We propose an account of the subject’s cognition and its relation to the world that allows for an articulation of the phenomenon of ideology. We argue that ideology is a form of what we call ‘a priori activity’: it transcendentally conditions the intelligibility of thought and practice. But we draw from strands of post-Kantian philosophy of science and social philosophy in repudiating Kant’s view that the a priori is necessary and fixed. Instead, we relativize the a priori: we argue that (...) it is contingent, and therefore revisable. More precisely, it is conditioned materially, in that it is enmeshed with and shaped by material social practice. We conclude with some remarks about the possibility of agency over the relativized, materially conditioned a priori—that is, about the possibility of critique. (shrink)

This special issue addresses the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological viewpoint, especially contemporary phenomenological research on selfhood. In the introduction, we first offer a brief survey of the various classic questions related to personal identity according to Locke’s initial proposal and sketch out key concepts and distinctions of the debate that came after Locke. We then characterize the types of approach represented by post-Hegelian, German and French philosophies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We argue that whereas the (...) Anglophone debates on personal identity were initially formed by the persistence question and the characterization question, the “Continental” tradition included remarkably intense debates on the individual or the self as being unique or “concrete,” deeply temporal and—as claimed by some philosophers, like Sartre and Foucault—unable to have any identity, if not one externally imposed. We describe the Continental line of thinking about the “self” as a reply and an adjustment to the post-Lockean “personal identity” question. These observations constitute the backdrop for our presentation of phenomenological approaches to personal identity. These approaches run along three lines: debates on the layers of the self, starting from embodiment and the minimal self and running all the way to the full-fledged concept of person; questions of temporal becoming, change and stability, as illustrated, for instance, by aging or transformative life-experiences; and the constitution of identity in the social, institutional, and normative space. The introduction thus establishes a structure for locating and connecting the different contributions in our special issue, which, as an ensemble, represent a strong and differentiated contribution to the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological perspective. (shrink)

The social world contains institutions, groups, objects, and more. This essay explores a puzzle about the essences of social items. There is widespread consensus against social essences because of problematic presuppositions often made about them. But it is argued that essence can be freed from these presuppositions and their problems. Even so, a puzzle still arises. In a Platonic spirit, essences in general seem detached from the world. In an Aristotelian spirit, social essences in particular seem embedded in the world. (...) The puzzle is that these inclinations are individually plausible but jointly incompatible. The essay has four aims: to clarify and refine the puzzle; to explore the puzzle's implications for essence in general and for social essences in particular; to illustrate the fruitfulness of the general distinction between detached and embedded; and to develop this distinction to sketch a novel solution to the puzzle. (shrink)

This essay reads Julia Kristeva’s ‘novel-essay’ on St. Teresa of Avila, Thérèse mon amour, as a form of relationship to literature we can also see suggested, though not theorized, in Kristeva’s critical thought. Thérèse mon amour performs feats of interpretation and intimacy with St. Teresa’s writing that rehearse key tenets of her theology, but that also revive and re-open questions at the heart of Kristeva’s theoretical matrix, questions of narcissism and love, metaphor and language. The essay traces these questions in (...) Kristeva’s oeuvre, proposing that Thérèse mon amour exposes unexpected affinities between a Kristevan ethics of relationship and the radical dilemma of faith in St. Teresa. The two are united, I suggest, by the fraught project of writing love. (shrink)

This essay critically explores contemporary Euro-American feminist debate on prostitution. It argues that to develop analyses relevant to the experience of more than just a small minority of “First World” women, those who are concerned with prostitution as a form of work need to look beyond liberal discourse on property and contractual consent for ways of conceptualizing the rights and wrongs of “sex work.”.

Using Judith Butler's notion that bodies are materialized via performances, “resig-nifying” disability involves a “democratizing contestation” of staircases because they exclude those in wheelchairs. Paleoanthropologist Maxine Sheets-Johnstone shows how consistent bipedal locomotion, together with the knowledge that we will die, are ingredients of our pan-hominid speciation, not contingent constructions. As axiologically important as contestation is, it forecloses the possibility of achieving a mutuality with others that is wonderfully possible.

This paper traces the political economy of the Christian concept of “evil” incarnate and its concomitant operations of sexual abjection and the repudiation of femininity, beginning with the early church's inaugural struggles to impose its monotheistic Law against maternal paganism. With attention to how “evil” has been deployed to sanction and sanctify the persecution of scapegoats, and particularly of heretics and witches, I examine the masculinist struggles for jurisdiction and control over women.

