bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Caring about Nature: Feminist Ethics and the Environment
Authors: King Roger J.H.
Published: October 2010

In this essay I examine the relevance of the vocabulary of an ethics of care to ecofeminism. While this vocabulary appears to offer a promising alternative to moral extensionism and deep ecology, there are problems with the use of this vocabulary by both essentialists and conceptualists. I argue that too great a reliance is placed on personal lived experience as a basis for ecofeminist ethics and that the concept of care is insufficiently determinate to explicate the meaning of care for nature.
Ground, Pivot, Motion: Ecofeminist Theory, Dialogics, and Literary Practice
Authors: Murphy Patrick D.
Published: October 2010

Ecofeminist philosophy and literary theory need mutually to enhance each other's critical praxis. Ecofeminism provides the grounding necessary to turn the Bakhtinian dialogic method into a critical theory applicable to all of one's lived experience, while dialogics provides a method for advancing the application of ecofeminist thought in terms of literature, the other as speaking subject, and the interanimation of human and nonhuman aspects of nature. In the first part of this paper the benefits of dialogics to feminism and ecofeminism are explored; in the second part dialogics as method is detailed; in the third part literary examples are discussed from a dialogical ecofeminist perspective.
Women and the Knife: Cosmetic Surgery and the Colonization of Women's Bodies
Authors: Morgan Kathryn Pauly
Published: October 2010

The paper identifies the phenomenal rise of increasingly invasive forms of elective cosmetic surgery targeted primarily at women and explores its significance in the context of contemporary biotechnology. A Foucauldian analysis of the significance of the normalization of technologized women's bodies is argued for. Three “Paradoxes of Choice” affecting women who “elect” cosmetic surgery are examined. Finally, two Utopian feminist political responses are discussed: a Response of Refusal and a Response of Appropriation.
This Body Which Is Not One: Speaking an Embodied Self
Authors: Probyn Elspeth
Published: October 2010

This article argues against a conception of the body as providing a basis for truth claims within feminist discourse. Taking from Michèle Le Doeuffs theory of the work of the image within discourse, and Michel Foucault's “technologies of the self,” it is argued that the doubledness of the body (“who am I? and who is she?”) can be put to work to construct embodied enunicative positions within feminist theory.
The Face Before the Mirror-Stage
Authors: Vasseleu Cathryn
Published: October 2010

Drawing on the work of Irigaray and Levinas, this paper discusses the ethical limitations of Lacan's “mirror-stage” dynamic and interpolates a different interpretation of the material he uses to elaborate his theory. Close attention is paid to the significance of metaphors of vision and touch in the work of the three philosophers. The paper develops into an analysis of bigamy's and Levinas's interpretations of touch as the differential site of ethics.
In Excess: The Body and the Habit of Sexual Difference
Authors: Diprose Rosalyn
Published: October 2010

Through a re-reading of Antigone, I offer a critique of Hegel's use of the story to illustrate the unity which emerges from the representation of sexual difference in ethical life. Using Hegel's own account of habits, as the mechanism by which the body becomes a sign of the self, I argue that the pretense of social unity assumes the proper construction and representation of one body only. This critique is brought to bear upon contemporary moves towards a post-Hegelian ethics of difference.
The Passion of the Signifier and the Body in Theory
Authors: Ferrell Robyn
Published: October 2010

The paper argues that psychoanalysis and deconstruction offer more to feminist theory than contestation. The common feminist criticisms of the work of Lacan and Derrida are not as compelling as may be thought. Among the possibilities for feminist theory using psychoanalysis and deconstruction is the scrutiny of theory as theory—and this will inevitably include scrutinizing feminist theory itself.
Where Are All the Pragmatist Feminists?
Authors: Seigfried Charlene Haddock
Published: October 2010

Unlike our counterparts in Europe who have rewritten their specific cultural philosophical heritage, American feminists have not yet critically reappropriated our own philosophical tradition of classical American pragmatism. The neglect is especially puzzling, given that both feminism and pragmatism explicitly acknowledge the material or cultural specificity of supposedly abstract theorizing. In this article I suggest some reasons for the neglect, call for the rediscovery of women pragmatists, reflect on a feminine side of pragmatism, and point out some common features. The aim is to encourage the further development of a feminist revisioning of pragmatism and a pragmatist version of feminism.
Reconstituting the Subject: Feminism, Modernism, and Postmodernism
Authors: Hekman Susan
Published: October 2010

Political agency is vital to the formulation of a feminist politics so feminists have attempted to create a subject that eschews the sexism of the Cartesian subject while at the same time retaining agency. This paper examines some of the principal feminist attempts to reconstitute the subject along these lines. It assesses the success of these attempts in light of the question of whether the subject is a necessary component of feminist theory and practice.
Toward a Value-Laden Theory: Feminism and Social Science
Authors: Bernick Susan E.
Published: October 2010

