This article is concerned with post-Marxism and materialism in the work of Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. As `post-Marxists' these writers use `material' in a variety of ways, all of which indicate limits and constraints. The article focuses on one version of `materialism' in this work, a version that is more implied than elaborated, in which `material' is equivalent to institutionalized performativity or sedimented discourse: to `objective' social structures and institutions. Post-Marxists often use `the social' as equivalent to (...) `material' in this sense, to gesture towards the context in which politics succeeds or fails. I argue that the specificities of `the social' cannot be theorized from within the terms of post-Marxism itself and that Butler and Laclau acknowledge this limitation in their most recent work. I therefore conclude that post-Marxism needs a supplement that I call political sociology. This is a dangerous supplement in the Derridean sense: a necessary addition that destabilizes the value post-Marxism gives to the distinction between `social' and `political' in which the latter is the privileged term. (shrink)

Aesthetic Evaluation and Film KlevanAndrew. Manchester University Press. 2018. pp. 256. £16.99.

For nearly twenty years, Anglo-American feminist theory has posed its own epistemological questions by looking at the lives and bodies of transsexuals and transvestites. This paper examines the impact of such scholarship on improving the everyday lives of the people central to such feminist argumentation. Drawing on indigenous scholarship and activisms, I conclude with a consideration of some central principles necessary to engage in feminist research and theory—to involve marginal people in the production of knowledge and to transform the knowledge-production (...) process itself. (shrink)

For nearly twenty years, Anglo-American feminist theory has posed its own epistemological questions by looking at the lives and bodies of transsexuals and transvestites. This paper examines the impact of such scholarship on improving the everyday lives of the people central to such feminist argumentation. Drawing on indigenous scholarship and activisms, I conclude with a consideration of some central principles necessary to engage in feminist research and theory—to involve marginal people in the production of knowledge and to transform the knowledge-production (...) process itself. (shrink)

Quality of care is a prominent discourse in modern health‐care and has previously been conceptualised in terms of ethics. In addition, the role of knowledge has been suggested as being particularly influential with regard to the nurse–patient–carer relationship. However, to date, no analyses have examined how knowledge (as an ethical concept) impinges on quality of care. Qualitative semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 26 patients with palliative and supportive care needs receiving district nursing care and thirteen of their lay carers. Poststructural (...) discourse analysis techniques were utilised to take an ethical perspective on the current way in which quality of care is assessed and produced in health‐care. It is argued that if quality of care is to be achieved, patients and carers need to be able to redistribute and redevelop the knowledge of their services in a collaborative way that goes beyond the current ways of working. Theoretical works and extant research are then used to produce tentative suggestions about how this may be achieved. (shrink)

Technology and its interfaces with nursing care, patients and carers, and the home are many and varied. To date, healthcare services research has generally focussed on pragmatic issues such access to and the optimization of technology, while philosophical inquiry has tended to focus on the ethics of how technology makes the home more hospital like. However, the ethical implications of the ways in which technology shapes the subjectivities of patients and carers have not been explored. In order to explore this, (...) poststructural theory, in particular the work of Butler, Foucault, and Deleuze, is used to theorize the relationship between subjectivity and materiality as ethically mandated on producing rather than precluding the development of subjectivities in novel ways. This theoretical understanding is then utilized through a process of ‘plugged in’ as described by Jackson and Massie that aims to link empirical data, research, and philosophical inquiry. Through this process, it is suggested that power, which the empirical data demonstrate, is frequently exercised through medical discourses and restricts patients' and carers' ability to shape the material environment of the home as a place to live and be cared for in palliative stages of illness. Alternative discourses are suggested both from the empirical data as well as other research, which may offer patients and carers the possibility of reclaiming power over the home and their subjectivities. Finally, the dichotomy between the home and hospital, mediated via technology, is posited as being problematic. It is argued the dichotomy is false and should be moved away from in order to allow an ethical embrace of technology in palliative care. (shrink)

