bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
More Thinking About Gender: A Response to Julie A. Nelson
Authors: Elliot Patricia
Published: October 2010

Nelson argues the best we can hope for in a nonsexist society is to revalue those feminine qualities that have previously been devalued. I argue that those qualities are the result of a sexist construction of gender categories, and that a nonsexist society would have no reason to preserve them.
More Thinking About Gender: Reply
Authors: Nelson Julie A.
Published: October 2010

Patricia Elliot distorts my work, in summarizing my position as one of advocating a revaluing of feminine qualities. After clarifying my position, I flesh out in greater detail my argument that complete gender neutrality is neither necessary nor sufficient for a non-sexist society. The argument focuses on gender as a cognitive category and on the crucial question of “how do we get there from here.”
Bringing Peace Home: A Feminist Philosophical Perspective on the Abuse of Women, Children, and Pet Animals
Authors: Adams Carol J.
Published: October 2010

In this essay, I connect the sexual victimization of women, children, and pet animals with the violence manifest in a patriarchal culture. After discussing these connections, I demonstrate the importance of taking seriously these connections because of their implications for conceptual analysis, epistemology, and political, environmental, and applied philosophy. My goal is to broaden our understanding of issues relevant to creating peace and to provide some suggestions about what must be included in any adequate feminist peace politics.
Mothering, Diversity, and Peace Politics
Authors: Bailey Alison
Published: October 2010

The most popular uniting theme in feminist peace literature grounds women's peace work in mothering. I argue if maternal arguments do not address the variety of relationships different races and classes of mothers have to institutional violence and/or the military, then the resulting peace politics can only draw incomplete conclusions about the relationships between maternal work/thinking and peace. To illustrate this I compare two models of mothering: Sara Ruddick's decription of “maternal practice” and Patricia Hill Collins's account of racial-ethnic women's “motherwork.”
Claire Loves Julie: Reading the Story of Women's Friendship inLa Nouvelle Héloise
Authors: Disch Lisa
Published: October 2010

Rousseau's Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloise is two novels in one: a story of wifely virtue and a counterstory of women's friendship. Whereas the virtue story exemplifies what feminist readers since Mary WoRstonecraft have considered to be the most oppressive of Rousseau's prescriptions for women, the friendship counterstory questions the ethical foundations and social manifestations of the model of patriarchal authority that Rousseau ordinarily defends. In this essay, I read the novel with an eye for both stories and the tension between them.
Being Dismissed: The Politics of Emotional Expression
Authors: Campbell Sue
Published: October 2010

My intent is to bring a key group of critical terms associated with the emotions—bitterness, sentimentality, and emotionality—to greater feminist attention. These terms are used to characterize emoters on the basis of how we express ourselves, and they characterize us in ways that we need no longer be taken seriously. I analyze the ways in which these terms of emotional dismissal can be put to powerful political use.
“The Lot of Gifted Ladies Is Hard”: A Study of Harriet Taylor Mill Criticism
Authors: Jacobs Jo Ellen
Published: October 2010

The question, “Why has Harriet Taylor MM appeared in the history of philosophy as she has?” has several answers. The answers intertwine the personality and polities of Harriet, the sexism of those who wrote of her (which was a reflection of the overall status of women during the period the commentator wrote), misunderstandings of the means and meaning of her collaboration with John Stuart Mill, and the disturbing challenge of her questioning.
Twenty Years of Feminist Philosophy
Authors: Ferguson Ann
Published: October 2010

This paper provides an overview of twenty years of feminist philosophy in Northamerka. The professionalization of feminist theory that has occurred through the mains treaming of feminist philosophy creates a danger of a gap between theory and practice that creates the danger of co-optation. Three stages of feminist philosophizing are outlined, including the radical critique, gender difference and difference/post-modemist stages. The last stage, it is argued, leads to an conceptual impasse about feminist strategies for social change.
Women and Language in Susan Griffin's Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her
Authors: Cantrell Carol H.
Published: October 2010

In Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, Susan Griffin's embedding of language and culture within the natural world implicitly offers a critique of widespread assumptions, shared by many feminists, that language belongs only to the powerful and that it is inherendy violent. Griffin's depiction of the process through which women come to speech is illuminated by V. N. VofosHnov's work on the multiaccentuakty of language and by Trinh Minh'ha's characterizations of oral traditions. Both authors stress the constant re-creation of language by speakers and listeners.
Presence with a Difference: Buddhists and Feminists on Subjectivity
Authors: Klein Anne C.
Published: October 2010

Essentialist and postmodern feminisms are often regarded as incompatible. I propose that Buddhist theories of subjectivity change the nature of the tension between them as presently construed because Buddhist traditions describe a mind not wholly governed by language, and a subjective mental dimension that is entirely integrated with the body and its sensations. A corollary is the compatibility Buddhists perceive between conditioned subjective states (akin to postmodern feminisms) and the unconditioned (akin to essentialist feminisms).
Beauvoir, Irigaray, and the Mystical
Authors: Hollywood Amy M.
Published: October 2010

