Feminist Pragmatism and Jane Addams

Feminist pragmatism borrows from classical American pragmatism a privileging of lived experience over theory, and from feminism a commitment to social justice (Whipps and Lake Reference Whipps, Lake and Zalta2020, 1, 12). Contemporary feminist pragmatists Marilyn Fischer, Maurice Hamington, Danielle Lake, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, and Judy Whipps take inspiration from women—some academics, not all—in history who argued in word and deed for the rights of vulnerable populations (Seigfried Reference Seigfried1996; Reference Seigfried1998; Reference Seigfried1999; Fischer Reference Fischer2004; Whipps Reference Whipps2004; Hamington Reference Hamington2010; Fischer Reference Fischer2011; Reference Fischer2014; Lake Reference Lake2014; Reference Lake2015; Fischer Reference Fischer2019; Whipps Reference Whipps and Fesmire2019; Whipps and Lake Reference Whipps, Lake and Zalta2020). Some of the values that feminist pragmatists are committed to include: a) reflecting on concrete experience, b) epistemologies “based in experience and relationality,” c) public engagement in the form of “place-based local activism,” d) education, e) social action, f) participatory democracy, and f) pluralism (Fischer Reference Fischer and Hamington2010, 94–95; Whipps and Lake Reference Whipps, Lake and Zalta2020, 12–26). Jane Addams has long been recognized as a feminist pragmatist whose philosophical activism inspired others, most notably John Dewey (Seigfried Reference Seigfried1999).

I read Addams as the first feminist pragmatist who welcomed immigrants con brazos abiertos. A hundred years before Sister Norma and 1,400 miles north of the Rio Grande Valley, Addams began to “restore human dignity” to immigrants through philosophical activism. With Ellen Gates Starr, Addams founded Hull House in 1889, calling it an “experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problem,” which affected the lives of recent and established eastern European immigrants on the near west side of Chicago (Addams Reference Addams1910/1981; 98; Whipps Reference Whipps and Fesmire2019, 318). The predominantly female residents who lived at Hull House offered the community free concerts, lectures, and classes, in addition to food, health care, and child care (Burnier Reference Burnier2019, 2; see also Jane Addams n.d.). Addams described her work at Hull House as a “response to the needs of all the people” (Addams Reference Addams, Fischer and Whipps1907/2003, 92; Whipps Reference Whipps and Fesmire2019, 318). The philosophy behind Hull House's response to the needs of the people can be theorized by using three concepts: being-with, sympathetic understanding, and a “larger, more general social impulse” (Addams Reference Addams1905, 16; Reference Addams1912, 11).

Not satisfied with the talking-about that often takes place in the ivory tower and political arena, Addams practiced being-with working-class immigrants in Chicago. Like all pragmatists, including John Dewey, William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce, Addams insisted that experience ground theory (Whipps and Lake Reference Whipps, Lake and Zalta2020). Being-with is valuable to feminist pragmatism, in part because it gives rise to what Addams called “sympathetic understanding,” which describes less an attitude than a commitment to thinking differently. Sympathetic understanding involves more than processing information we already have; it means opening our minds wide enough to consider certain kinds of (perhaps previously disregarded) information as knowledge. Finally, the third philosophical concept that we see play out in Hull House is Addams's idea that charity, as it was commonly understood and practiced then, was not the path to philosophical activism. In 1905 Addams called instead for a “larger, more general social impulse” (Addams Reference Addams1905, 16). In the remainder of this section I expand on these three concepts central to Addams's philosophical activism.