Teen girls’ ‘sexy selfies’ have become highly politicised over the last years, and while feminist scholars have comprehensively analysed present day discourses about this topic, research about teen girls’ own reflections is still scarce. Studies that did include girls’ voices demonstrated how girls’ navigations of sexiness are related to the performance of gender and sexuality. The present article, which is based on ethnographic fieldwork among Dutch young people, contributes to and extends this strand of research by exploring how girls’ navigations (...) of sexy selfies are related to the performance of not just gender and sexuality, but also other intersecting axes of social differentiation, including axes that have remained undertheorised such as smartness, maturity and popularity. Through their navigations of sexy selfies, girls perform complex, intersectional identities in interaction with dominant discourses about sexiness, the materiality of their bodies, their social position and the specific context of self-making practices. Involving this complexity in discussions about sexy selfies can create promising opportunities for interrogating social norms, stereotypes and power inequalities. (shrink)

: Hundreds of thousands of students in introductory human sexuality classes read textbooks whose covert ideology reinforces dominant heteronormative narratives of sexual dimorphism, male hegemony, and heteronormativity. As such, the process of scientific discovery that proposes to provide description of existing sexual practices, identities, and physiologies instead succeeds in cultural prescription. This essay provides a feminist, queer content analysis of such textbooks to illuminate their implicit narratives and provide suggestions for writing more feminist, queer-friendly texts.

Hundreds of thousands of students in introductory human sexuality classes read textbooks whose covert ideology reinforces dominant heteronormative narratives of sexual dimorphism, male hegemony, and heteronormativity. As such, the process of scientific discovery that proposes to provide description of existing sexual practices, identities, and physiohgies instead succeeds in cultural prescription. This essay provides a feminist, queer content analysis of such textbooks to illuminate their implicit narratives and provide suggestions for writing more feminist, queer-friendly texts.

“Humanism” is a term that has designated a remarkably disparate set of ideologies. Nonetheless, strains of religious, secular, existential, and Marxist humanism have tended to circumscribe the category of the human with reference to the themes of reason, autonomy, judgment, and freedom. This essay examines the emergence of a new humanistic discourse in feminist theory, one that instead finds its provocation in the unwilled passivity and vulnerability of the human body, and in the vulnerability of the human body to suffering (...) and violence. Grounded in a descriptive ontology that privileges figures such as exposure, dispossession, vulnerability, and “precariousness,” this new humanism is a corporeal humanism. This essay probes both the promise and the limitations of this emergent humanism with particular reference to recent work by feminist philosophers Judith Butler and Adriana Cavarero. (shrink)

The present article explores how the concept of normativity can be used as a starting point for research on language and sexuality, such as Queer Linguistics. Recent language and sexuality research has demonstrated the prominent role that normativity plays in the discursive construction of identities and behaviours, but the theorisation of normativity as an analytical concept has so far remained limited. To change this state of affairs, this article discusses the theoretical underpinnings of normativity as they relate to language and (...) sexuality studies. This discussion is then supplemented by a case study on how speakers orient to sexual normativities in talk on objectophilia, a clearly non-normative form of sexuality. The concluding section elaborates on the consequences that a focus on normativity in language and sexuality studies suggests for potential Queer Linguistic agendas and critical discourse studies more generally. (shrink)

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.

Both Judith Butler and Chantal Mouffe challenge liberal conceptions of politics based on their ontological descriptions of the political. Mouffe argues that the failure of liberalism to grasp the agonistic character of political life means that properly political conflicts get translated into moral terms. Mouffe thinks that the way to correct our “post-political” problems is to avoid translating political conflicts into a moral register. I challenge Mouffe’s separation of ethics and politics by invoking Butler’s more nuanced account of the ethical (...) sphere. I demonstrate that Mouffe does not consider that there are different orders of moral claims ; nor does Mouffe consider that there are different orders of affect, some of which cannot be simply opposed to rationality. (shrink)