By reading the analyses of mysticism found in Beauvoir and Irigaray with and against some medieval women's mystical texts, the paper articulates a possible space for the divine within feminist thought.
Feminists, Philosophers, and Mystics
Authors: Jantzen Grace M.
Published: October 2010

This article challenges the widely held view that mysticism is essentially characterized by intense, ineffable, subjective experiences. Instead, I show that mysticism has undergone a series of social constructions, which were never innocent of gendered struggles for power. When philosophers of religion and popular writers on mysticism ignore these gendered constructions, as they regularly do, they are in turn perpetuating a post-Jamesian understanding of mysticism which removes mysticism and women from involvement with political and social justice.
Feminist Epistemology and the Extent of the Social
Authors: Webb Mark Owen
Published: October 2010

Many feminist epistemologists have been inclined to embrace socialized epistemology. There are, however, many different theses that go by that name. Sandra Harding, Lynn Hankinson Nelson, and Elizabeth Potter hold various of these theses, but their reasons for holding those theses, while they do support less ambitious theses, do not support the theses they are offered to support.
The Concept of Truth in Feminist Sciences
Authors: Gorham Geoffrey
Published: October 2010

If we view the aim of feminist science as truthlikeness, instead of either absolute or relative truth, then we can explain the sense in which the feminist sciences bring an objective advance in knowledge without implicating One True Theory. I argue that a certain non-linguistic theory of truthlikeness is especially well-suited to this purpose and complements the feminist epistemologies of Harding, Haraway, and Longino.
Seeing and Caring: The Role of Affect in Feminist Moral Epistemology
Authors: Little Margaret Olivia
Published: October 2010

I develop two different epistemic roles for emotion and desire. Caring for moral ends and people plays a pivotal though contingent role in ensuring reliable awareness of morally salient details; possession of various emotions and motives is a necessary condition for autonomous understanding of moral concepts themselves. Those who believe such connections compromise the “objective” status of morality tend to assume rather than argue for the bifurcated conception of reason and affect this essay challenges.
Feminism, Objectivity, and Analytic Philosophy
Authors: Worley Sara
Published: October 2010

Evelyn Fox Keller and Susan Bordo are often cited as sources for the claim that the notion of objectivity found in Western science and analytic philosophy is male-biased. I argue that even if their arguments that objectivity is male-biased are successful, the bias they establish is not a sort which should worry any feminist analytic philosophers (or scientists). I also examine their suggestions for reconceiving objectivity and find them inadequately motivated.
Is Psychological Individualism a Piece of Ideology?
Authors: Antony Louise M.
Published: October 2010

I analyze and criticize Naomi Scheman's argument for the claim that psychological individualism—the thesis that psychological states are entities or particulars over which psychological theories may quantify—has no legitimate philosophical backing and is instead an element of patriarchal ideology. I conclude that Scheman's argument is flawed and that her thesis is false. Psychological individualism is perfectly compatible with and may even be required by feminist political theory.
Value in Ethics and Economics. By Elizabeth Anderson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Authors: Maybee Julie E.
Published: October 2010

In this review, I try to sketch out and evaluate briefly Anderson's new theory of value. I then focus on the social and dialogical account of rationality tied to her value theory and argue that it will be unable to rule out racism as neatly as Anderson sometimes implies. Still, this failure allows her theory to account for the complexity of racism, and points us in promising directions.
Between Hypatia and Beauvoir: Philosophy as Discourse
Authors: Arens Katherine
Published: October 2010

Two studies of women in philosophy, Michéle Le Doeuff's biography of Simone de Beauvoir Hipparchia's Choice (1991) and Fritz Mauthner's historical novel Hypatia (1892), question what kind of power and authority are available to philosophers. Mauthner's philosophy of language expands on Le Doeuff to outline how philosophy acts parallel to other sociohistorical discourses, relying on public consensus and on the negotiation of stereotypes to create a viable speaking subject for the female philosopher.
Irigaray's Mimicry and the Problem of Essentialism
Authors: Xu Ping
Published: October 2010

This essay deals with the essentialism controversy concerning Luce Irigaray through looking into her strategic use of mimicry, which has not been fully addressed by her critics. The author argues that what appear to be essentialist elements in Irigaray's writings are in fact the “sites” where she is mimicking the phallogocentric discourse in order to uncover its essentialist and “sexed” nature and at the same time to resist being reabsorbed into its reductive order.
Amazon Intertextuality and Sinuosity in Sandra Shotlander's Angels of Power
Authors: Curb Rosemary Keefe
Published: October 2010

Angels of Power, by Australian lesbian playwright Sandra Shotlander, illustrates political strategies described by American lesbian philosopher Jeffner Allen. In the play three female members of Australian parliament align to force regulation of new reproductive technologies. Using essentialist, materialist, liberal, and radical feminist arguments, the characters practice sinuous strategies through loading and layering female signs (intertextuality) in order to eradicate patriarchal signification and reenact a contemporary version of ancient Amazons taking over the Acropolis.
Beauty and Breast Implantation: How Candidate Selection Affects Autonomy and Informed Consent
Authors: Parker Lisa S.
Published: October 2010