This essay argues that the ambiguities of the just war tradition, sifted through a feminist critique, provides the best framework currently available for translating the ethical entitlement to human dignity into concrete feminist political practices. It offers a gendered critique of war that pursues the just war distinction between legitimate and illegitimate targets of wartime violence and provides a gendered analysis of the peace which the just war tradition obliges us to preserve and pursue.

I offer here an analysis of contemporary foundation garments while exploring the ways in which these garments encourage, reinforce and protect normative femininity. In examining the performatives of contemporary normative, ideal femininity as they perpetuate inhibited intentionality, ambiguous transcendence, and discontinuous unity, I look to the possibility for subversive performativity vis-à-vis the strengths of women in order to proliferate categories of gender and to potentially displace current notions of what it means to become woman.

Drawing on Iris Marion Young's essay, “House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme,” Weir argues for an alternative ideal of home that involves: the risk of connection, and of sustaining relationship through conflict; relational identities, constituted through both relations of power and relations of mutuality, love, and flourishing; relational autonomy: freedom as the capacity to be in relationships one desires, and freedom as expansion of self in relationship; and connection to past and future, through reinterpretive preservation and transformative identification.

None dispute that Aldo Leopold has made an invaluable contribution to environmental discourse. However, it is important for those involved in the field of environmental ethics to be aware that his works may unwittingly promote an attitude of domination toward the nonhuman world, due to his frequent and unregenerate hunting. Such an attitude runs counter to most strains of environmental ethics, but most notably ecofeminism. By examining Leopold through the lens of ecofeminism, I establish that the effect of such narrative (...) is to portray the natural world as an object available for exploitation, thereby casting it as the "other" referred to in feminist writings. Thus I conclude that Leopold's work, if accepted uncritically, may actually reinforce the very notions that have been revealed as damaging to the nature/culture relationship. (shrink)

Women's activities and relations to men are persistent metaphors for man's projects. I query the prominence of these and the lack of equivalent metaphors where men are the metaphoric vehicle for women and women's activities. Women's role as metaphor results from her otherness and her relational and mediational importance in men's lives. Otherness, mediation, and relation characterize the role of metaphor in language and thought. This congruence between metaphor and women makes the metaphor of woman especially potent in man's conceptual (...) economy. (shrink)

Margaret Crosland argues that it was the Marquis de Sade, infamous for dominating women, who was in fact dominated by women. The important people in his life, those with whom he had direct contact, and who gave him friendship and support, were women; he knew the men important to him mostly indirectly, through their books. Crosland makes the case that de Sade's writing is often discounted due to an overly literal reading of his work, and that his writings remain an (...) important place to see the principles of materialism worked out to one kind of logical extreme. Crosland's essay additionally serves as a brief overview of the changes in de Sade's writing over the course of his life. (shrink)

What is it for a person to have style? Philosophers working in action theory, ethics, and aesthetics are surprisingly quiet on this question. I begin by considering whether theories of artistic style shed any light on it. Many philosophers, artists, and art historians are attracted to some version of the view that artistic style is the expression of personality. I clarify this view and argue that it is implausible for both artistic style and, suitably modified, personal style. In fact, both (...) theories of style crack along the same line, which suggests that they can indeed be mutually illuminating. I articulate and defend a view of personal style according to which, roughly, having style is a matter of expressing one’s ideals. I show how this illuminates the widely neglected value of personal style and propose a new, analogous theory of individual artistic style: artistic style is the expression of the ideals the artist has for her art. (shrink)

Umbilical cord blood banking is one of many biomedical innovations that confront pregnant women with new choices about what they should do to secure their own and their child’s best interests. Many mothers can now choose to donate their baby’s umbilical cord blood (UCB) to a public cord blood bank or pay to store it in a private cord blood bank. Donation to a public bank is widely regarded as an altruistic act of civic responsibility. Paying to store UCB may (...) be regarded as a “unique opportunity” to provide “insurance” for the child’s future. This paper reports findings from a survey of Australian women that investigated the decision to either donate or store UCB. We conclude that mothers are faced with competing discourses that force them to choose between being a “good mother” and fulfilling their role as a “good citizen.” We discuss this finding with reference to the concept of value pluralism. (shrink)

