The article contributes to the debate on new materialism commenced by Sara Ahmed (2008). Taking up Lena Gunnarsson’s (2013) argument that erasing distinctions is no effective antidote to dualistic theorising, the article argues that Karen Barad’s (2003, 2007) theory is problematic on this count. Whereas Barad dilutes the theoretical distinction between mind and matter as well as that between the animate and the inanimate, the contention here is that it is ethically and politically vital to hold on to a notion (...) of subjectivity understood in terms of the capacity for experience, on account of which sentient being is exposed to suffering. This requires accentuating the passive dimension of subjectivity rather than merely the active dimension of matter. This article contests Barad’s reinscription of a masculinist devaluation of passivity on the grounds that only by moving beyond it can we overcome the hierarchical opposition of subject versus object and, in consequence, of mind versus matter. (shrink)

In this article I argue that, if one is persuaded by the arguments of Emmanuel Levinas, the pursuit of something called ‘ethical feminism’ is rendered difficult, for, according to Levinas, there is a hiatus between ethics and politics in so far as politics does not flow from ethics. Indeed, politics obliges one to engage in the non-ethical, so that the ethical cannot be understood as a basis for feminist politics. I contend that one can argue that it is in the (...) way that the dangers of the non-ethical are handled that politics begins. If this is so, one can refigure the question of ethics within feminism. Ethics becomes a check on freedom and politics rather than its originary source. However, I argue, along with Michel Foucault and William Connolly, that ethical responses, while coming from the other, have also to be subjected to genealogical critique, so that their conditions of possibility are not naturalized. (shrink)

Positive arguments on behalf of passion are scarce in liberal political theory. Rather, liberal theorists tend to push passion to the margins of their theories of politics, either by ignoring it or by explicitly arguing that passion poses a danger to politics and is best kept out of the public realm. The purpose of this essay is to criticize these marginalizations and to illustrate their roots in impoverished conceptions of passion. Using a richer conception of passion as the desire for (...) an envisioned good, I argue that it is neither possible nor desirable to eliminate passion from politics. Passion should therefore be established as a central category of analysis in political theory alongside other key concerns. Key Words: passion • reason • politics • liberalism • eros. (shrink)

This paper analyzes and explores varying discourses within the talk of new practitioner direct entry (DE) midwives in Aotearoa/New Zealand. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, midwifery is theorized as a feminist profession undertaken in partnership with women. Direct entry midwifery education is similarly based on partnerships between educators and students in the form of liberatory pedagogies. The context for the analysis is a large ethnographic study undertaken with a variety of differently positioned midwives based mainly in one city in New Zealand. I (...) interviewed and observed over 40 midwives in their different practice settings in 2003. Complex and contesting forms of knowledge production are analyzed in this paper drawing on methodological insights from Foucauldian discourse analysis. New practitioners engage in techniques of self‐monitoring and surveillance as they move towards becoming established practitioners. New midwifery subjectivities and forms of knowledge production which contest authoritative forms of knowledge are produced. Midwives in New Zealand are seen to inhabit a complex and liminal space of midwifery praxis. Paradoxically, they are exhorted to remain the ‘guardians of normal birth’ in a time of increasing interventions into birth both locally and internationally. Paradoxes encountered by new midwifery practitioners in New Zealand as they struggle to maintain ideals of ‘normal’ birth may be paralleled by the constraints inadvertently produced through governing discourses of emancipatory or liberatory pedagogies. The relevance of this is also highly critical for midwifery and birth practices internationally. (shrink)

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.

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.

This article is a critique, first, of the theory of identity advanced by Judith Butler and many of the feminist critics of identity politics, and, second, of identity politics itself. I argue that Butler's rejection of the modernist subject for its opposite, the fictional, substanceless subject, is untenable. Looking to object relations theory, I argue instead for a concept of the subject as an ungrounded ground, occupying a middle ground between the postmodern and the modern subject. With regard to identity (...) politics I argue that instead of populating the political realm with multiple identities, we should instead remove identity entirely from the political realm. (shrink)

This paper expands on the political vision embedded in Donald Winnicott’s psychoanalytic work. It comments on Winnicott’s notion that individuality is produced by society, and adds that such production inevitably involves power asymmetry. It is argued that Winnicott values rights and property as communicative devices rather than as private enclosures held against society. However, it is also maintained that Winnicott thinks that social deliberation itself depends on a preceding objective instance that may be referred to as justice. Lastly, aspects of (...) Winnicott’s outlook that touch on ideas of welfare and distribution are examined, especially those concerning the relationships between the market and social agencies, and between the household and the state. It is suggested that these attributes point to an affinity Winnicott has with a progressive liberal trend dating back to Mill, the later manifestation of this liberalism being evident in the design of the 20th-century welfare state. It is concluded that it is for this polity that Winnicott wrote his psychological theory. (shrink)