Candidate evaluation for breast implantation presents a more important obstacle to the fulfillment of the normative requirements of informed consent than do the social roles of women or cultural norms governing female beauty. I argue that women's decisions to receive breast implants may indeed be informed, competently made, and substantially voluntary, but that the cultural construction of beauty may undermine women's autonomy by influencing the evaluation of surgical candidates and risk disclosure during informed consent.
Identity Politics and Dialectical Reason: Beyond an Epistemology of Provenance
Authors: Kruks Sonia
Published: October 2010

Identity politics is important within feminism. However, it often presupposes an overly subjectivist theory of knowledge that I term an epistemology of provenance. I explore some works of feminist standpoint theory that begin to address the difficulties of such an epistemology. I then bring Sartre's account of knowledge in the Critique of Dialectical Reason to bear on these difficulties, arguing that his work offers tools for addressing them more adequately.
Hearing the Difference: Theorizing Connection
Authors: Gilligan Carol
Published: October 2010

Hearing the difference between a patriarchal voice and a relational voice defines a paradigm shift: a change in the conception of the human world. Theorizing connection as primary and fundamental in human life leads to a new psychology, which shifts the grounds for philosophy and political theory. A crucial distinction is made between a feminine ethic of care and a feminist ethic of care. Voice, relationship, resistance, and women become central rather than peripheral in this reframing of the human world.
The Meshing of Care and Justice
Authors: Held Virginia
Published: October 2010

This essay attempts to work out how justice and care and their related concerns fit together. I suggest that as a basic moral value, care should be the wider moral framework into which justice should be fitted.
A Note on Justice, Care, and Immigration Policy
Authors: Baier Annette C.
Published: October 2010

Should a “caring” immigration policy give special treatment to would-be immigrants who are near neighbors? It is argued that, while those on our borders requesting entry have some special claim, it should not drown out the claims of more distant applicants for citizenship.
Reply to Patrick Hopkins
Authors: Vadas Melinda
Published: October 2010

Patrick Hopkins has claimed that SM is compatible with feminist principles. I argue that his account relies on both mistaken analogies and an untenable account of the allegedly changed meaning of SM scenes.1
Sophie Doesn't: Families and Counterstories of Self-Trust
Authors: Nelson Hilde Lindemann
Published: October 2010

Girls learn the lesson of cognitive deference most clearly, perhaps, growing up in patriarchal families. Taught to discount their own judgments and to depend on those of the family's dominantmen, they lose self-trust and cannot take themselves seriously as moral deliberators. I argue that through the telling of counterstories, which undermine normative stories of oppression, it is sometimes possible for women to reclaim these families as places where they have cognitive authority.
Questions of Identity and Inheritance: A Critical Review of Kwame Anthony Appiah'sIn My Father's House
Authors: Nzegwu Nkiru
Published: October 2010

Judeo-Christian and Anglo-Saxon forms of marriage have injected patrilineal values and companionate expectations into the Akan matrilineal family structure. As Anthony Appiah demonstrates, these infusions have generated severe strains in the matrikin social structures and, in extreme cases, resulted in the break up of families. In this essay, I investigate the ideological politics at play in this patrilinealization of Asante society.
Other Mothers: Toward an Ethic of Postmaternal Practice
Authors: Michaels Meredith W.
Published: October 2010

This essay attempts a deliberately perverse interpretation of die new reproductive practices (e.g., contract pregnancy, in vitro fertilization, etc.) in an effort to rethink maternal subjectivity and the bodies that might accompany it.
Are Lesbians Women?
Authors: Hale Jacob
Published: October 2010

I argue that Mordque Wittig's view that lesbians are not women neglects the complexities involved in the composition of the category “woman.” I develop an articulation of the concept “woman” in the contemporary United States, with thirteen distinct defining characteristics, none of which are necessary nor sufficient. I argue that Wittig's emphasis on the material production of “woman” through the political regime of heterosexuality, however, is enormously fruitful for feminist and queer strategizing.
Questions to Luce Irigaray
Authors: Ince Kate
Published: October 2010

This article traces the “dialogue” between the work of the philosophers Luce Irigaray and Emmanuel Levinas. It attempts to construct a more nuanced discussion than has been given to date of Irigaray's critique of Levinas, particularly as formulated in “Questions to Emmanuel Levinas” (Irigaray 1991)-It suggests that the concepts of the feminine and of voluptuosity articulated by Levinas have more to contribute to Irigaray's project of an ethics of sexual difference than she herself sometimes appears to think.
War Is Not Just an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence
Authors: Cuomo Chris J.
Published: October 2010

Although my position is in basic agreement with the notion that war and militarism are feminist issues, I argue that approaches to the ethics of war and peace which do not consider “peacetime” military violence are inadequate for feminist and environmentalist concerns. Because much of the military violence done to women and ecosystems happens outside the boundaries of declared wars, feminist and environmental philosophers ought to emphasize the significance of everyday military violence.
The Laws of War and Women's Human Rights
Authors: Philipose Liz
Published: October 2010