The dominant view of women has changed radically during the last century. These changes have had an important impact on the way of life of women in general and, undoubtedly, on women as patients. So far, gender differences have received little attention when developing healthcare services. Stroke hits a great number of elderly women. Wyller et al. found that women seemed to be harder hit by stroke than men; they achieved lower scores in tests of motor, cognitive and ADL functions, (...) both in the acute phase and 1 year after stroke. It is reasonable to expect that differences in outcome among male and female sufferers may in part be explained by the fact that rehabilitation services are designed primarily to meet the needs of men. de Beauvoir's feminist theory maintains that one's body is fundamental in creating the person, which is a lifelong process. Traditionally, the female body has been exposed to alienation and oppression through life. This has led women to develop a life in immanence. This we feel can be of significance in connection with rehabilitation after a stroke, particularly for elderly women. In this article we will discuss how de Beauvoir's theory can throw new light on the experiences and rehabilitation of elderly women and point to ways of improving the process of rehabilitation. (shrink)

I here explore the educational potential of cinema and TV-series through the eyes of the French philosopher Alain Badiou. To illustrate, I read the Norwegian web-based TV-series Skam, which reached out to millions of Nordic teens by a broad distribution, easy access and speaking a language young people could relate to. The series portrays the many faces and ambiguities of shame and shaming embedded in Nordic youth culture. In bringing the question of the pedagogy of cinema and TV-series to the (...) forefront, I here read Skam on three analytical levels. First, to explore the TV-series capability to captivate the viewers through a doubling of the real. Second, to examine Badiou’s idea of cinema as an ontological art, revolving around the question of the relationship between being and appearing. Third, I read Skam analytically, to consider Badiou’s claim that cinema is a democratic emblem. In sum, what may be the series’ potential for shaping the viewers’ ethical–political awareness? (shrink)

This article is concerned with the construction of feminist literary studies in the last twenty years and points out how we have created a literary history which is both selective and schematic. It suggests that we should be more critically aware of what we are constructing, how we are constructing it and of the political consequences of those constructs. It stresses three critical modes which might help us to complicate our history: a greater awareness of institutional contexts, a concern with (...) empirical detail, and an ongoing analysis of the cultural and political significance of feminist literary practice. This article briefly applies these critical modes in a survey of eleven introductions to feminist literary studies – introductions which feature frequently and influentially in the teaching situation. The final section focuses on the key problem of inclusion and exclusion. Considering arguments from Third World feminism and postmodernist feminism, the study concludes that white, academic feminists should confront the privilege of their own inclusion as a necessary spur to political action. (shrink)

Conceptions of citizenship which rest on an abstract and universal notion of the individual founder on their inability to recognize the political relevance of gender. Such conceptions, because their ‘gender-neutrality’ has the effect of excluding women, are not helpful to the project of promoting the full citizenship of women. The question of citizenship is often reduced to either political citizenship, in terms of an instrumental notion of political participation, or social citizenship, in terms of an instrumental notion of economic (in)dependence. (...) The paper argues for the recognition of citizenship as gendered, and as an ethical, that is non-instrumental, social status which is distinct from both political participation and economic (in)dependence. What unites us as citizens, in our equal membership of the political community, need not rely on a conception of us as ‘neutral’ (abstract, universalized, genderless) individuals undertaking one specific activity located in the public realm, but can take account of the diverse ways in which we engage in ethically-grounded activities on the basis of our different genders, ethnic and cultural backgrounds and other differences, in both the public and private realms. A convincing feminist conception of citizenship necessarily involves a radical redefinition of the public/private distinction to accommodate the recognition of citizenship practices in the private realm. The paper builds on the observation that the concept of ‘citizenship’ is broader than the concept of ‘the political’ (or ‘the social/economic’), and contends that feminism provides us with the emancipatory potential of gendered subjectivity, which applies to both men and women. The recognition of gendered subjectivity opens the way to the recognition of the diversity of citizenship practices. It is not that women need to be liberated from the private realm, in order to take part in the public realm as equal citizens, but that women – and men – already undertake responsibilities of citizenship in both the public and the private realms. (shrink)