Marjorie Shostak's ethnography,Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, is analyzed as a case study of feminist social science. Three principles of feminist research are suggested as standards for evaluation. After discussion of the principles and analysis of the text, I raise a criticism of the principles as currently sketched. The entire project is framed by the question of how best to resolve conflict between researcher and participant accounts.
An Ethical Justification of Women's Studies; or What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
Authors: McGrath Lynette
Published: October 2010

The feminist in academe, says Paula Bennett, is like Procne married to Tereus, “inextricably wedded to the sources of her harm.” An ethical justification of academic feminism can be found, not in cooperation and affiliation, but in the strategies currently necessary to ensure curricular and cultural diversity. Historically contextualized and strategically politicized, this ethic is founded on the claim that universities are places where we may all learn to know what is other than ourselves.
The Subject in Feminism
Authors: Braidotti Rosi
Published: October 2010

Inaugural lecture as Professor of Women's Studies in the Arts Faculty of the University of Utrecht, May 16, 1990.
The Morality of Feminism
Authors: Sevenhuijsen Selma L.
Published: October 2010

Inaugural lecture as Professor of Women's Studies in the Social Science Faculty at the University of Utrecht.
The Science of Caring
Authors: Puka Bill
Published: October 2010

A response to S. Elise Peeples's comment “Her Terrain is Outside His ‘Domain.’”
In Praise of Clutter as a Necessary Part of The Feminist Perspective
Authors: Ayim Maryann
Published: October 2010

A comment on Susan Wendell's paper “Oppression and Victimization; Choice and Responsibility” that appeared in Hypatia 5(3).
Reply to Maryann Ayim
Authors: Wendell Susan
Published: October 2010

A response to Maryann Ayim's “In Praise of Clutter as a Necessary Part of the Feminist Perspective.”
Open Letter To the Editors and Advisors of Hypatia
Authors: Trigilio Jo
Published: October 2010

A response to the exchange between Esther Frances and Helen Bequaert Holmes on the contents of Hypatia.
The Logic of the Development of Feminism; or, Is MacKinnon to Feminism as Parmenides Is to Greek Philosophy?
Authors: Bernick Susan E.
Published: October 2010

Catharine MacKinnon's investigation of the role of sexuality in the subordination of women is a logical culmination of radical feminist thought. If this is correct, the position of her work relative to radical feminism is analogous to the place Parmenides's work occupied in ancient Greek philosophy. Critics of MacKinnon's work have missed their target completely and must engage her work in a different way if feminist theory is to progress past its current stalemated malaise.
On the Compatibility of Pacifism and Care
Authors: Kaplan Laura Duhan
Published: October 2010

A mother's commitment to use violence if necessary to protect her children is not incompatible with pacifism, if pacifism is understood as the commitment to end war and war is understood as the use of violence as a political tool.
Caring and Violence
Authors: Davion Victoria
Published: October 2010

I reply to Laura Duhan Kaplan that I do not suggest women's political choices concerning pacifism are determined by biology. Although I contend the practice of mothering does not imply a pacifist commitment, this does not imply that the practice of mothering is inconsistent with such a commitment. Further, because the practice of mothering is not limited to women, even if it is inconsistent with pacifist commitment, this does not limit choices based on biology.
Jeffner Allen: A Lesbian Portrait
Authors: Zita Jacquelyn N.
Published: October 2010

This review essay covers the lesbian writing of philosopher Jeffner Allen, contrasting’ her fiercely separatist earlier work with her more recent experimental writing. A quest for a separate ontic space—defining difference qua Lesbian and consistently characterized by Allen as “the open”—links her earlier work with her more recent atonalities richly coded with ritual, myth, memory, and play.
On Borderlands/La Frontera: An Interpretive Essay
Authors: Lugones María
Published: October 2010

Borderlands/La Frontera deads with the psychology of resistance to oppression. The possibility of resistance is revealed by perceiving the self in the process of being oppressed as another face of the self in the process of resisting oppression. The new mestiza consciousness is bom from this interplay between oppression and resistance. Resistance is understood as social, collective activity, by adding to Anzaldúa's theory the distinction between the act and the process of resistance.
The Feminist Sexuality Debates and the Transformation of the Political
Authors:   BAT-AMI BAR ON
Published: October 2010

In this essay 1 examine the history of the sexuality debates among feminists. In both the nineteenth century and the recent sexuality debates the personal is taken to be foundational for a political stance, while simultaneously the debates transform feminist understandings of the extent to which the personal is political. 1 suggest that this transformation undermines the epistemological assumptions of the debates, resulting in a feminism that cannot be radical.
Queer Ethics; or, The Challenge of Bisexuality to Lesbian Ethics
Authors: Däumer Elisabeth D.
Published: October 2010

Due to its problematic political and social position between two opposed sexual cultures, bisexuality has often been ignored by feminist and lesbian theorists both as a concept and a realm of experiences. The essay argues that bisexuality, precisely because it transgresses bipolar notions of fixed gendered and sexed identities, is usefully explored by lesbian and feminist theorists, enhancing our effort to devise an ethics of difference and to develop nonoppressive ways of responding to alterity.
The Ideology of Fair Use: Xeroxing and Reproductive Rights
Authors: Roof Judith
Published: October 2010