This is a review of historical developments in international criminal law leading up to the inclusion of rape as a “crime against humanity” in the current war crimes tribunal for the ex-Yugoslavia. In addition to the need to understand the specificity of events and their impact on women, the laws of war must also be understood in their specificity and the ways in which even the humanitarian provisions of those laws privilege military needs.
The Dance of Dependency: A Genealogy of Domestic Violence Discourse
Authors: Ferraro Kathleen J.
Published: October 2010

Domestic violence discourse challenges cultural acceptance of male violence against women, yet it is often constituted by gendered, racialized, and class-based hierarchies. Transformative efforts have not escaped traces of these hierarchies. Emancipatory ideals guiding 1970s feminist activism have collided with conservative impulses to maintain and strengthen family relationships. Crime control discourse undermines critiques of dominance through its focus on individual men. Domestic violence discourse exemplifies both resistance to and replication of hierarchies of power.
Confessionals, Testimonials: Women's Speech in/and Contexts of Violence
Authors: Supriya K. E.
Published: October 2010

Theories of discursive genres provide the philosophical and theoretical framework for the empirical examination of the ways in which immigrant women construct their cultural identities in contexts of violence. The claim of the paper is that the analytical genres of confessional and testimonial discourse enable the examination of the particular ways by which immigrant women both reproduce and resist power and violence.
The Voice on the Skin: Self-Mutilation and Merleau-Ponty's Theory of Language
Authors: McLane Janice
Published: October 2010

Self-mutilation is generally seen only as a negative response to trauma. But when trauma cannot be expressed, other forms of communication become necessary. As gestural communication, self-mutilation can reorganize and stabilize the trauma victim's world, providing a “voice on the skin” when the actual voice is forbidden. This is a plausible extension of Merleau-Ponty's gestural theory of language, and an interesting comment on his notion of “reversibility” as essential to linguistic communication.
Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Think No Evil: Ethics and the Appeal to Experience
Authors: Lauritzen Paul
Published: October 2010

This essay distinguishes three types of appeals to experience in ethics, identifies problems with appealing to experience, and argues that appeals to experience must be open to critical assessment, if experientially-based arguments are to be useful. Unless competing and potentially irreconcilable experiences can be assessed and adjudicated, experientially-based arguments will be problematic. The paper recommends thinking of the appeal to experience as a kind of story telling to be evaluated as other stories are.
Questioning Feminine Connection
Authors: Forbes Morgan E.
Published: October 2010

This paper examines Nancy Chodorow's theory of feminine connection and masculine separation inThe Reproduction of Mothering. First it demonstrates that, contrary to many feminists’ interpretations, Chodorow's theory does not portray masculine separation as a social problem to which feminine connection is the solution. Then it shows that Chodorow's apparently intended theory is incoherent. Finally, it argues that Chodorow's claims imply another theory that is coherent and that deserves feminists’ attention.
“There is no evidence to suggest …”: Changing The Way We Judge Information For Disclosure in the Informed Consent Process
Authors: Cannold Leslie
Published: October 2010

Feminist health activists and medical researchers frequently disagree on the adequacy of the informed consent processes in clinical trials. I argue for an informed consent process that reflects the central importance of patient-participant autonomy. Such a standard may raise concerns for medical researchers about their capacity to control the quantity and quality of the information they disclose to potential participants. These difficulties might be addressed by presenting potential participants with differently sized disclosure packages.
Addendum to “Rape as a Weapon of War”
Authors: Card Claudia
Published: October 2010

Learning about martial sex crimes against men has made me rethink some of my ideas about rape as a weapon of war and how to respond to it. Such crimes can be as racist as they are sexist and, in the case of male victims, may be quite simply racist.
What is a Woman? Butler and Beauvoir on the Foundations of the Sexual Difference
Authors: Heinämaa Sara
Published: October 2010

The aim of this paper is to show that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has been mistakenly interpreted as a theory of gender, because interpreters have failed adequately to understand Beauvoir's aims. Beauvoir is not trying to explain facts, events, or states of affairs, but to reveal, unveil, or uncover (découvrir) meanings. She explicates the meanings of woman, female, and feminine. Instead of a theory, Beauvoir's book presents a phenomenological description of the sexual difference.
Feminist Philosophy and the Philosophy of Feminism: Irigaray and the History of Western Metaphysics
Authors: Colebrook Claire
Published: October 2010

Irigaray demonstrates that metaphysics depends upon the specific negation and exclusion of the female body. Readings of Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman tend to highlight the status of this excluded materiality: is there an essential female body which precedes negation or is the feminine only an effect of exclusion? I approach Irigaray's work by way of another question: is it possible to move beyond a feminist critique of metaphysics and towards a feminist philosophy?
A Politics of Enlarged Mentality: Hannah Arendt, Citizenship Responsibility, and Feminism
Authors: Moynagh Patricia
Published: October 2010