There are grave issues with how the U.K. government approaches the issue of wellbeing. Specifically, policy interventions that might improve the material conditions of citizens are being down-played, and at times out-rightly dismissed. Instead, an individualist, instrumental message is being promoted, namely, that the best way to improve wellbeing is by improving individual happiness and mental health. I argue that this instrumental message – which in practice blames the victims for their lack of happiness and removes state responsibility – can (...) be made to sound feasible because of a reliance on positivist-based research, whether obtained objectively or subjectively. In this paper, I therefore detail the failings of mainstream wellbeing research and its policy conclusions, and argue that critical realism offers solutions. (shrink)

In this article, I compare and contrast the phenomenological ethics of Emmanuel Levinas with that of twentieth-century Japanese philosopher, Kuki Shūzō. In the resulting counterpoint, I put special emphasis on the conception of time espoused by each author. I argue that both go astray by mistakenly basing their ethics on the complete otherness of the other (diachrony) rather than recognizing that both the other (diachrony) and I (synchrony) are originally inseparable in experience before the conceptual separation of “me” and “you.” (...) The fetishization of otherness, which is associated with the feminine in the ethics of both philosophers, leads them to overlook how the details of our everyday concrete experience can provide a guide for action. This paper also explores the two East Asian ethical ideals that Kuki proposes–the Buddhist ideal and the ideal of bushidō, the code of the samurai warrior. In his ethics, Kuki prefers the ethics of bushidō to that of Buddhism. I explain how Kuki’s misunderstanding of Buddhism leads him to this choice, and I explore what he overlooked in Buddhist ethics. (shrink)

In a reading of René Descartes's The Passions of the Soul, Luce Irigaray explores the possibility that wonder, first of all passions, can provide the basis for an ethics of sexual difference because it is prior to judgment, and thus nonhierarchical. For Descartes, the passion of generosity gives the key to ethics. I argue that wonder should be extended to other differences and should be combined with generosity to form the basis of an ethics.

In 1960, a relatively new ‘syndrome’ began appearing with growing frequency in psychiatric hospitals and in doctors’ offices. Eventually termed ‘delicate self-cutting’, this new model for typical self-mutilative behavior was developed in conjunction with a description of the ‘typical’ self-mutilator: young (adolescent to just post-adolescent), female, and almost always attractive. This article contends that, despite recent efforts to change the nature of research on self-mutilation, the myth of a typical mutilator, developed from a particular historical bias, continues to work in (...) popular and medical discourses on the subject. I will begin with a detailed discussion of the medical discourse in an effort to ask how the myth was made. Noting that the female body, here, is singled out as pathological at a time when, specifically in the USA, the emergent Women’s Movement was beginning to contest certain gender lines, I would like to examine how the medical discourse and material bodies interrelate and interact with each other and with the cultural narratives around them. Finally, I end with examples from the 1999 film Girl, Interrupted, as well as other recent popular and medical accounts, to illustrate not only the perpetuation of the myth of the ‘typical’ self-mutilator but also the inability or refusal to recognize the biased nature of the medical discourse in the instance on self-mutilation. (shrink)

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.

Feminists are starting to look to the work of Pierre Bourdieu, in the hope that it might provide a useful framework for conceptualising the tension between structure and agency in questions of gender. This paper argues that Bourdieu’s analysis of gender can indeed be useful to feminists, but that the options Bourdieu offers for change are problematic. The paper suggests that Bourdieu’s analysis of gender echoes the work of earlier radical feminists, particularly Catharine MacKinnon, in important ways. Consciousness-raising, one of (...) MacKinnon’s strategies for change, sits well with Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, despite Bourdieu’s own scepticism. The paper argues that recasting the role of consciousness-raising in Bourdieu’s theory helps to undermine the deterministic elements of his work. It concludes that a feminist turn to Bourdieu as an attempt to understand gender’s entrenchment-andmalleability can be fruitful, and that such a turn might find a re-engagement with the idea of consciousness-raising helpful. (shrink)