Addams blamed the injustices in her society on a “lack of imagination,” which, she lamented, “prevents a realization of the experiences of other people” (Addams Reference Addams1902/1920, 9–10; Seigfried Reference Seigfried1999, 209). A lack of imagination can lead us to limit our interaction with people who are not like us, which, Addams believed, has the detrimental effect of “not only circumscrib[ing] our range of life, but limit[ing] the scope of our ethics” (Addams Reference Addams1902/1920, 10). Addams intentionally built connections with a variety of diverse peoples, and as Addams scholar Danielle Lake points out, “Addams's lifelong work can be seen as an effort to build and foster ‘joint associations’ where co-action is more likely to work effectively” (Lake Reference Lake2014, 82; see also Whipps Reference Whipps2004, 122). Opening our minds is not always a matter of the will; it often takes putting ourselves in new or uncomfortable situations to begin to think differently. Addams knew that imagination alone is often insufficient to open the mind, so she called people to come and work alongside her. A commitment to being-with the community afforded Addams and the other Hull House residents a chance to foster sympathetic understanding.

Addams used the term sympathetic understanding sparingly, but scholar Charlene Haddock Seigfried and others have recovered and developed it as a fundamental part of Addams's philosophy. As Seigfried explains, “for pragmatists, scientific understanding is engaged, not distanced, and sympathetic understanding is a valuable aspect of experimental inquiry” (Seigfried Reference Seigfried1999, 217). Addams first used the term in 1912 in A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, where she explained:

Even if someone had researched a given societal ill to the point where they could recite statistics from memory, Addams believed that absent sympathetic understanding, they would fail to administer good solutions. Addams complained that “there are many people in every community who have not felt the ‘social compunction,’ who do not share the effort toward a higher social morality, who are even unable to sympathetically interpret it” (Addams Reference Addams1902/1920, 71). Approaching a problem with sympathetic understanding involves looking at it from multiple angles and experientially growing the imagination to represent various viewpoints (albeit always imperfectly).

Sympathetic understanding is an easy concept to misunderstand because the term sympathy often connotes top-down feelings of pity or paternalism. On the surface, it also sounds like empathy, which Addams scholar Judy Whipps describes as “coming alongside others and working to understand their lived experience as a basis of democratic change” (Whipps Reference Whipps and Fesmire2019, 319). In her reply to Lorraine Code, Seigfried implies that sympathetic understanding could be a response to Gayatri Spivak (Spivak Reference Spivak, Nelson and Grossberg1988):

Sympathetic understanding is neither sympathy nor empathy; it is a commitment to hear and think better, and it flourishes when I commit to being-with people whose experiential background differs greatly from mine. As Lake points out, sympathetic understanding “requires more than the tolerating of difference. It calls on us to actively seek out the perspective of others” (Lake Reference Lake2014, 84). In practicing sympathetic understanding, Addams believed we can “gain insight into the individuated worlds of experience of others and the values they hold that make these worlds cohere” (Seigfried Reference Seigfried1996, 222).

An example of sympathetic understanding can be found in Hull House's Labor Museum, which displayed traditional spinning wheels for older women to display their talents. In Twenty Years at Hull House, Addams recounted how Italian, Russian, Polish, Syrian, Greek, and Irish mothers would light up in this space, their fingers reminding them of their expertise (Addams Reference Addams1910/1981, 173–75).Footnote ² Marilyn Fischer points out that in this practice, “Addams advocates replacing hierarchy with democracy, defined as a way of associating with others through concrete experience and sympathetic understanding” (Fischer Reference Fischer2004, 86). Fischer adds:

Since democracy and pluralism are so important to feminist pragmatists, it is crucial that we find ways to learn about the situations of others, even people we disagree with. Sympathetic understanding is a powerful—but easily misunderstood—concept for feminist pragmatism, and for Sister Norma, as we'll see in the next section.

In “The Immigrants and American Charities” from 1905, Addams applauds her listeners at the Illinois Conference of Charities but also condemns the “old” idea of charity, saying that “one should like to make a plea that we take some pains to know immigrants as they are, in their ordinary occupations, to cultivate kind relations with them and not to turn them over so completely to charity” (Addams Reference Addams1905, 15). At the time, Addams lamented:

Finally, Addams suggested that her listeners “supplement [their] charitable impulse with the larger, more general social impulse” (16).