Drawing from four Arenaaan themes—plurality, the public realm, power, and perspective appreciation—I argue for citizenship as a “politics of enlarged mentality.” This term suggests an alternative conception of citizenship that surpasses the limits of both the liberal and civic republican traditions. Unlike die masculinized liberal ideal of the citizen and contrary to the gendered universality that defines the civic republican traditions, a politics based on enlarged mentality combines context sensitivity with principled judgments.
Social Citizenship From a Feminist Perspective
Authors: Sarvasy Wendy
Published: October 2010

In this article I construct a feminist notion of social citizenship from early twentieth-century feminism in the United States. Arguing that there are four aspects to the interconnection between women's citizenship and social democracy—new modes of citizenship, a socialized view of rights, new spaces for participation, and a female-privikged definition of gender equality—I suggest that such a concept could help us move from a welfare state to a feminist social democracy.
Anti-Anti-Identity Politics: Feminism, Democracy, and the Complexities of Citizenship
Authors: Bickford Susan
Published: October 2010

In this essay, I argue that recent leftist aitiasms of “identity politics” do not address problems of inequality and interaction that are central in thinking about contemporary democratic politics. I turn instead to a set of feminist thinkers who share these critics’ vision of politics, but who critically mobilize identity in a way that provides a conception of democratic citizenship for our inegalitarian and diverse polity.
Women, Utopia, and Narrative: Toward a Postmodern Feminist Citizenship
Authors: Silbergleid Robin
Published: October 2010

Feminist utopian novels reconstruct citizenship by interrogating ideological assumptions at the root of civil rights theory, particularly its reliance on the sexual contract and the family romance narrative. While many feminist citizenships still depend on such assumptions, utopian fictions deconstruct the logic of natural rights and replace traditional governments and nation-states with social structures based on community and global-ecological awareness. They thereby underscore the importance of narrative for feminist philosophy and political theory.
Essence of Culture and a Sense of History: A Feminist Critique of Cultural Essentialism
Authors: Narayan Uma
Published: October 2010

Drawing parallels between gender essentialism and cultural essentialism, I point to some common features of essentialist pictures of culture. 1 argue that cultural essentialism is detrimental to feminist agendas and suggest strategies for its avoidance, Contending that some forms of cultural relativism buy into essentialist notions of culture, I argue that postcolonial feminists need to be cautious about essentialist contrasts between “Western” and “Third World” cultures.
Rethinking Power
Authors: Allen Amy
Published: October 2010

This paper argues that feminists have yet to develop a satisfactory account of power. Existing feminist accounts of power tend to have a one-sided emphasis either on power as domination or on power as empowerment. This conceptual one-sided’ ness must be overcome if feminists are to develop an account complex enough to illuminate women's diverse experiences with power. Such an account is sketched here.
Saving the Victim: Recuperating the Language of the Victim and Reassessing Global Feminism
Authors: McLeer Anne
Published: October 2010

This paper reconsiders the use of the term “victim” in feminist theory to attempt to find common ground for the intersection and interconnection of Western and indigenous feminisms. The role of the victim in the discourse of victimology, a branch of criminology, is assessed and applied to the work of Rajeswari Sunder Rajan and Lata Mani who both examine the construction of women's subjectivity in the practice of “sati” in India.
How Does One Know What Shame Is? Epistemology, Emotions, and Forms of Life in Juxtaposition
Authors: Lehtinen Ullaliina
Published: October 2010

Do women conceptualize—understand, know about, and react to—shame differently from the way men do? Does the experience and knowledge of shame have a gender-specificity, and along what lines could it be analyzed? By introducing a distinction between life or enduring experiences, “Erfahrung,” and episodic or occurrent experiences, “Erlebnis,” andby juxtaposing this distinction with the Rylean notion that knowledge is dispositional this paper argues for the plausibility of a gender-specificivy.
The Reasonable Heart: Mary Wollstonecraft's View of the Relation Between Reason and Feeling in Morality, Moral Psychology, and Moral Development
Authors: Zaw Susan Khin
Published: October 2010

Wollstonecraft's early works express a coherent view of moral psychology, moral education and moral philosophy which guides the construction of her early fiction and educational works. It includes a valuable account of the relation between reason and feeling in moral development. Failure to recognize the complexity and coherence of the view and unhistorical readings have led to mistaken criticisms of Wollstonecraft's position. Part I answers these criticisms; Part II describes and textually supports her view.
Catharine Macaulay's Letters on Education: Odd but Equal
Authors: Gardner Catherine
Published: October 2010

Commentators on the work of Catharine Macaulay acknowledge her influence on the pioneering feminist writing of Mary Wollstonecraft. Yet despite Macaulay's interest in equal education for women, these commentators have not considered that Macaulay offered a self-contained, sustained argument for the equality of women. This paper endeavors to show that Macaulay did produce such an argument, and that she holds a place in the development of early feminism independent of her connections with Wollstonecraft.
Taking Seriously Dual Systems and Sex
Authors: Calhoun Cheshire
Published: October 2010