Frederick Douglass's socio-political narrative is explored through an existential lens, arguing that Douglass is contesting the proposition that essence precedes existence. Douglass, through his fight with Covey, a white 'slave breaker', and his escape to freedom, affirms his ex-istence (etymologically, 'standing out') as being for it-self (pour-soi) over and against the reduction of his existence to that of being in-itself (an-soi). Drawing from the work of Simone de Beauvoir, who was greatly influenced by the phenomenological and politico-praxic work of Black (...) novelist Richard Wright, it is argued that Douglass disrupts the power/knowledge regime of white American slavery, exercising his existential capacity for transcendence. Examining whiteness as a species of what Beauvoir calls 'the serious man', it is argued that whites within Douglass's text are in a state of flight, performing their whiteness as 'the serious man', that is, where whiteness is accepted as an unconditioned state of being. Douglass's narrative depicts whiteness as a flight from freedom (bad faith); for his very act of protestation against whiteness demonstrates that whiteness is not an objective, hypostatized thing, but a performative choice that sustains white hegemony. Key Words: American slavery • Simone de Beauvoir • Frederick Douglass • existentialism • Michel Foucault • genealogy • Lewis Gordon • the 'serious man' • value code • whiteness • womanism • Richard Wright. (shrink)

In this paper, my aim is to develop a phenomenological understanding of discrimination from the perspective of the discriminator. Since early existential phenomenology, the phenomenon of discrimination has received a great deal of attention. While much of this work has focused on the experience of the discriminatee, recent scholarship has begun to reflect on the intentional structures on the side of the discriminator. In a contribution to this trend, I argue that our sense of what is (ab)normal plays a constitutively (...) significant role in the reiteration and reinforcement of harmful discriminatory practices. More specifically, I argue that Husserl's distinction between two forms of normality, namely, concordance-normality [Einstimmigkeit] and optimal-normality [Optimalität], is an important tool for illuminating otherwise overlooked aspects of the discriminator's experience. I achieve this by demonstrating how these two notions of normality play distinct constitutive roles when comparing deliberate acts of discrimination committed with malintent, compared with more primordial, habitual, and prereflective expectations which are already discriminatory in nucleo. I argue that at the heart of discriminatory practices there is a naïve, normalizing attempt to stabilize concordance at the expense of critical self-reflection, normative revisions, and enriched horizons of expectation. In doing so, this paper provides a novel and important contribution to philosophical discussions surrounding discrimination. (shrink)

In Pregnant Embodiment: Subjectivity and Alienation, Iris Marion Young describes the lived bodily experience of women who have “chosen” their pregnancies. In this essay, Lundquist underscores the need for a more inclusive phenomenology of pregnancy. Drawing on sources in literature, psychology, and phenomenology, she offers descriptions of the cryptic phenomena of rejected and denied pregnancy, indicating the vast range of pregnancy experience and illustrating substantial phenomenological differences between “chosen” and unwanted pregnancies.

Articulating heterosexualism is not to supplicate for gays but to better understand consequences of institutionalizing a particular relationship between men and women. In this essay, Hoagland takes up the claim from a number of women of color that women are not all the same gender.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:World Alienation in Feminist ThoughtThe Sublime Epistemology of Emphatic Anti-EssentialismBonnie Mann (bio)The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition.Hannah ArendtWe are tied to place undetachably and without reprieve.Edward CaseyThe alliance between feminism and postmodernism1 in the American academy has brought about a revolution in feminist epistemology. The early feminist epistemology of unmasking, of sorting through appearances to get to the real underneath, has been discredited as "essentialist."2 (...) Feminist standpoint epistemology was an attempt to respond to this accusation by using social location as a "standpoint" from which at least local and situated knowledge could be articulated.3 More recently, many feminists have taken on the epistemology of the simulacrum. Here "the real" plays a part only as that which dissolves into the appearances themselves. Behind the appearances, if there were such a place, would be only an abyss of absence.With this revolution in feminist epistemology comes a wholesale displacement [End Page 45] of the feminist project. Others have argued that the feminist political project is displaced in the alliance with postmodernism.4 On my view, the epistemological and political displacements accompany and instantiate an even deeper level of dispossession. The ultimate price we pay for the feminist alliance with postmodernism may well be a material displacement, in which we are dispossessed of our ability to inquire into and articulate our relationship to the earth itself. We find this planet we inhabit, this physical place that sustains us moment by moment, to be effectively shut out of what now passes as "good" feminist inquiry.In 1958, Hannah Arendt wrote already of "the advent of a new and yet unknown age," marked by world-alienation, a "twofold flight from the earth into the universe and from the world into the self" (1958, 6). The "unknown age" has now been named. Postmodernity takes this flight one step further than Arendt foresaw, however, and even folds the universe and the self into discourse. World-alienation has taken the form of the self-enclosed universe of the text. Our sojourn in the world of signs is so paradigmatic of "the postmodern condition," that asking the question of our relationship to the physical planet we inhabit seems naive and nostalgic. Anything we might say about the earth, after all, is already in language, already bound up in discourse. To speak of an "earth" or "nature" that exceeds discourse is to find oneself locked, even so, within discourse. Having lost our belief in the referentiality of language, in the relation between words and things, we are stuck with signs that refer only to other signs.A capitulation to our very real physical and phenomenological experience of world-alienation finds here its theoretical form. We give in to placelessness. As Edward S. Casey writes, "To say 'I have no place to go' is to admit to a desperate circumstance. Yet we witness daily the disturbing spectacle of people with no place to go: refugees from natural catastrophes or strife-torn countries, the homeless on the streets of modern cities, not to mention 'stray' animals. In fearing that 'the earth is becoming uninhabitable'—a virtual universal lament—we are fearing that the earth will no longer provide adequate places in which to live. The incessant motion of postmodern life in late-capitalist societies at once echoes and exacerbates this fear" (Casey 1993, xiii). Intellectually, we find ourselves in equally desperate circumstances, trapped as we are inside a language that can refer only to itself. This self-enclosure becomes a kind [End Page 46] of no place, a world-alienated space without place,5 and feminist thinking is set adrift from the physical places that give feminist thinkers our moment by moment sustenance. In its alliance with postmodernism, feminism has capitulated to the placelessness that so marks our phenomenological experience at the turn of the millennium.6Yet we inhabit this planet. Faced with its destruction we are compelled to make sense of our relationship to it and to act to save it. A feminist philosophy that turns its back on the earth embraces, rather than contests, the world-alienation of which Arendt spoke. Yet our alienation... (shrink)