Looking at the metaphorical similarities between abortion statutes and copyright law reveals reproductive laws’ stake in property ideologies. “Fair use” provisions in copyright law are analogous to abortion rights, delimiting the extent to which a non-owner (one who copies, a mother) can exert control over material “belonging” to another. The similarity suggests that the way to understand abortion fury is as a manifestation of property rights.
Presence of Mind, Presence of Body: Embodying Positionality in the Classroom
Authors: Ardis Ann
Published: October 2010

This essay focuses on how we embody the language we speak: how an audience “reads” the body of a speaker as it both constructs the positionality of that speaking subject and construes that subject's discursive authority. Buildingon the work of Linda Brodkey and Michelle Fine, 1 explore what is at stake when university students harass a faculty member by accusing that teacher of not embodying authority in the proper form (body).
A Woman's Thought or a Man's Discipline? The Letters of Abelard and Heloise
Authors: Nye Andrea
Published: October 2010

This paper is part of a larger project of recovering the work of women thinkers. Heloise has traditionally been read as either a foil of Abelard or his intellectual appendage. In this paper, I present her views on love, religious devotion, and language as an alternative to philosophic method as it is conceived by Abelard.
Male Friendship and Intimacy
Authors: Strikwerda Robert A. , May Larry
Published: October 2010

Our primary focus is the concept of intimacy, especially in the context of adult American male relationships. We begin with an examination of comradeship, a nonintimate form of friendship, then develop an account of the nature and value of intimacy in friendship. We follow this with discussions of obstacles to intimacy and of Aristotle's views. In the final section, we discuss the process of men attaining intimacy.
Why Care About Gender?
Authors: Garry Ann
Published: October 2010

I address motivations that feminist philosophers have for being concerned about the “maleness” of philosophy and the “problem of difference” within feminist theory. An appropriate motivation for caring about both sets of issues is the desire not to oppress others. In order to be able to understand this motivation and to act on it, we need to retain gender as an analytical category.
Reflections on Feminist Scepticism, The “Maleness” of Philosophy and Postmodernism
Authors: Milligan Maureen
Published: October 2010

Bordo is concerned with what she calls apostmodem “theoretics of heterogeneity” that questions the validity of historical and cultural analyses “along gender-tines.” It also challenges the validity of feminist analyses concerning the “maleness” of philosophy. Not surprisingly, this has precipitated debate between postmodernists and those alarmed by its implications for feminist work. At issue is the epistemological and political capacity of feminism to analyze social power and dominance through an analysis of gender.1
“Maleness” Revisited
Authors: Bordo Susan
Published: October 2010

My response to the preceding commentaries draws on recent events such as the Thomas/Hill hearings to illustrate some of my central arguments in “Feminist Skepticism and the ‘Maleness’ of Philosophy.” I also attempt to clarify frequently misunderstood aspects of my use of gender as an analytical category, and discuss why, in my opinion, we should continue to care about the “maleness” of philosophy.
Exclusion and Essentialism in Feminist Theory: The Problem of Mothering
Authors: DiQuinzio Patrice
Published: October 2010

Accounts of mothering have both contributed to feminist theory's development and depended on certain of its central concepts. Some of its critics, however, argue that feminist theory is undermined by the problems of exclusion and essentialism. Here I distinguish between these two problems and consider their implications for questions about mothering. I conclude that exclusion and essentialism do not present insurmountable obstacles to theorizing motherhood, but do suggest new directions for such theorizing.
Renaissance Madonnas and the Fantasies of Freud
Authors: Wiseman Mary Bittner
Published: October 2010

Through the work of Julia Kristeva, this paper challenges Freud's laws that everyone is always already gendered, that the mother is feminine and every infant masculine, and that one cannot love the same (gender). The figure of the Madonna, seen through the paintings of Giovanni Bellini, is used to theorize the time in the life of a child before Oedipus and to undo the conceptual knot with which Freud has bound the feminine to the maternal.
Feminist-Pragmatist Revisionings of Reason, Knowledge, and Philosophy
Authors: Rooney Phyllis
Published: October 2010

By tracing a specific development through the approaches of Peirce, James, and Dewey I present a view of (classical) pragmatist epistemology that invites comparison with recent work in feminist epistemology. Important dimensions of pragmatism and feminism emerge from this critical dialectical relationship between them. Pragmatist reflections on the role of reason and philosophy in a changing world encourage us to see that philosophy's most creative and most responsible future must also be a feminist one.
Introduction to Jessie Taft, “The Woman Movement from the Point of View of Social Consciousness”
Authors: Seigfried Charlene Haddock
Published: October 2010

This essay introduces Jessie Taft's pragmatist feminist dissertation, which was written under the guidance of George Herbert Mead at the University of Chicago in 1913 and published in 1915. It gives a brief biography of Taft and summarizes the four chapters of her dissertation, the second of which is reprinted below.
The Woman Movement As Part of the Larger Social Situation
Authors: Taft Jessie
Published: October 2010