Axiomatic and problematic approaches to ontology are discussed, at first in relation to the work of Badiou and Deleuze in mathematics. This discussion is then broadened focussing on problematics in Deleuze and Guattari’s critiques of capitalism and psychoanalysis which results in an analysis of the implications of this discussion for education. From this, education as being already there, which is an assumption in some strands of philosophy of education, following Deleuze’s critique of axiomatic presentations of ontological identities, is described as (...) a repressive, stabilizing operation, which produces objectives which are characterized as peculiar things. By contrast, those aspects of practice, knowledge, behaviours and populations which cannot be accommodated and resolved by axiomatic formulae and fall from axiomatic systems are characterized as queer things that constitute counter cultures. (shrink)

This article was originally presented as a paper, and since much of what it discusses turns on problems of position, location, self-representation and representativity, I have decided to leave it, as far as is possible, in its original form. Extensive use of the first person pronoun is frowned on in the contexts in which I am used to working, but I have deliberately retained it in this text to try and convey a sense of particularity, of myself speaking in a (...) specific context(s). The use of ‘we’ is a highly politicized act both in anthropology and in feminist contexts. Its use here is intended to convey a sense of audience, that is of myself speaking to others. But, and much more importantly, it also operates as a mark of interrogation, a fictive unity that reveals the lines of fragmentation at the very moment when it claims affinity.1. (shrink)

This intervention queries whether subjecting feminist jurisprudence to a methodological transfiguration toward pragrammatology (Derrida, in Smith and Kerrigan 1984) holds liberating potential for f (be it ‘woman’, ‘female’ or ‘feminine’) as both a signifier and a subject to be read with lucidity and nuance in feminist justice claims. I examine feminist jurisprudence’s methodological challenges in the settler colonial context of Alaska with respect to the murders of Della Brown (in 2000) and Mindy Schloss (in 2007). I advance my case for (...) pragrammatology as a critical methodology for feminist jurisprudence by subjecting the case(s) of Brown and Schloss to a more lucid (re)reading in two related and intersecting moves. First, I trace and deconstruct the citations of Brown and Schloss’ legal narratives to expose violence in the systemisation of f as a power and legal relation (Ahmed in Soc Legal Stud 4:55–73, 1995). I then examine the paradoxical nature of f justice claims which necessitate a pragrammatological approach. I conclude by advancing counsel on how we might move within paradox. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, I demonstrate how Louise Bourgeois used her artworks not only to better understand herself but also to cultivate a self capable of taking control of and reshaping the material of her past. Exploring her artworks in the context of Michel Foucault's understanding of technologies of the self, I both contribute to the appreciation of Bourgeois’ work and show how visual artworks can be used to understand, cultivate, and transform aspects of the self. Foucault's understanding of our subjectivity, (...) as formed and deployed by power tactics, suggests the need for the formation of new subjectivities as a tactic of resistance. While his view of subjectivity as contingently created allows for the possibility that it could be different, his understanding of the conditions of its creation in terms of power tactics seems to constrain the possibilities for alternative subjectivities. I argue that artworks can help us understand the contingency of our subjectivity and illustrate how something new can be created out of existing conditions, in ways that may disrupt those very conditions. Further, in addition to bringing us to an awareness of the possibility of creating new subjectivities, artworks can directly contribute to this process for both artists and audience members. Turning to Foucault's own understanding of Stoic writing practices as a means of knowing and controlling the self, I use Bourgeois’ work to illustrate how artworks can operate as technologies of the self, which work directly on the self, extending Foucault's understanding of the role of writing to consider the particular contribution that visual artworks can make. I explore how the visual form, sculptural medium, and materials of Louise Bourgeois’ works contribute to their operation as technologies of the self which can allow one to relate to oneself differently. (shrink)

:Visual culture – art, film, entertainment, advertising – are saturated with images of normative heterosexual masculinity. They form visual narratives that project a largely coherent kind of masculinity where heterosexual men are shown to be creative and powerful; they initiate heroic action, take the moral high ground and preserve traditional roles and the status quo. This widely extensive visual field, peopled with normative images of masculinity, also affects and infiltrates the domain of art exemplified by Jackson Pollock and abstract expressionism (...) which, to the present day, continues to project masculinity as the originator and pioneer of aesthetic value. This essay reviews feminist and queer artists’ image making that appropriates the myth of homogeneous masculinity and turns it into a medium for a variety of creative and hybrid explorations. I argue that Deleuzoguattarian concepts such as becoming-woman and becoming-imperceptible help us to understand this molecularisation of masculinity. And importantly in the other direction, these feminist and queer image makers allow us to understand and explore more fully these concepts. (shrink)