Social groups, including racial and gender groups and teams and committees, seem to play an important role in our world. This article examines key metaphysical questions regarding groups. I examine answers to the question ‘Do groups exist?’ I argue that worries about puzzles of composition, motivations to accept methodological individualism, and a rejection of Racialism support a negative answer to the question. An affirmative answer is supported by arguments that groups are efficacious, indispensible to our best theories, and accepted given (...) common sense. Then, I turn to an examination of the features of social groups. I argue that social groups can be divided into two sorts. Groups of Type 1 are organized social groups like courts and clubs. Groups of Type 2 are groups like Blacks, women, and lesbians. While groups of both sorts have some features in common, they also have marked differences in features. Finally, I turn to views of the nature of social groups. I argue that the difference in features provides evidence that social groups do not have a uniform nature. Teams and committees are structured wholes, while race and gender groups are social kinds. (shrink)

This article is the first in a series in which I propose to draw on the emergent and poly/trans disciplinary field of Food Studies in order to pursue questions of national identity, political struggle, cultural resistance and psychological survival in Palestine. There are several perspectives from which this connection between food and territoriality may be theorised. At first instance, for the purposes of this paper, I ask whether it is appropriate to draw on the cultural property paradigm in order to (...) spotlight the possibilities and significance of claiming their cuisine as the intangible cultural heritage of Palestinians. This essay is a rhetorical cry for the repatriation and rehabilitation of regional specialties. The need to acknowledge, safeguard and celebrate Palestinian culture, its distinctive genius and the abundance and refinement of its traditions is part of the struggle for meaningful political change. The Palestinian ethnographic research included in this paper was conducted in collaboration with Bait al Karama, a local NGO founded and run entirely by women, for local women. My methodology is rooted in the relationship between activism and academia. (shrink)

:This article interrogates “masculinity” as a named object of study for the social sciences, and sociology in particular, by drawing on the analysis of sense and language in Gilles Deleuze's The Logic of Sense. While rejecting essentialist definitions of masculine attributes, sociologists have long insisted that masculinity can be defined as a strategic articulation in the pursuit of social goals. Developing Deleuze's notion of the “singularity” within signifying series, this article argues that sociological emphases on goal-oriented practices have elided important (...) problems around the individuation of social relations, as well as neglecting the subsequent textual work of naming such relations as masculine. To develop this argument, the article begins with R.W. Connell's concept of “hegemonic masculinity” as one example of empirical investigation that proceeds by way of specialised metaphors – strategies, positions, goals – that make masculinity appear self-evident as an innate communication between men. In scrutinising the efficacy of such metaphors, the article questions the paradigm of homosociality as a methodological a priori in social scientific research. Finally, the article asks how masculinity studies might engage a more critical relationship to observation and description, a question that remains urgent for developing the ethical vision of gender studies more broadly. (shrink)

This essay uses the phenomenal advent of women's climbing as a paradigm case for integrating feminism and phenomenology, and for analyzing how women experience and evolve free movement and existence. In contrast to the paradigm set by Iris Marion Young's “Throwing like a Girl,” it stresses the category of the lived body over the category of gender, and it reveals how women, by employing and cultivating the body's motility and spatiality, engage and transcend the limits of crux situations.