As we know, charitable work does not automatically foster sympathetic understanding, but as Lake shows, sympathetic understanding can help people shed their simplistic notions of charity: “sympathetic understanding is a keystone toward effective collaboration; as Addams's careful articulation of sympathetic understanding separates it from a more common and simplistic understanding of charity” (Lake Reference Lake2014, 84). For Addams, “real intercourse” with the community can inspire this “larger, more general social impulse” (Addams Reference Addams1905, 16). Sister Norma embodies and encourages this social impulse even though she runs what is labeled a “charity.” I now turn to Sister Norma's organic feminist pragmatism to show how she practices “sympathetic understanding,” “being with,” and a “larger, more general social impulse” and in so doing, calls members of her community to practice place-based philosophical activism alongside her.

Sister Norma's Feminist Pragmatism

In 2017, Sister Norma published a short essay titled “Immigrant” for The Pope Francis Lexicon. Here we get a snippet of Sister Norma's background, much like the first few chapters of Addams's Twenty Years at Hull House.

Sister Norma describes her upbringing as entre mundos (between worlds). Born in South Texas in 1953 to Mexican parents, Sister Norma grew up on both sides of the then wall-less border. Her bilingual and bicultural childhood meant spending time with immigrants and nonimmigrants alike; there was no pressure to distinguish between them. Recalling the Pope's command “to respond in a way which is always humane, just, and fraternal,” Sister Norma remembers growing up in a United States that she called kind (Pimentel Reference Pimentel, Wooden and McElwee2018, 93). As a young nun, Sister Norma lived in a convent with her (now-deceased) mentor Sister Juliana Garcia, and she recalls how Border Patrol would call Sister Juliana in the middle of the night asking her to house a Central American family for a few days. In 2014, instead of the Border Patrol calling Sister Juliana, it was McAllen's mayor, Jim Darling, calling Sister Norma Pimentel, Executive Director of Catholic Charities for the diocese of Brownsville. And instead of housing one family in her convent, Sister Norma founded the Humanitarian Respite Center to house hundreds of families. The volunteer-run shelter was Sister Norma's response to the mayor's call.Footnote ³

Sister Norma was asked to aid the hundreds of immigrants who were being “caught” and “released” daily by Immigration and Customs Engagement (ICE). Immigrants who were deemed safe enough to be released obtained bus tickets to reunite with family members in other parts of the United States where they would await their court dates. Quickly, the McAllen bus station became overwhelmed with the extra demand. Sister Norma asked Sacred Heart Catholic Church in downtown McAllen near the bus station if she could borrow the parish hall to take care of people “for a few days” until the bus station could figure out how to meet the additional needs. Fr. Thomas Luczak agreed, and with help from the community, Sister Norma opened the HRC. Volunteers from all over the country—religious and nonreligious—began to gather in McAllen to help. Five years and four locations later, the process remained the same: seven days a week, usually more than twice a day, a volunteer would wait at the bus stop to offer hundreds of immigrants a chance to eat, shower, rest, and make a phone call. As late as December 2018, if the asylum-seekers were lucky enough to be released, the immigrant's first gift from the US was an ankle monitor. This kept them out of detention, but it was morally fetid, as it criminalized and stigmatized them I witnessed their second gift on many occasions from 2014–2019: a standing ovation when they walked through the Humanitarian Respite Center doors, welcoming them to the US and acknowledging their bravery. They received clothes and shoes (when there were enough), medical attention, hot soup, hygiene products, and to-go bags with food for what they prayed would be the last leg of their journey (Catholic Charities n.d.). Parents of babies also received disposable diapers and formula. When McAllen and the HRC would appear in the national news, donations would spike high enough to buy the children a toy for the road. Sister Norma credited the HRC's success to the generosity of the Rio Grande Valley community. In addition to donating goods, she says they also “gave lovingly of their time” (Pimentel Reference Pimentel, Wooden and McElwee2018, 92).Footnote ⁴