‘Women-protective’ language is broadly used as a frame in political discussions on women’s reproductive healthcare and labour rights. This article addresses the use of ‘women-protective’ language in online news articles in the Latvian media about the proposed prohibition of oocyte donation for nulliparous women. The main focus of the recent Latvian debate has not been on the technology itself, but rather on the female body and women’s rationality and decision-making capacity. The results of the analysis show that use of the (...) ‘women-protective’ frame positions women as victims, increases control over the female body and restricts women’s rights to make autonomous decisions. The application of this frame is especially dangerous when used by politicians as it may lead to the legal restriction of women’s rights. (shrink)

Since mitochondrial replacement techniques were developed and clinically introduced in the United Kingdom, there has been much discussion of whether these lead to children borne of three parents. In the UK, the regulation of MRT has dealt with this by stipulating that egg donors for the purposes of MRT are not genetic parents even though they contribute mitochondrial DNA to offspring. In this paper, I examine the way that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act in the UK manages the question (...) of parentage. I argue that the Act breaks the link typically made between genetic causation and genetic parenthood by redefining genetic causation solely in terms of nuclear genetics. Along with this, mtDNA is construed as a kind of supplement to the nuclear family. Drawing on the account of the supplement developed by Jacques Derrida, I argue that mtDNA and the women who donate it are seen as both essential to establishing the nuclear family but also exterior to and insignificant for it. (shrink)

After years of activism and scholarship concerning patriarchal social structures, many contemporary societies have made substantial progress in women’s rights. The shortfall, and the work ahead, is well known. Even in societies where the most progress has been achieved, males continue to dominate at key levels of power. Yet, essentialism appears to be widely, although not yet entirely, discounted. In helping to illuminate the social ontology of patriarchy and thereby helping to defuse its injustice, scholars have made proposals of patriarchy’s (...) origins; however, these appear not to be optimally consistent with historical and prehistorical facts. This article offers a different account of patriarchy, arguing that this one can not only explain how such a social condition originated and why it persists, but also point to what may be necessary to do in order to undo it. While I do not contend this ontology of patriarchy is the best possible, it provides a good example of the many issues at stake which an account of patriarchy must explain and points to how we should seek the best ontology as a way of both understanding contemporary societies and suggesting how to rectify a long-standing injustice. (shrink)

In feminist linguistic analysis, women's speech has often been characterized as "powerless" or as "over-polite"; this paper aims to challenge this notion and to question the eliding of a feminine speech style with femaleness. In order to move beyond a position which judges speech as masculine or feminine, which are stereotypes of behavior, I propose the term "discourse competence" to describe speech where cooperative and competitive strategies are used appropriately.

The relationship between feminism and metaphysics has historically been strained. Metaphysics has until recently remained dismissive of feminist insights, and many feminist philosophers have been deeply skeptical about any value that metaphysics might have when thinking about advancing gender justice. Nevertheless, feminist philosophers have in recent years increasingly taken up explicitly metaphysical investigations. Such feminist investigations have expanded the scope of metaphysics in holding that metaphysical tools can help advance debates on topics outside of traditional metaphysical inquiry. Moreover, feminist philosophers (...) typically bring new methodological insights to bear on traditional ways of doing philosophy. Feminist metaphysicians have also recently begun interrogating the methods of metaphysics and they have raised questions about what metaphysics as a discipline is in the business of doing. In discussing such methodological issues, Elizabeth Barnes has recently argued that some prevalent conceptions of metaphysics rule out feminist metaphysics from the start and render it impossible. This is bad news for self-proclaimed feminist metaphysicians in suggesting that they are mistaken about the metaphysical status of their work. With this worry in mind, the paper asks: how does feminist metaphysics fare relative to ‘mainstream’ metaphysics? More specifically, it explores how feminist and ‘mainstream’ debates intersect, on what grounds do they come apart, and whether feminist metaphysics qualifies as metaphysics ‘proper’. (shrink)