This piece is Chapter Two of Jessie Taft's 1913 doctoral dissertation The Woman Movement from the Point of View of Social Consciousness.
Feminism and Post-Communism
Authors: Funk Nanette
Published: October 2010

Introduction to the special cluster of articles by feminists from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Soviet Patriarchy: Past and Present
Authors: Voronina Olga , Svobodny Nicole , Meisel Maude
Published: October 2010

The myth that women had equal rights and were emancipated in the Soviet Union masks the reality that the Soviet state, like all totalitarian states, is a manifestation of patriarchal ideology. The true democratization of Russian society requires the rejection of masculinist ideology and constitutes one of the most important social and cultural challenges.
In Defense of a Worldly Separatism
Authors: Shogan Debra
Published: October 2010

In this response to Kathleen Martindale and Martha Saunders's “Realizing Love and Justice: Lesbian Ethics in the Upper and Lower Case,” which appeared in Hypatia 7(4), I argue that a worldly separatism depends upon taking attention from those in positions of dominance and redirecting it to members of nondominant groups, as apolitical, worldly act of resistance.
Response
Authors: Martindale Kathleen , Saunders Martha J.
Published: October 2010

We argue that Shogan's critique, as well as that of Fox, fails to engage with the central focus of our article, which was to characterize and evaluate different approaches to lesbian ethics and to propose an alternative to the more familiar approaches.
Responsibility and Rhetoric
Authors: Code Lorraine
Published: October 2010

In this paper I offer a retrospective rereading of my work on epistemic responsibility in order to see why this inquiry has found only an uneasy location within the discourse of Anglo-American epistemology. I trace the history of the work's production, circulation and reception, and examine the feminist implications of the discussions it has occasioned.
Difference, Intersubjectivity, and Agency in the Colonial and Decolonizing Spaces of Hélène Cixous's “Sorties”
Authors: Thomas Sue
Published: October 2010

In this essay I examine Hélène Cixous's readings and figurings of women in colonial and decolonizing cultural spaces and slippages between universalized Western metaphors and metonyms and their colonial and orientalist significance. These readings, figurings, and slippages provide a supplementary framing of Cixous's utopian model of intersubjective exchange, her representation of the relation between materiality and textuality, and her universalization of the singular transcendental subject.
The Virtues of Feminist Empiricism
Authors: Campbell Richmond
Published: October 2010

Despite the emergence of new forms of feminist empiricism, there continues to be resistance to the idea that feminist political commitment can be integral to hypothesis testing in science when that process adheres strictly to empiricist norms and is grounded in a realist conception of objectivity. I explore the virtues of such feminist empiricism, arguing that the resistance is, in large part, due to the lingering effects of positivism.
Philosophical Feminism in Latin America and Spain: An Introduction
Authors: Schutte Ofelia
Published: October 2010

Introduction to the special cluster of feminist philosophy papers from Spain and Latin America.
Cartesianism and Feminism. What Reason Has Forgotten; Reasons for Forgetting
Authors: Amorós Celia , Uriarte Ana , McAlister Linda López
Published: October 2010

This paper recovers and pays homage to the arguments in support of the equality of the sexes developed by the Seventeenth Century Cartesian philosopher François Poullain de la Barre (1647–1723).
Feminist Movements and Their Constitution as Political Subjects
Authors: Castañeda Griselda Gutiérrez , Marquez Ivan
Published: October 2010

In these passages I would like to reflect about the need for structured forms of organization and struggle in feminist movements. I try to point out the importance for feminist movements of increasingly opening up to forms of interrelation with other social forces in order to construct democracy.
Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections
Authors: Warren Karen J. , Cady Duane L.
Published: October 2010

In this essay we make visible the contribution of women even and especially when women cannot be added to mainstream, non-feminist accounts of peace. We argue that if feminism is taken seriously, then most philosophical discussions of peace must be updated, expanded and reconceived in ways which centralize feminist insights into the interrelationships among women, nature, peace, and war. We do so by discussing six ways that feminist scholarship informs mainstream philosophical discussions of peace.
The Psychology of Tyranny: Wollstonecraft and Woolf on the Gendered Dimension of War
Authors: Andrew Barbara
Published: October 2010

Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf criticize the social construction of the soldier and argue that gender hierarchy relies on particular constructions of masculinity and femininity. Both contend that private tyrannies lead to public ones, and thatmen's domination in families provides a model for public domination. This reveals the social and psychological conditions which replicate domination, violence, and war. I examine how gender constructs promote and participate in the psychological conditions necessary for war.
An Alternative to Pacifism? Feminism and Just-War Theory
Authors: Peach Lucinda J.
Published: October 2010

Only rarely have feminist theorists addressed the adequacy of just-war theory, a set of/principles developed over hundreds of years to assess the justice of going to war and the morality of conduct in war. Recently, a few feminist scholars have found just-war theory inadequate, yet their own counterproposals are also deficient. I assess feminist contributions to just-war theorizingand suggest ways of strengthening, rather than abandoning, this moral approach to war.
The Ethic of Care vis-â-vis the Ethic of Rights: A Problem for Contemporary Moral Theory
Authors: Kroeger-Mappes Joy
Published: October 2010