Unlike Addams, Sister Norma is neither a writer nor a philosophically trained intellectual. In my experience, her political, social, and theological positions have to be wrangled out of her in the form of speeches and interviews she is asked to give all over the country. But as feminist pragmatists Lake and Whipps have said about the process of recovering early feminist pragmatists, “we often have to look beyond academic philosophy to find the women who were influential social philosophers” (Whipps and Lake Reference Whipps, Lake and Zalta2020, 2). Some of these early women were, like Sister Norma, organic intellectuals, “college educated activists rather than professional academic philosophers” (4).Footnote ⁵ Feminist pragmatists take seriously as intellectuals women who were not trained as philosophers but who “were continuously involved in fighting oppression, especially of women, children, and minorities” (13). We don't need to call Sister Norma a philosopher to read her actions in conversation with feminist pragmatism. But it's critical that we read her as a feminist activist: feminist, insofar as she has worked longest with vulnerable women and children, and activist, insofar as she uses her power and role to sway others to join her work. Sister Norma is not Jane Addams, but she is a feminist pragmatist; the Humanitarian Respite Center is not Hull House, but it is a site where “being-with,” “sympathetic understanding,” and a “larger, more general social impulse,” are fostered (Addams Reference Addams1905, 16). Like Addams, Sister Norma advocates for the humane treatment of immigrants to the US, and her acts have sparked hundreds, if not thousands, of religious and lay people to join in her mission to “restore human dignity” to the men, women, and children who passed through the HRC every day for five years. Both Addams and Sister Norma embody a “come-and-see” attitude, believing that if you spend time with immigrants, change will take place on the inside and the outside. Like Addams did in the first decades of the twentieth century, a hundred years later Sister Norma practices “being-with,” “sympathetic understanding,” and a “larger, more general social impulse.”

Being-With

Sister Norma points out that we have a lot to learn from the immigrants at the Humanitarian Respite Center even if we do not spend a lot of time with them. The important thing is to be with them and not just talk about them. Sister Norma has convinced me that one ought to resist talking about the immigration crisis on the US–Mexico border if one has not been-with the immigrant population on the border. When President Trump traveled to McAllen, Texas, in the summer of 2019 to investigate the border crisis, he refused to visit the HRC even after having been personally and publicly invited by Sister Norma in the Washington Post (Pimentel Reference Pimentel2019). Had Trump visited the HRC, he would not have found “rapists” and “murderers,” but frightened families fleeing the violence overwhelming their home countries. Pragmatists value experience, and the HRC provides people with experience in the form of being-with.

Can-stacking is a good example. At the HRC, immigrants were sometimes asked to help unload and organize donated goods. As I broke down cardboard boxes behind the HRC one day in 2018, I watched two men, no doubt tired from their crossings, carefully fill a storage unit with tin cans. Admittedly, these Central American men were far from displaying expertise like the eastern European women that Addams wrote about, but their bodies communicated a work ethic that is perpetually denied by anti-immigrant rhetoric. Their eagerness to stack cans may have been motivated by gratitude, a desire to help, or even boredom, but each can they stacked returned to them some of that dignity that had been stolen from them on their journeys north, including by Border Patrol. One man's son was playing in the dirt close by (no doubt instructed to stay close for fear of separation), and this child had the opportunity to watch his father, in Sister Norma's words, regain his dignity. This activity on this particular day may have been temporary and spontaneous, but it was co-creation, akin to Addams's being-with. The result of such a scene is not pity but respect, what Addams called “kindly fellowship, and a real understanding” (Addams Reference Addams1905, 12).