Social researchers have extensively addressed the immigration of one million Russian speakers to Israel/palestine over the past twenty-five years. However, the immigrants’ incorporation into the Israeli occupation regime and the ongoing colonisation of Palestine have rarely been questioned as such. In the interviews informing this article, Russian-speaking immigrant women living in Arab-Palestinian communities discuss their complex relations with Palestinian, Jewish-Israeli and Russian-Israeli communities. Sharing a background with Russian-speaking Jewish Israelis on the one hand, and marital kinship ties to Palestinians on (...) the other, these women encounter multiple boundaries of territory and identity in their everyday lives. Drawing on feminist border thinking, I explore these encounters as a navigation through geopolitical and epistemic borderlands in a dense colonial reality. I am particularly interested in the potential of such an exploration to question essentialism and destabilise binary ethno-national categories of identity, such as Arab/jew and Israeli/palestinian, that dominate not only hegemonic but also emancipatory discourses. These binary divisions are not a straightforward outcome of political regimes but rather the result of ongoing border-making processes, which are vulnerable to disorder and disruption. This perspective aims to enrich understandings of the roles that gendered ethno-national identities play in sustaining the colonial relations of power in Israel/palestine. (shrink)

This paper will discuss Edna Millay's influence on Anne Sexton, with particular reference to issues such as gender politics, femininity, performativity, and the female body. Through close comparative readings of some of the two women's most representative poems, I analyze, firstly, how Millay's outspokenness and daring self-presentation as a woman writer facilitated Sexton's handling of material that was previously considered unacceptable for poetry and, secondly, how Sexton expanded the scope of women's writing in a manner that paid tribute to the (...) earlier poet's innovation. My paper maintains that Millay's repeated attempts to explore gender and interrogate the concept of ‘authentic’ femininity anticipated Sexton's overtly feminist works. Ultimately, I am arguing that, despite the literary climate of the 1960s (which urged the rejection of poets like Mi May) and despite her own ambiguous feelings for the earlier poet, Sexton eventually recovered Mil lay as an important literary predecessor for her generation, consistently imitated her artistic posturing, performance strategies, and self-presentation, and finally acknowledged her unique contribution to women's writing. (shrink)

This paper considers two accounts of the self that have gained prominence in contemporary feminist psychoanalytic theory and draws out the implications of these views with respect to the problem of moral reflection. I argue that our account of moral reflection will be impoverished unless it mobilizes the capacity to empathize with others and the rhetoric of figurative language. To make my case for this claim, I argue that John Rawls's account of reflective equilibrium suffers from his exclusive reliance on (...) impartial reason. (shrink)

In 2002, Evolution and Human Behavior published a study purporting to show that the differences in toy preferences commonly attributed to girls and boys can also be found in male and female vervet monkeys, tracing the origin of these differing preferences back to a common ancestor. Despite some flaws in its design and the prima facie implausibility of some of its central claims, this research received considerable attention in both scientific circles and the popular media. In what follows, I survey (...) some of the problems with this study that seem to be characteristic of research into sex differences in a particular research program in evolutionary psychology. I suggest that an epistemology of ignorance is at work that suppresses the methods and insights of an earlier research program, which emphasized the complexity and contingency that ultimately grounds the variety of human behaviors, in favor of one that has been widely criticized as empirically flawed and politically pernicious. I conclude with some speculative remarks on the persistence of this problematic research program in evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

In spite of the growing public awareness of those who would identify as transgender, very little has changed in attitudes that would accord such people full approbation. The author takes the reader on a 40‐year journey of discovery that has led her to an abiding interest in and dedication to the issues faced by people who do not fit within the gender binary of Western society. As well as describing a personal experience with someone who identifies as transsexual, the author (...) relates two troubling experiences from her nursing career. Included in the discussion are linguistics, sexuality, and vocabulary. A personal epistemology is explored that incorporates unknowing, intuition, and embodiment, and the difference this view can make to the care of those who identify as gender‐diverse. (shrink)