In response to Ann Ferguson and Claudia Card, I argue that Gayle Rubin's analysis of sex-gender systems supports the hypothesis that heterosexual domination is a distinctive axis of oppression. While gender domination places women in disad-vantaged positions, heterosexual domination displaces lesbians and gay men from society. In response to Chris Cuomo, I argue that same-sex desire is part of lesbians’ gender ambiguity; but I agree that nvy work has underemphasized sexual desire.
Humankind at a Turning Point? Feminist Perspectives
Authors: Pellikaan-Engel Maja
Published: October 2010

This paper was presented at the XIX World Congress of Philosophy, “Mankind at a Turning Point: Philosophical Perspectives” held in Moscow, August 22-28, 1993. The author, representing the International Association of Women Philosophers, criticizes the use of “Mankind” in the Congress title and incorporates a resolution, subsequently passed unanimously by the steering committee of the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophic, that calls for the use of non-sexist language at future World Congresses.
Multiculturalism as a Cognitive Virtue of Scientific Practice
Authors: Cudd Ann E.
Published: October 2010

I argue that science will be better, by its own criteria, if it pursues multiculturalism, by which I mean an ethnic- and gender-diverse set of scientists. I argue that minority and women scientists will be more likely to recognize false, prejudiced assumptions about race and gender that infect theories. And the kinds of changes that society will undergo in pursuing multiculturalism will help reveal these faulty assumptions to scientists of all races and genders.
Resisting the Veil of Privilege: Building Bridge Identities as an Ethico-Politics of Global Feminisms
Authors: Ferguson Ann
Published: October 2010

Northern researchers and service providers espousing modernist theories of development in order to understand and aid countries and peoples of the South ignore their own non-universal starting points of knowledge and their own vested interests. Universal ethics are rejected in favor of situated ethics, while a modified empowerment development model for aiding women in the South based on poststructuralism requires building a bridge identity politics to promote participatory democracy and challenge Northern power knowledges.
Gender, Development, and Post-Enlightenment Philosophies of Science
Authors: Harding Sandra
Published: October 2010

Recent “gender, environment, and sustainable development” accounts raise pointed questions about the complicity of Enlightenment philosophies of science with failures of Third World development policies and the current environmental crisis. The strengths of these analyses come from distinctive ways they link androcentric, economistic, and nature-blind aspects of development thinking to “the Enlightenment dream.” In doing so they share perspectives with and provide resources for other influential schools of science studies.
The Timing of Feminism
Authors: Ferrell Robyn
Published: October 2010

Is history a category of reason, or is reason a category of history? These opposing questions have divided the structuralist from the materialist—but neither question is wrong. Analysis of the logic of oppositions challenges feminism, in particular, to find a logic—and a poetics—in which to render its values without historical or theoretical naiveté. I explore the question of the timing of feminism through Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray.
Princess Elisabeth and the Problem of Mind-Body Interaction
Authors: Tollefsen Deborah
Published: October 2010

This paper focuses on Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia's philosophical views as exhibited in her early correspondence with Rene Descartes. Elisabeth's criticisms of Descartes's interactionism as well as her solution to the problem of mind-body interaction are examined in detail. The aim here is to develop a richer picture of Elisabeth as a philosophical thinker and to dispel the myth that she is simply a Cartesian muse.
Back to the Future: Marriage as Friendship in the Thought of Mary Wollstonecraft
Authors: Abbey Ruth
Published: October 2010

If liberal theory is to move forward, it must take the political nature of family relations seriously. The beginnings of such a liberalism appear in Mary Wollstonecraft's work. Wollstonecraft's depiction of the family as a fundamentally political institution extends liberal values into the private sphere by promoting the ideal of marriage as friendship. However, while her model of marriage diminishes arbitrary power in family relations, she seems unable to incorporate enduring sexual relations between married partners.
She Came to Stay and Being and Nothingness
Authors: Fullbrook Edward
Published: October 2010

This essay, using works by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hazel Barnes, and Elizabeth Fallaize, documents the correspondence between the philosophical content of Beauvoir's She Came to Stay and Sartre's Being and Nothingness (both originally published in 1943). After reviewing the existential/phenomenological philosophical method, this paper examines the two philosophers’ letters and diaries to show that Beauvoir wrote her book before Sartre wrote his and that the distinctive ideas and arguments the two works share originated with Beauvoir.
Beauvoir's Minoritarian Philosophy
Authors: Secomb Linnell
Published: October 2010

Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's elaborations of the project of philosophy and styles of minoritarian literature, it becomes possible to reveal new dimensions in Simone de Beauvoir'sThe Second Sex.In this work she uses a minoritarian philosophy, which is an accessible and collaborative mode of philosophizing, to create a concept of Woman as an incarnate-becoming. This concept overcomes the dichotomizing oftranscendence andimmanence, and revalues feminine existence within philosophical discourses.
Simone de Beauvoir's Phenomenology of Sexual Difference
Authors: Heinämaa Sara
Published: October 2010

The paper argues that the philosophical starting point of Simone de Beauvoir'sThe Second Sexis the phenomenological understanding of the living body, developed by Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It shows that Beauvoir's notion of philosophy stems from the phenomenological interpretation of Cartesianism which emphasizes the role of evidence, self-criticism, and dialogue.
Simone de Beauvoir: A Feminist Thinker for Our Times
Authors: Vintges Karen
Published: October 2010