: I argue that Irigaray's recent work develops a theoretically cogent and politically radical form of realist essentialism. I suggest that she identifies sexual difference with a fundamental difference between the rhythms of percipient fluids constituting women's and men's bodies, supporting this with a philosophy of nature that she justifies phenomenologically and ethically. I explore the politics Irigaray derives from this philosophy, which affirms the sexes' rights to realize the possibilities of their rhythmically diverse bodies.

Love's Labor explores the relations that dependency work fosters between women and between men and women, and argues that dependency is not exceptional but integral to human life. The commentaries point to more facets of dependency such as the importance of personal narrative in philosophizing dependency ; the role of spirituality that Gottlieb addresses with regard to his disabled daughter; and the application of the theory to the situation of elderly women.

Inspired by recent theorization by Dreier and Lave concerning situated perspectives on learning, I illuminate learning of international graduate students in a science lab in Japan as trajectories of participation in multi-layered activities and various mutually constituted occasions, and as crossing of multiple communities of practice. By doing so, I describe trajectories of participation as unique and multiple ways characteristic of individual participants instead of as a linear process from newcomer to old-timer or from peripheral to full participation in a (...) community of practice. Identity formation is also reformulated as discovering and constituting one’s unique self through crossing multiple communities of practice rather than merely as becoming a member in a community of practice. Further, I show that identity formation may be regarded not merely as adjusting the relationship among multiple communities within individuals, but as the practice of organizing new linkages among communities and of reconstituting communities of practice. (shrink)

The American tradition of action theory failed to produce a useful theory of the possible existence of trans-individual consistencies in sexual desirability. Instead, most sociological theorists have relied on market metaphors to account for the logic of sexual action. Through a critical survey of sociological attempts to explain the social organization of sexual desiring, this article demonstrates that the market approach is inadequate, and that its inadequacies can be remedied by studying sexual action as occurring within a specifically sexual field (...) , with a correlative sexual capital. Such a conception allows for historical and comparative analysis of changes in the organization of sexual action that are impeded by the use of a market metaphor, and also points to difficulties in Bourdieu's own treatment of the body qua body. (shrink)

While The Second Sex is usually taken as Simone de Beauvoir's major theoretical contribution to feminism, in the 1960s and 1970s it was very often through her autobiographies – especially Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, The Prime of Life, and Force of Circumstance, along with novels such as She Came to Stay and The Mandarins – that her feminist ideas were most thoroughly absorbed. The autobiographies became nothing less than a guide for the fashioning of a new kind of feminine (...) self. Where The Second Sex had intimated that a significant aspect of human liberation lay in women not losing their identity or their sense of self in those of men, it was the autobiographies which suggested and demonstrated in great detail how this might be done. In them, the rejection of conventional marriage and children was no mere slogan, but the foundation of what seemed to young female readers to be a fascinating and challenging life. In this paper, I reflect on de Beauvoir and her historical and contemporary relevance: first through reminiscence and re-reading of the autobiographies themselves; then with an historical examination of how they were read, taking Sydney, Australia, as my example; and finally by offering some reflections on subsequent feminist critique. (shrink)

Taking Catholic sexual ethics and liberal feminist ethics as points of departure, this essay argues that both frameworks are ill-prepared to deal with the moral problems raised by sex trafficking: while Catholic sexual ethics is grounded in a normative understanding of sexuality, liberal feminist ethics argues for women's sexual autonomy, resting upon freedom of action and consent. From a perspective that attends both to the phenomenological interpretation of embodied selves and the Kantian normative interpretation of dignity, it becomes possible to (...) critique both the Catholic and the liberal feminist frameworks of ethics. I argue that Catholic sexual ethics requires a reconceptualization as social ethics in order to meet the challenges of our present time, but that the shift is possible without giving up the moral imperatives of both Catholic and feminist ethics to protect human dignity and women's rights. (shrink)