Philosophy projects a certain understanding of reason that is related to the ways in which the city figures in its imaginary. Conversely, the city is a practice of spatialization that determines the ways in which agents are able, or unable, to live out their social agency. This essay focuses on the ways in which philosophy and the city's spatializing practices and imaginaries inform differential ways of living out social agency. The thrust of the investigation is to discern the ways in (...) which sexism - differential engendering - results from the relationship that exists between philosophy and the city. To illustrate this link between philosophy, the city, and differential engendering, the work turns to a consideration of Jean-Paul Sartre's phenomenology, which is taken as an exemplary illustration of the entwinement between the philosophical imaginary, and the perception and reception of the city. (shrink)

One of the perennial questions of philosophy concerns the simple statements which say that an object is so and so or that such and such objects are so and so related: simple predicative statements. Do such statements have an ontological basis, and if so, what is that basis? The answer to this question determines—or in any case, is expressive of—a specific fundamental outlook on the world. In the course of the history of Western philosophy, various philosophers have given various answers (...) to the question of predication. This essay presents the main, crucial answers: the paradigms and theories of predication of the Sophists (and of all later radical relativists), of Plato, of Aristotle, of the Aristotelian-minded non-nominalists, of Leibniz, and of Frege. In addition, the essay follows (to some extent) the most influential—the Aristotelian or mereological—paradigm of predication in its continuity and modification through the many centuries of its reign. However, the essay is not content to adopt the merely historical point of view; it also poses the question of adequacy. Prior to Frege, there was no philosophically adequate theory of predication, and the essay points out the shortcomings (besides aspects that can be viewed as advantages) of each pre-Fregean predication theory considered in it. Frege, in the nineteenth century, brought the philosophy of predication on the right track, but his own theory of predication has its own deficits. The essay ends with the presentation of a theory of predication that the author himself considers adequate. (shrink)

The present paper examines certain salient features of the his tory-memory-identity relation. The common feature underpinning most contemporary manifestations of the memory craze seems to be an insecurity about identity, an insecurity that generates an excessive pre occupation with 'memory'. In the face of memory's valorization, what should be the attitude of the historian? At the present moment there is a pathetic and sometimes tragic conflict between what 'memory' expresses and confirms, namely, the demands made by subjectivities, and the demand, (...) essential to any scientific discipline, for proof. The paper explores this conflict and argues that neither term can be reduced to the other. It suggests that one needs to conceptualize the field of history as involving inevitable limits to historical knowledge, such that both history and memory are seen as inadequate. In this way one avoids both the arrogance of a would-be definitive history and the 'arrogance of authenticity' that all too often accompanies claims for memory. (shrink)

This paper explores the ambivalent effects of recognition through a critical examination of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition. I argue that his underlying perfectionist account and his focus on the psychic effects of recognition lead him to overlook important connections between recognition and power. These claims are substantiated through Butler’s theory of gender performativity and recognition; and issues connected to the socio-institutional recognition of transgender identities. I conclude by suggesting that certain problems with Butler’s own position can corrected by drawing (...) more from the Foucauldian aspects of her work. I argue that this is the most promising way to conceptualise recognition and its complex, ambivalent effects. (shrink)

This paper considers the advantages of incorporating Foucault's anti-essentialist theory of the body into feminist explanations of women's oppression. There are also problems in that Foucault neglects to examine the gendered character of the body and reproduces a sexism endemic in "gender neutral" social theory. The Foucauldian body is essentially passive resulting in a limited account of identity and agency. This conflicts with an aim of feminism: to rediscover and revalue the experiences of women.