Sympathetic Understanding

Marilyn Fischer warns us of the potential pitfalls of promoting a concept like sympathetic understanding, which attempts to bridge the gap between the socioeconomic haves and have-nots. She writes:

Sympathetic understanding—the ability to read a social issue from multiple angles because one has grown one's imagination through meaningful interaction with others; actively seeking out the perspective of others on the assumption that their ideas are coherent; gaining insight into the values and experiences of others that lead to their choices—is made possible by being-with others. Still, it is not easy to get right; sympathetic understanding falls victim to false starts, mistakes, and the need for redos. The good news is that pragmatism values an experimental approach to social problems (Whipps Reference Whipps and Fesmire2019). There is, for pragmatists, no other way to begin. In becoming philosophical activists, we will necessarily make mistakes (perhaps even of this paternalistic variety), but not becoming philosophical activists for fear of making mistakes is no solution.Footnote ⁶ It is awkward to put oneself in unfamiliar circumstances and risk the kinds of criticism that Fischer points to above. It is safer to stay at home than to try to foster sympathetic understanding by working alongside people condemned to the periphery—the geographical periphery of the US–Mexico border in addition to the socioeconomic, linguistic, cultural, and religious peripheries. If we stay home, no one can charge us with paternalism. Yet feminist pragmatists like Jane Addams and Sister Norma invite us to take the risk. Risk we do, and so do our students.

It is not easy to visit the HRC for the first time, and my students tend to get intimidated before they go. They do not know what to expect, and they worry that they are inadequate to the task. One of the courses in which I assign hours at the HRC is designed with sympathetic understanding in mind. Foregrounded in this course are the themes included in the course's title, “Ethics, Happiness, and the Good Life,” but as we live on the US–Mexico border, the background of the course is the ethics of immigration.

All students in this course are required to spend fifteen hours at the HRC throughout the semester, but before beginning their hours they answer the question: “What is my responsibility toward the immigrant?” At the end of the course, after working alongside refugees and studying 1) Kant's Categorical Imperative, 2) Mill's Utilitarian framework, 3) Kierkegaard's interpretation of the biblical injunction to “love thy neighbor,” and 4) Levinas's concept of “the face,” students write a final essay answering the same question about their responsibility toward the immigrant.

Before their first day at the HRC, I ask the students not to probe into the personal life of anyone they meet there. Aside from that, I tell the students just to show up, to put themselves in an uncomfortable position in order to spend time with people whose life circumstances do not match theirs. (In the case of some students on the South Texas border, their life circumstances actually do match those of the immigrants: I have had students report that their experience inspired a conversation with parents who crossed over years ago.) And just as Addams noticed, when people show up, something important happens.

After their experience at the HRC, the students do not report gaining a newfound sense of sympathy. They've gained knowledge. Addams was right that undergoing this human experience would give them the kind of knowledge she called sympathetic understanding (Addams Reference Addams1912, 11). The students learned by occupying the same space as other people, by being-with immigrants and fellow volunteers. Afterwards, and as a consequence of ceasing to approach immigration as mere “statisticians” (as they had done when their primary source of knowledge was the nightly news), the students gain a fuller sense of why immigrants would trade their home country for the perils of a trip north to an uncertain future.

A Larger Social Impulse

Addams wanted her contemporaries to adopt a “newer” attitude toward immigrants, one that would extend beyond “charity” into a “larger, more general, social impulse” (Addams Reference Addams1912, 11). From the outside it really looks like Sister Norma has set up a typical “charity” (it is, after all, funded in part by Catholic Charities). Still, I believe that the HRC cultivates in its volunteers, and perhaps in the immigrants themselves, Addams's “larger, more general, social impulse.”

In the first place, the HRC is not explicitly religious. The only physical references to Catholicism are found in a couple of paintings and statues hanging in the HRC, along with the Missionaries of Jesus habit that Sister Norma wears daily (which looks more like a suit than a traditional habit). No volunteer or immigrant was to be asked what religion, if any, they practiced, and they were explicitly told not to proselytize or try to convert the immigrants. The current location of the HRC is still open but is mostly vacant due to the Remain in Mexico policy, and it is supported and run by the community, religious and nonreligious alike (Pimentel Reference Pimentel, Wooden and McElwee2018, 92).