Carol Gilligan has delineated two ethics, the ethic of rights and the ethic of care. In this article I argue that the two ethics are part of one overall system, the ethic of care functioning as a necessary base for the ethic of rights. 1 also argue that the system is seriously flawed. Because women are held accountable to both ethics and because the two ethics frequently conflict, women recurrently find themselves in a moral double bind.
Dismantling the Master's House: A Hestian/Hermean Deconstruction of Classic Texts
Authors: Thompson Patricia J.
Published: October 2010

Classical philosophy adopts the standpoint of males in the Greek polis. The consequent adumbration of the standpoint of women and noncitizen men in the oikos, the household, has implications for feminist philosophy. Two systems of action are differentiated: the domestic economy protected by the goddess Hestia, and the political economy protected by Hermes. Shifting one's standpoint to include both the oikos and the polis offers an alternative to gender as the defining issue in feminist theory.
Women, Earth, and the Goddess: A Shākta-Hindu Interpretation of Embodied Religion
Authors: Patel Kartikeya C.
Published: October 2010

This essay explores the notion of female embodiment and its relation to the phenomenon of religion. It explains religious beliefs, acts, and events in terms of the worship of the female body. By elucidating this standpoint, this essay hopes to reclaim the centrality of the female body and its importance in the study of philosophy of religion.
Finding Our Feminist Ways in Natural Philosophy and Religious Thought
Authors: Gatens-Robinson Eugenie
Published: October 2010

The essay explores the connection between ecological wisdom and feminist spiri' tuality. It takes a careful look at the difficulties that feminist thinkers have had in establishing such wisdom through a tradition of ethics focused on intrinsic value, a tradition of scientific thinking in which the knower is distanced from nature, and Western religious thinking in which both the feminine and nature are taken as profane. The suggestion is made that the resources of American Naturalism may provide a truly spiritual means to the needed transformation.
Analytic Feminism: A Brief Introduction
Authors: Cudd Ann E.
Published: October 2010

This essay introduces the subject of this special issue by offering a characterization of analytic feminism in terms of its context, methods, and problem areas. I argue that analytic feminism is a legitimate sub-field both of feminism and of analytic philosophy. I then summarize the problems addressed by the essays of this issue.
A Minimally Decent Philosophical Method? Analytic Philosophy and Feminism
Authors: Garry Ann
Published: October 2010

This essay focuses on the extent to which the methods of analytic philosophy can be useful to feminist philosophers. I pose nine general questions feminist philosophers might ask to determine the suitability of a philosophical method. Examples include: Do its typical ways of formulating problems or issues encourage the inclusion of a wide variety of women's points of view? Are its central concepts gender-biased, not merely in their origin, but in very deep, continuing ways? Does it facilitate uncovering roles that gender, politics, power, and social context play in philosophy as well as in other facets of life?
Feminist Epistemology: An Interpretation and a Defense
Authors: Anderson Elizabeth
Published: October 2010

Feminist epistemology has often been understood as the study of feminine “ways of knowing.” But feminist epistemology is better understood as the branch of naturalized, social epistemology that studies the various influences of norms and conceptions of gender and gendered interests and experiences on the production of knowledge. This understanding avoids dubious claims about feminine cognitive differences and enables feminist research in various disciplines to pose deep internal critiques of mainstream research.
Reconciling Equality to Difference: Caring (F)or Justice For People With Disabilities
Authors: Silvers Anita
Published: October 2010

A feminist ethics that bases morality on dependence or vulnerability challenges the moral priority of uniform over disparate treatment. Persons with disabilities resist equality's homogenization of moral personhood. But displacing equality in favor of caring or trust reprises the repression of those already marginalized. The ethics of difference proves an ineffective remedy for the negative consequences attendant on how historically marginalized groups are different. An historicized conception of equality resolves the dilemma.
Mixed Black and White Race and Public Policy
Authors: Zack Naomi
Published: October 2010

The American folk concept of race assumes the factual existence of races. However, biological science does not furnish empirical support for this assumption. Public policy derived from nineteenth century slave-owning patriarchy is the only foundation of the “one-drop rule” for black and white racial inheritance. In principle, Americans who are both black and white have aright to identify themselves racially. In fact, recent demographic changes and multiracial academic scholarship support this right.
Pornography: An Uncivil Liberty?
Authors: Carse Alisa L.
Published: October 2010

Pornographic speech harms women by playing a key role in sustaining the social conditions through which women's liberty and equality are undercut. Though there is a principled moral and constitutional basis for pursuing a legal strategy in fighting pornography, we should not overestimate the effectiveness of the law or underestimate its potential dangers. The struggle against pornography must be waged through education, expressive exploration, and protest, not through the law.
Resistance and Insubordination
Authors: Nelson Hilde Lindemann
Published: October 2010