The concept of non-discrimination has been central in the feminist challenge to gendered violence within international human rights law. This article critically explores non-discrimination and the challenge it seeks to pose to gendered violence through the work of Judith Butler. Drawing upon Butler’s critique of heteronormative sex/gender, the article utilises an understanding of gendered violence as effected by the restrictive scripts of sex/gender within heteronormativity to illustrate how the development of non-discrimination within international human rights law renders it ineffective to (...) challenge gendered violence due to its own commitments to binarised and asymmetrical sex/gender. However, the article also seeks to encourage a reworking of non-discrimination beyond the heteronormative sex binary through employing Butler’s concept of cultural translation. Analysis via the lens of cultural translation reveals the fluidity of non-discrimination as a universal concept and offers new possibilities for feminist engagement with universal human rights. (shrink)

Much contemporary work on agency offers only a partial account because it remains within an essentially negative understanding of subject formation. This essay examines the work of Judith Butler and Drucilla Cornell and argues that the negative paradigm needs to be supplemented by a more generative theoretical framework, if feminists are to develop a fuller account of agency. In the negative paradigm, the subject is understood in passive terms as an effect of discursive structures. This tends to overlook ideas of (...) self-interpretation that introduce more active dimensions into understandings of subject formation and agency. Furthermore, an unqualified notion of indeterminacy does not unpick the imbrication of relations of time and power that overdetermine agency. Ultimately, structural accounts of subject formation need to be integrated more closely with hermeneutic perspectives of the self in order to understand better the complexities of agency in a post-traditional society. (shrink)

This essay examines one of the contributions that Sandra Bartky makes to feminist theory. Bartky critiques Foucault for his gender blind treatment of the disciplines and social practices that create "docile bodies." She introduces several gender specific disciplines and practices that illustrate that the production of bodies is itself gender coded. This essay argues that social practices are not monolithic, but are composed of various strands that may be in tension with one another.

According to some philosophers, gender is a social role or pattern of behavior in a social context. I argue that these accounts have problematic implications for transgender. I suggest that gender is a complex behavioral disposition, or cluster of dispositions. Furthermore, since gender norms are culturally relative, one’s gender is partially constituted by extrinsic factors. I argue that this has advantages over thinking of gender as behavior, and has the added advantage of accommodating the possibility of an appearance/reality dissonance with (...) respect to one’s gender. (shrink)

This article takes up references to breasts as a key case study to examine white Western feminist debate around embodiment and objectification. Tracking shifting understandings of ‘the gaze’ in these accounts, we find that objectification is often rendered singular, ahistorical and, increasingly, individually internalised. The history of these approaches to objectification helps to explain why during the early 2000s, theorisations of feminist politics-lost were often rhetorically located alongside discussions of surgically modified breasts as a symbol of a new era of (...) ‘fake’ feminism. In contrast, the 2010s saw several feminist movements premised on exposure of flesh and claims to individual recuperation of bodily autonomy. This article contends that both of these perspectives rely on a notion, built over successive eras of white Western feminist thought, that political work can and ought to be done through the body as a site of representational politics. This article subsequently offers a brief insight into how we might queer our approach to breasts to better account for the messiness of experiences of the flesh, considering the personal as political, while not investing in the body as the site where politics must be enacted. (shrink)

This article presents ethnographic research on women's self-defense training and suggests that women's self-defense culture prompts feminists to refigure our understanding of the body and violence. The body in feminist discourse is often construed as the object of patriarchal violence, and violence has been construed as something that is variously oppressive, diminishing, inappropriate, and masculinist. Hence, many feminists have been apathetic to women's self-defense. As a practice that rehearses, and even celebrates women's potential for violence, women's self-defense illustrates how and (...) why feminism can frame the body as both a social construction and as politically significant for theory and activism. (shrink)

While there has been much focus on the disempowering and incapacitating effects of ‘normative’ femininity, less attention has been paid to the queer possibilities of femininity. Queer femme has been proposed by some as a key site for rethinking femininity. Extending upon these discussions, and drawing on interviews conducted with queer femmes in Australia in 2013, this article proposes focusing on affective dimensions to deepen our understanding of queer femme as more than an identity, but rather, as assemblage Working from (...) the basis of assemblage, this article examines exactly how and why femme bodies queer femininity. However the article also argues that where queer femme discourse distances itself from non-femme, or ‘normative’, femininity, it misses an opportunity for advocating for a different approach to gender presentation within a broader collective. The central argument of this article is that from an affective theory of queer femme as assemblage, we can better understand both queer femme identity and the attachments to femininity that people maintain more generally, without relying on a binary logic that proclaims femininity as only disempowering or empowering, queer or not queer enough. (shrink)