Addams claimed that the “newer attitude” she was looking for from her society would come from spending time with immigrants (Addams Reference Addams1905, 15). I took my kids to the HRC to play with the children there, in part on the understanding that kids do not care about immigration status. It may be tempting—and it may even be justified—to criticize their play as an act of “charity.” But if it is charity, it is also more than that. Although the standard power differentials do not cease to exist in the space of play, between citizen and noncitizen, between differing levels of formal education, between those who can go home and those who don't know where home is, I didn't feel like a university professor “slumming it” with her children. If I had I may not have gone, and I am not convinced that staying away on principle is a better answer. Neither Jane Addams nor Sister Norma would advise us to stay home for fear of troublesome power dynamics. I saw the visit as something of a break from child care, and my children saw a roomful of children to play with. Despite the problems inherent in volunteerism, our visit gave both sets of children (and parents) a fundamental way to communicate; it built one small (and imperfect) bridge between similar creatures coming from dissimilar circumstances. As Seigfried reminds us, one of the pillars behind social democracy is that “the diversity of human experience should elicit sympathetic understanding” (Seigfried Reference Seigfried1999, 223). Although I cannot erase the power differentials in the room, we will not reach sympathetic understanding by never stepping into the room at all.

Despite the fact that volunteers at the HRC work with recent arrivals who often leave within twenty-four hours, instead of with permanent residents with whom they could share their lives, it is enough time to cultivate Addams's “larger, more general social impulse” (Addams Reference Addams1912, 11). It does not take long to see that refugees are not “rapists” and “criminals” (Trump Reference Trump2015) but frightened mothers and fathers and children seeking protection and human opportunity. I am convinced that this is why Trump did not visit the HRC; it might have humanized the refugees to him, leaving him at risk of growing his social impulse. The short-term nature of the work can make the HRC look ineffective: it does not directly change policy regarding immigrants, and doubters might say that no lasting transformation can come from it. But this way of thinking dismisses the ways that being-with, sympathetic understanding, and cultivating a larger social impulse can make all the difference in the lives of volunteers and refugees.

In her own way, Sister Norma has built the HRC to enact Addams's “newer attitude” toward charity (Addams Reference Addams1905, 15). Drawing on Pope Francis, she writes:

Sister Norma is writing about communities, societies, and worlds. And although Addams did not use the term “revolution of tenderness” to describe what went on inside Hull House, it fits. And although “revolution of tenderness” sounds like an oxymoron—revolution is hard, tenderness soft—both the HRC and Hull House are powerful reminders of how humans qua tender beings can care for one another. Initiatives like the HRC help us cultivate the larger social impulse for which Addams advocated.

A teaching example on developing a larger social impulse: one student asked me to release her from the service requirement at the HRC. She had children and explained that she didn't have time to go. When I told her that I took my children with me to the HRC, and that they benefited from going, she seemed relieved. This student turned out to be one of those most moved by the experience.

All of the students presented on their HRC experience during the last week of class, and they reported learning unforeseeable lessons. One student's written and oral presentation revolved around the theme of boredom; he concluded that the boring tasks that characterize care work may be the most important work a person can do. Other students reported an intention to keep volunteering. Most confessed that, prior to the readings and the HRC, they had no knowledge of immigration, even though droves of people were coming into the US, essentially into their backyard. One student artistically interpreted what goes on in the HRC (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Untitled, by Bertha Cristal Reyna.

This student had interpreted the immigrant not as a rapist or a criminal, but as a dark-skinned Christ, being tended to by a dark-skinned woman in traditional dress, perhaps an immigrant herself, or perhaps Mary, his mother. They are both glowing. This drawing shows sympathetic understanding at work; after visiting the HRC, this student's perception of who is the caregiver and who is the receiver was reversed. The maligned immigrant is revealed to be God in disguise, and the dark-skinned female, normally thought to be the recipient of American charity, becomes the provider. Students and volunteers learn quickly that the old model of charity is not what goes on in the HRC. Being-with immigrants can help us cultivate a sympathetic understanding, which in turn will lead us to a larger social impulse.