I introduce the notion of the counterstory: a story that contributes to the moral self-definition of its teller by undermining a dominant story, undoing it and retelling it in such a way as to invite new interpretations and conclusions. Counterstories can be told anywhere, but particularly when told within chosen communities, they permit their tellers to reenter, as full citizens, the communities of place whose goods have been only imperfectly available to its marginalized members.
Politics, Identity, and Social Change: Contested Grounds in Psychoanalytic Feminism
Authors: Elliot Patricia
Published: October 2010

This essay engages in a debate with Nancy Fraser and Dorothy Leland concerning the contribution of Lacanian-inspired psychoanalytic feminism to feminist theory and practice. Teresa Brennan's analysis of the impasse in psychoanalysis and feminism and Judith Butler's proposal for a radically democratic feminism are employed in examining the issues at stake. I argue, with Brennan, that the impasse confronting psychoanalysis and feminism is the result of different conceptions of the relationship between the psychical and the social. I suggest Lacanian-inspired feminist conceptions are useful and deserve our consideration.
Multicultural Education and Feminist Ethics
Authors: Friedman Marilyn
Published: October 2010

Feminist ethics supports the contemporary educational trend toward increased multiculturalism and a diminished emphasis on the Western canon. First, I outline a feminist ethical justification for this development. Second, I argue that Western canon studies should not be altogether abandoned in a multicultural curriculum. Third, I suggest that multicultural education should help combat oppression in addition to simply promoting awareness of diversity. Fourth, I caution against an arrogant moralism in the teaching of multiculturalism.
The Severed Head and Existential Dread: The Classroom as Epistemic Community and Student Survivors of Incest
Authors: Potter Nancy
Published: October 2010

I discuss pedagogical issues that concern incest survivors. As teachers, we need to understand the ways in which the legacy of incest variously affects survivors' educational experiences and to be aware that the interplay of trust, knowledge, and power may be particularly complex for survivors. I emphasize the responsibility teachers have to create classrooms that are inclusive of survivors, while raising concerns about the practice of personal disclosure and assumptions about trust and safety in the classroom.
Shifting Paradigms: Theorizing Care and Justice in Political Theory
Authors: Deveaux Monique
Published: October 2010

The following is an introduction to a roundtable panel of the American Political Science Association meeting (Normative Political Theory Division) held September 2, 1994, in New York City. I set out some main themes in the “care/justice debate,” and suggest that the impasse between care proponents and liberal, neo-Kantian thinkers is perpetuated by caricatured construals of these theories; salient differences come into relief by addressing the ethical and political applications of these moral perspectives.
Colonialism and Its Others: Considerations On Rights and Care Discourses
Authors: Narayan Uma
Published: October 2010

I point to a colonial care discourse that enabled colonizers to define themselves in relationship to “inferior” colonized subjects. The colonized, however, had very different accounts of this relationship. While contemporary care discourse correctly insists on acknowledging human needs and relationships, it needs to worry about who defines these often contested terms. I conclude that improvements along dimensions of care and of justice often provide “enabling conditions” for each other.
Care as a Basis for Radical Political Judgments
Authors: Tronto Joan C.
Published: October 2010

The best framework for moral and political thought is the one that creates the best climate for good political judgments. I argue that universalistic theories of justice fall short in this regard because they cannot distinguish idealization from abstraction. After describing how an ethic of care guides judgments, I suggest the practical effects that make this approach preferable. The ethic of care includes more aspects of human life in making political judgments.
Rape, Group Responsibility and Trust
Authors: Davion Victoria
Published: October 2010

In this paper I link the very interesting analysis of responsibility provided by Larry May and Robert Strikwerda in “Men in Groups: Collective Responsibility for Rape (May and Strikwerda 1994) to some strategies for helping women avoid rape. In addition, I call for some clarification on May and Strikwerda's claim that rapists are fully responsible for their actions and that it is largely a matter of luck which men actually turn out to be rapists.
Simulation and the Reproduction of Injustice: A Reply
Authors: Hopkins Patrick D.
Published: October 2010

Melinda Vadas rejects my claim that there are morally relevant differences between simulations of unjust events and actual unjust events on the ground that I overlook the connection between simulations and that which they simulate. I argue that this purported moral connection can only be understood as either the result of a necessary psychological disposition or as a “magical,” metaphysical attachment, neither of which is defensible or satisfactory.
Relational Rights and Responsibilities: Revisioning the Family in Liberal Political Theory and Law
Authors: Minow Martha , Shanley Mary Lyndon
Published: October 2010

This article discusses three main orientations in recent works of legal and political theory about the family—contract-based, community-based, and rights-based—and argues that none of these takes adequate account of two paradoxical features of family life and of the family's relationship to the state. A coherent political and legal theory of the family in the contemporary United States requires recognition of the relational rights and responsibilities intrinsic to family life.
Sexual Orientation, Gender, and Families: Dichotomizing Differences
Authors: Okin Susan Moller
Published: October 2010

