In this case, a subscription to ancestry.com has closed the door on an imagined past and opened the door to a whole new family!

And speaking of making links...While Linnet is in London she will be attending a philosophy discussion put on by Philosophy For All entitled "What are you thinking about?". She will also be meeting with PFL founder and the editor of Philosophy Now magazine, Anji Steinbauer, to talk about teaching philosophy in an adult education context, about designing philosophy programs with women in mind, and about the creation of an exciting new London-based initiative that brings philosophy to the public - the London School of Philosophy.

Remember those field trips back when you were in elementary school?...Does anybody smell the whiff of a wine women and philosophy field trip to London in the works?...

Manifesta for a new day

Dear valued members and friends,

We have been doing some serious thinking about a new direction for wwp. As you will gather from the manifesta that appears below, our current emphasis is much more on the teaching of philosophy than on activity-based getaways. For those of you who know us and our history, we welcome your input. For those of you who have yet to discover wine women and philosophy, we will be interested to hear if our ideas appeal to you.

Members may be interested to know that the manifesta as a literary form and rousing call to action will be the focus of our December salon evening. More details about this event will follow soon. In the meantime, don't forget our upcoming salon evening on October 27th which takes the form of a debate between those age-old tropes assigned to women: 'The Good Girl' and 'The Bitch'.

wine women and philosophy manifesta

Wine women and philosophy is a philosophy school with a difference. What makes us different? In a nutshell, we turn living rooms, wine bars, and country retreats into classrooms. We cater solely to women. And we find ways to make philosophy pertinent to women's lives.

We don’t promise that philosophy will save your life…But we are convinced that it will make your life a lot more interesting. This is how we do it.

As educational entrepreneurs we put women first.

• we admire women who have the courage to walk through the door and who are prepared to take the risk of learning something new
• we treat every woman as a person who thinks unlike any other person, and who has thoughts, ideas and sensibilities that can enrich learning for others
• we ask ourselves constantly how we can meet women’s educational aspirations and give them a learning experience that they value
• we believe that every woman who challenges herself to learn something new opens the door to a new way of engaging with the world.

As committed professionals we design unique educational experiences that take seriously each woman's creative and reflective side.

• we create friendly teaching and learning environments in convivial locales
• we provide a safe place for women to find their voice around the issues they care about and to be opened to issues that they might care about in the future
• we are developing a challenging, rigorous and fun way to learn which encourages everyone's contribution
• we embrace a feminist pedagogy that challenges authoritative 'expertise' ; that values and builds on women's individual life experiences and backgrounds; and that seeks to broaden the idea of what education is and who gets to participate in it.

As hands-on philosophers we are dedicated to adventurous thinking.

• we bring the word ‘excitement’ into the teaching and learning of philosophy
• we employ innovative teaching methods that breathe a breath of fresh air into your life
• we speak from the heart and work hard to make sure that our words aren't empty, or overly laden with jargon
• we champion more imaginative futures for ourselves and for those with whom we teach and learn.

As dynamic animators we are proud to offer a philosophy program that is accessible, vibrant and well thought through.

• we start with a topic: past topics have ranged from Funny girls in film to the trope of the Invisible Matron ; from How we look at photographs to Finding your body in your favourite poem
• we then link a theme to that topic: for example, our look at family photographs becomes a way to explore the place of nostalgia and memory in our lives; our dip into your favourite poem opens the door to discussing the difference between reading poetry for what it says (the realm of representation) and discovering within that poem the traces of a living, breathing body (the workings of affect)
• we introduce, next, some philosophical concepts to highlight connections between topic and theme, and to build a shared language that helps to prompt our collective working of ideas and individual understandings: Roland Barthes' notion of punctum, for example, builds a bridge between the piercing effect that a detail in a photograph can have on us and its triggering of a memory pang; Julia Kristeva's interpretation of the rhythmic and womb-like chora, for example, enables us to better grasp how certain styles of writing are more bodily than others
  
• we use props!...drawing on a variety of conversational forms, playful exercises and artifacts we turn abstract concepts into grounded insights, taken-for-granted assumptions into interesting questions. In this way, a cookie cutter and a piece of dough become a way to understand how ‘the male gaze’ works ; sifting through a box of seemingly random objects illuminates a post-structuralist line of flight.

As a passionate team dedicated to enriching women’s lives through philosophy, we love those things that make us feel alive.

• aha! moments
• questions, questions, questions…
• messy thinking, u-turns and loose ends
• friendships blossoming out of shared learning experiences
• an individual woman suddenly discovering her 'inner philosopher'
• a growing number of women realizing that philosophy is for them.

Interested? Excited? Want to know more? We are eager to tell you about our salon series, our philosophy club, our membership schemes, our activity groups, and our up-and-coming educational offerings in a wine bar near you!

Email Linnet or Rona at wwpgetaway@live.com