For many, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has only historic significance. The aim of this article is to show on the contrary that Beauvoir's philosophy already contains all the elements of contemporary feminism—so much so that it can be taken as its paradigm. Beauvoir's ideas about the self are extremely relevant today. Feminist themes such as the logic of “equality and difference” and identity are interwoven in her thinking in ways that can offer solutions to what seem to be insurmountable dilemmas in modern feminism. The attack on all kinds of essentialism can be reconciled with feminist identity-politics when the latter presents itself as “arts of living.”
Beauvoir, Ontology, and Women's Human Rights
Authors: Linsenbard Gail E.
Published: October 2010

Simone de Beauvoir offers an important contribution to discourse on universal human rights. Her descriptive ontology of persons as free, interdependent, and situated in a world that offers resistance brings the discussion of human rights to a new level that also converges with some African perspectives. I claim that Beauvoir is able to defend universal human rights and, moreover, justify moral action against human rights abuses by showing the existential priority of ontological freedom.
The Self-Other Relation in Beauvoir's Ethics and Autobiography
Authors: Tidd Ursula
Published: October 2010

This article examines how some of Simone de Beauvoir's ethical notions about the Self-Other relation explored in her theoretical philosophy of the 1940s were developed in her subsequent autobiography. It argues that Beauvoir represents reciprocal alterity in these autobiographical texts through a testimonial engagement with autobiography conceptualized as an act of bearing witness for the Other, through the privileging of various interlocutors and privileged others with whom “the real” is experienced and through a negotiation with the reader. The article also explores the wider question of how Beauvoir's engagement with autobiography might constitute a mode of ethical engagement with the Other.
No One's Land: Australia and the Philosophical Imagination
Authors: Lloyd Genevieve
Published: October 2010

Drawing on the work of Michèle Le Dœuff, this paper uses the idea of “philosophical imagination” to make visible the historical intersection between philosophical ideas, social practice, and institutional structures. It explores the role of ideas of “terra nullius” and of the “doomed race” in the formation of some crucial ways in which non-indigenous Australians have imagined their relations with indigenous peoples. The author shows how feminist reading strategies that attend to the imaginary open up ways of rethinking processes of inclusion and exclusion.
Shedding Light For The Matter
Authors: Bolt Barbara
Published: October 2010

This paper critiques enlightenment notions of representation and rehearses an alternative model of mapping that is grounded in performance. Working from her own practice as a landscape painter, Bolt argues that the particular experience of the “glare” of Australian light fractures the nexus between light, form, knowledge, and subjectivity. This rupture prompts a move from shedding light ON the matter to shedding light FOR the matter and suggests an emergent rather than a representational practice.
The End of Phenomenology: Bergson's Interval in Irigaray
Authors: Olkowski Dorothea E.
Published: October 2010

Luce Irigaray is often cited as the principle feminist who adheres to phenomenology as a method of descriptive philosophy. A different approach to Irigaray might well open the way to not only an avoidance of phenomenology's sexist tendencies, but the recognition that the breach between Irigaray's ideas and those of phenomenology is complete. I argue that this occurs and that Irigaray's work directly implicates a Bergsonian critique of the limits of phenomenology.
Educating the Political Imaginary
Authors: Mendieta Eduardo
Published: October 2010

María Pía Lara's two books, La Democracia como proyecto de identidad ética and Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere are described and analyzed. Her contribution to a feminist left-Habermasian theory of the relationship between the aesthetic dimension and the political imaginary are discussed. Questions and concerns, however, are raised regarding the assumptions of universal pragmatics and Lara's attempt to offer a positive reading of the dependence of the political imaginary on literary acts and genres.
Introduction to “Iconic Space and the Rule of Lands,” by Marie-José Mondzain
Authors: Franses Rico
Published: October 2010

This introduction highlights two of Mondzain's contributions in the chapter reproduced here, “Iconic Space and the Rule of Lands.” The first is her discussion of a link between images and power, which stresses the formal characteristics of paintings rather than their narratives. The second is her examination of the specific task which representation is called on to perform in religious as opposed to secular contexts, where spiritual, otherworldly figures are given physical shape and form.
Introduction to Monique David-Ménard on Kant and Madness
Authors: Ross Alison
Published: October 2010

Ross examines the relation between thought and madness within the practical and theoretical wings of Kant's critical philosophy. She argues that the notion of critique is formulated as a guard against the tendency of thought to madness. She locates the significance of David'Ménard's essay on Kant's pre-critical works in the idea that Kant's own tendency to madness functions in these early works as a motivational principle for the mature, critical system.
Conversion in Philosophy: Wittgenstein's “Saving Word”
Authors: Soulez Antonia
Published: October 2010