Throughout history, women and men have been seen as “opposites” in various respects. Examples from the writings of political theorists illustrate this point, while Virginia Woolf is shown to have departed radically from the general tendency to dichotomize sexual difference. Further, this “need” to dichotomize sexual differences contributes to anxiety about and stigmatization of homosexuality. As the social salience of gender becomes reduced, it is to be expected that hostility to homosexuality will decline.
Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Reading The Orange
Authors: Donovan Josephine
Published: October 2010

Ecofeminism, a new vein in feminist theory, critiques the ontology of domination, whereby living beings are reduced to the status of objects, which diminishes their moral significance, enabling their exploitation, abuse, and destruction. This article explores the possibility of an ecofeminist literary and cultural practice, whereby the text is not reduced to an “it” but rather recognized as a “thou,” and where new modes of relationship—dialogue, conversation, and meditative attentiveness—are developed.
Against Marriage and Motherhood
Authors: Card Claudia
Published: October 2010

This essay argues that current advocacy of lesbian and gay rights to legal marriage and parenthood insufficiently criticizes both marriage and motherhood as they are currently practiced and structured by Northern legal institutions. Instead we would do better not to let the State define our intimate unions and parenting would be improved if the power presently concentrated in the hands of one or two guardians were diluted and distributed through an appropriately concerned community.
Is There a Natural Sexual Inequality of Intellect? A Reply to Kimura
Authors: Foss Jeffrey E.
Published: October 2010

The noted psychologist, Doreen Kimura, has argued that we should not expect to find equal numbers of men and women in various professions because there is a natural sexual inequality of intellect. In rebuttal I argue that each of these mutually supporting theses is insufficiently supported by the evidence to be accepted. The social and ethical dimensions of Kimura's work, and of the scientific study of the nature-nurture controversy in general, are briefly discussed.
Fetal Relationality in Feminist Philosophy: An Anthropological Critique
Authors: Morgan Lynn M.
Published: October 2010

This essay critiques feminist treatments of maternal-fetal “relationality” that unwittingly replicate features of Western individualism (for example, the Cartesian division between the asocial body and the social-cognitive person, or the conflation of social and biological birth). I argue for a more reflexive perspective on relationality that would acknowledge how we produce persons through our actions and rhetoric. Personhood and relationality can be better analyzed as dynamic, negotiated qualities realized through social practice.
Relational Individualism and Feminist Therapy
Authors: Radden Jennifer
Published: October 2010

My aim here is to clarify the practice of honoring and validating the relational model of self which plays an important role in feminist therapy. This practice rests on a tangle of psychological claims, moral and political values, and mental health norms which require analysis. Also, severe pathology affects the relative “relationality” of the self. By understanding it we can better understand the senses of autonomy compatible with and even required for a desired relationality.
Moral Reasoning as Perception: A Reading of Carol Gilligan
Authors: Kyte Richard
Published: October 2010

Gilligan's understanding of moral reasoning as a kind of perception has its roots in the conception of moral experience espoused by Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch. A clear understanding of that conception, however, reveals grave difficulties with Gilligan's descriptions of the care perspective and justice perspective. In particular, we can see that the two perspectives are not mutually exclusive once we recognize that attention does not require attachment and that impartiality does not require detachment.
The Diabolical Strategy of Mimesis: Luce Irigaray's Reading of Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Authors: Kozel Susan
Published: October 2010

In this essay I explore the dynamic between Luce Irigaray and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as it unfolds in An Ethics of Sexual Difference (1993). Irigaray's strategy of mimesis is a powerful feminist tool, both philosophically and politically. Regarding textual engagement as analogous for relations between self and other beyond the text, I deliver a cautionary message: mimetic strategy is powerful but runs the risk of silencing the voice of the other.
Reply to Louise Antony
Authors: Scheman Naomi
Published: October 2010

In her discussion of Naomi Scheman's “Individualism and the Objects of Psychology” Louise Antony misses the import of an unpublished paper of Scheman's that she cites. That paper argues against token identity theories on the grounds that only the sort of psycho-physical parallelisms that token identity theorists, such as Davidson and Fodor, reject could license the claim that each mental state or event is some particular physical state or event.
Friendship Across Generations
Authors: Nye Andrea
Published: October 2010

Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, edited by Bonnie Honig, a collection of critical feminist essays on Hannah Arendt, illustrates both the disorientation and the insights that can result when feminist philosophers come to terms with a canonical figure who is a woman.
Rape as a Weapon of War
Authors: Card Claudia
Published: October 2010

This essay examines how rape of women and girls by male soldiers works as a martial weapon. Continuities with other torture and terrorism and with civilian rape are suggested. The inadequacy of past philosophical treatments of the enslavement of war captives is briefly discussed. Social strategies are suggested for responding and a concluding fantasy offered, not entirely social, of a strategy to change the meanings of rape to undermine its use as a martial weapon.
Gender and “Postmodern War”
Authors: Schott Robin May
Published: October 2010

In this essay I argue that war is not “above” gender analyses. I question in particular whether the concept of “postmodern war” is adequate to explain the intersections of gender with ethnicity and nationality, which underlie the sexual violence against women in wartime. The poststructuralist concept of the “fluidity” of the category of gender needs to be modified by an analysis of how “non-fluid” configurations of gender are entrenched in material conditions of existence.
Double Binds: Latin American Women's Prison Memories
Authors: Treacy Mary Jane
Published: October 2010

Scant attention given to gender in Latin American prison experiences implies that men and women suffer similarly and react according to their shared beliefs. This essay explores the prison memoirs of four Latin American women. Each account uses a standardized prison narrative adjusted to suit the narrator's own purpose and hints at how sexuality and motherhood, which shape women's experiences in prison, have been removed from sight.
Surfing the Third Wave: A Dialogue Between Two Third Wave Feminists
Authors: Alfonso Rita , Trigilio Jo
Published: October 2010

As third wave feminist philosophers attending graduate schools in different parts of the country, we decided to use our e-mail discussion as the format for presenting our thinking on the subject of third wave feminism. Our analogue takes us through the subjects of postmodernism, the relationship between theory and practice, the generation gap, and the power relations associated with feminist philosophy as an established part of the academy.
The Legacy of the Personal: Generating Theory in Feminism's Third Wave
Authors: Siegel Deborah L.
Published: October 2010

This essay focuses on the repeated rhetorical moves through which the third wave autobiographical subject seeks to be real and to speak as part ofacolhctive voice from the next feminist generation. Given that postmodernist, postructuralist, and multi-culturalist critiques have shaped the form and the content of third wave expressions of the personal., the study is ultimately concerned with the possibilities and limitations of such theoretical analysis for a third wave of feminist praxis.
Mean Spirits: The Politics of Contempt Between Feminist Generations
Authors: Detloff Madelyn
Published: October 2010

Current models for individuatton in academe exacerbate generational tensions between second and third wave feminists. Feminist pedagogues must be wary of getting caught in the “vicious circle of contempt,” where students are expected to compensate for a teacher's past narcissistic wounds, instead, we must be willing to mourn the wounds we have received at the hands of a contemptuous culture and to acknowledge same-gender attachments that are disavowed in dialectical models of subject production.
Swear by the Moon
Authors: Bedecarré Corrinne
Published: October 2010

In this article I discuss the argument/criticismi'concerns of bisexuality that arise from within progressive communities which already accept gay and lesbian rights. Issues discussed include trust, heterosexuality and the body, the power dynamics of patriarchal oppression and subjective verification. The moon is evoked as a material metaphor for phases and changes. 1 argue that conditions of the world preclude political attachment to an excessively fixed standard of many things, including sexual orientation.
False Memory Syndrome: A Feminist Philosophical Approach
Authors: Park Shelley M.
Published: October 2010

In this essay, I attempt to outline a feminist philosophical approach to the current debate concerning (allegedly) false memories of childhood sexual abuse. Bringing the voices of feminist philosophers to bear on this issue highlights the implicit and sometimes questionable epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical-political commitments of some therapists and scientists involved in these debates. It also illuminates some current debates in and about feminist philosophy.
Moving from Feminist Identity Politics To Coalition Politics Through a Feminist Materialist Standpoint of Intersubjectivity in Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Authors: Fowlkes Diane L.
Published: October 2010

Identity politics deployed by lesbian feminists of color challenges the philosophy of the subject and white feminisms based on sisterhood, and in so doing opens a space where feminist coalition building is possible. I articulate connections between Gloria Anzaldúa's epistemological-political action tools of complex identity narration and mestiza form of intersubject, Nancy Hartsock's feminist materialist standpoint, and Seyla Benhabib's standpoint of intersubjectivity in relation to using feminist identity politics for feminist coalition politics.
Autonomy, Relationality, and Feminist Ethics
Authors: Keller Jean
Published: October 2010

While care ethics has frequently been criticized for lacking an account of autonomy, this paper argues that care ethics’ relational model of moral agency provides the basis for criticizing the philosophical tradition's model of autonomy and for rethinking autonomy in relational terms. Using Diana Meyers s account of autonomy competency as a basis, a dialogical model of autonomy is developed that can respond to internal and external critiques of care ethics.
A Critique of Normative Heterosexuality: Identity, Embodiment, and Sexual Difference in Beauvoir and Irigaray
Authors: Schutte Ofelia
Published: October 2010

The distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality does not allow for sufficient attention to be given to the question of non-normative heterosexualities. This paper develops a feminist critique of normative sexuality, focusing on alternative readings of sex and/or gender offered by Beauvoir and Irigaray. Despite their differences, both accounts contribute significantly to dismantling the lure of normative sexuality in heterosexual relations—a dismantling necessary to the construction of a feminist social and political order.
Questions of Proximity: “Woman's Place” in Derrick and Irigaray
Authors: Armour Ellen T.
Published: October 2010

This article reconsiders the issue of Luce Irigaray's proximity to Jacques Derrida on the question of woman. I use Derrida's reading of Nietzsche in Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles (1979) and Irigaray's reading of Heidegger in L'Oubli de l'air (1983) to argue that reading them as supplements to one another is more accurate and more productive for feminism than separating one from the other. I conclude by laying out the benefits for feminism that such a reading would offer.