Wittgenstein raises the notion of “conversion” in philosophy through his claims that philosophical understanding is a matter of the will rather than the intellect. Soulez examines this notion in Wittgenstein's philosophy through a series of reflections on the aims and methodology of his philosophical “grammar,” in relation to comparable models among Wittgenstein's contemporaries (Freud, fames) and from the history of philosophy (Saint Augustine, Descartes).
Gottlob Frege, One More Time
Authors: Imbert Claude
Published: October 2010

Frege's philosophical writings, including the “logistic project,” acquire a new insight by being confronted with Kant's criticism and Wittgenstein's logical and grammatical investigations. Between these two points a non-formalist history of logic is just taking shape, a history emphasizing the Greek and Kantian inheritance and its aftermath. It allows us to understand the radical change in rationality introduced by Gottlob Frege's syntax. This syntax put an end to Greek categorization and opened the way to the multiplicity of expressions producing their own intelligibility. This article is based on more technical analyses of Frege which Claude Imbert has previously offered in other writings (see references).
Reflections on Feminist Merleau-Ponty Skepticism
Authors: Stoller Silvia
Published: October 2010

Shannon Sullivan's critique of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception is based on the argument that, due to his concept of the “anonymous body,” his theory of intersubjectivity omits the particularities of bodies, such as gender. I argue that Merleau-Ponty's “anonymous body” (le corps phénoménal) is not in fact “neutral” as Sullivan suggests, and moreover that he does not ignore differences but rather provides us with the idea of difference as a process of differentiation. Additionally, I argue that Sullivan's concept of “hypothetical construction,” which is introduced as an alternative to Merleau-Ponty, turns out to be a conscious construction, not reflecting upon its very conditions. Thus, Sullivan's account fails by presupposing what in fact needs to be explained: the particularities.
Impairment and Disability: Constructing an Ethics of Care That Promotes Human Rights
Authors: Morris Jenny
Published: October 2010

The social model of disability gives us the tools not only to challenge the discrimination and prejudice we face, but also to articulate the personal experience of impairment. Recognition of difference is therefore a key part of the assertion of our common humanity and of an ethics of care that promotes our human rights.
Unhealthy Disabled: Treating Chronic Illnesses as Disabilities
Authors: Wendell Susan
Published: October 2010

Chronic illness is a major cause of disability, especially in women. Therefore, any adequate feminist understanding of disability must encompass chronic illnesses. I argue that there are important differences between healthy disabled and unhealthy disabled people that are likely to affect such issues as treatment of impairment in disability and feminist politics, accommodation of disability in activism and employment, identification of persons as disabled, disability pride, and prevention and “cure” of disabilities.
Sensing Disability
Authors: Corker Mairian
Published: October 2010

Disability theory privileges masculinist notions of presence, visibility, material “reality,” and identity as “given.” One effect of this has been the erasure of “sensibility,” which, it is argued, inscribes, materializes, and performs the critique of binary thought. Therefore, sensibility must be re-articulated in order to escape the “necessary error” of identity implicit in accounts of cultural diversity, and to dialogue across difference in ways that dislocate disability from its position of disvalue in feminist thought.
The Abused Mind: Feminist Theory, Psychiatric Disability, and Trauma
Authors: Nicki Andrea
Published: October 2010

I show how much psychiatric disability is informed by trauma, marginalization, sexist norms, social inequalities, concepts of irrationality and normalcy, oppositional mind-body dualism, and mainstream moral values. Drawing on feminist discussion of physical disability, I present a feminist theory of psychiatric disability that serves to liberate not only those who are psychiatrically disabled but also the mind and moral consciousness restricted in their ranges of rational possibilities.
“New Mestizas,” “World'Travelers,” and “Dasein”: Phenomenology and the Multi-Voiced, Multi-Cultural Self
Authors: Ortega Mariana
Published: October 2010

The aim of this essay is to carry out an analysis of the multi-voiced, multi-cultural self discussed by Latina feminists in light of a Heideggerian phenomenological account of persons or “Existential Analytic.” In so doing, it (a) points out similarities as well as differences between the Heideggerian description of the self and Latina feminists' phenomenological accounts of self, and (b) critically assesses María Lugones's important notion of “world-traveling.” In the end, the essay defends the view of a “multiplicitous” self which takes insights from Lugones's view of the self that “travels ‘worlds’” and from other Latina feminists' accounts of self as well as from Martin Heidegger's account of Dasein.
The Look of Love
Authors: Oliver Kelly
Published: October 2010

I begin to suggest an alternative to the notion of vision based in alienation and hostility put forth by Jean-Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, and Jacques Lacan. I diagnose this alienating vision as a result of a particular alienating notion of space presupposed by their theories. I develop lrigaray's comments about light and air to suggest an alternative notion of space that opens up the possibility that vision connects us to others rather than alienates us from them.
Reading Ladelle McWhorter's Bodies and Pleasures
Authors: Feder Ellen K.
Published: October 2010

Ladelle McWhorter's Bodies and Pleasures provides an unusual and important reading of Michel Foucault's later work. This response is an effort to introduce McWhorter's project and to describe the challenge it presents to engage in askesis, the transformative exercise of thinking, which McWhorter's work itself exemplifies.