: This essay examines the reconfiguration of the racial and sexual contracts underpinning democratic theory and practice in the transition to independence in India. Drawing upon the work of Carole Pateman and Charles Mills, Keating argues that the racialized fraternal democratic order that they describe was importantly challenged by nationalist and feminist struggles against colonialism in India, but was reshaped into what she calls a postcolonial sexual contract by the framers of the Indian Constitution.

This essay examines the reconfiguration of the racial and sexual contracts underpinning democratic theory and practice in the transition to independence in India. Drawing upon the work of Carole Pateman and Charles Mills, Keating argues that the racialized fraternal democratic order that they describe was importantly challenged by nationalist and feminist struggles against colonialism in India, but was reshaped into what she calls a postcolonial sexual contract by the framers of the Indian Constitution.

This essay examines the reconfiguration of the racial and sexual contracts underpinning democratic theory and practice in the transition to independence in India. Drawing upon the work of Carole Pateman and Charles Mills, Keating argues that the racialized fraternal democratic order that they describe was importantly challenged by nationalist and feminist struggles against colonialism in India, but was reshaped into what she calls a postcolonial sexual contract by the framers of the Indian Constitution.

In the current paper, our aim is to explore the latent power dynamics surrounding corporate social responsibility in developing countries. To do this, we synthesize an analytic framework that borrows from both cross-cultural management literature as well as feminist considerations of power. We then use the framework to examine three streams of CSR literature. Our analysis uncovers the prevalence of arguments and discussions about indigenous and power-over themes rather than more generative, endogenous, and power-to themes. The paper concludes with the (...) suggestion for more space in the CSR literature for examining the realities and potentialities of local SME CSR expressions to counterbalance the overwhelming focus on MNCs. Such counterbalancing can better lead to the recognition that power and domination are not the only important dynamics to examine in CSR research. Just as important is the need for a more nuanced consideration of the role and contributions of different actors to the continuously unfolding CSR discourse. (shrink)

The nation/state as an imaginative enterprise encompasses multiple imagined subnational boundaries. The ‘public/private’, I suggest, is a ‘purposeful fiction’ constitutive of the will to statehood. As such, its configurations are impacted upon by the institutions and forces competing with and within state-building enterprises. Proposing the terms government, non-government and domestic as analytical tools to demarcate discursive and material domains, I argue that, in Lebanon, the fluidity of boundaries among these spheres is constitutive of patriarchal connectivity, a form of patriarchal kinship (...) linked to the state-building enterprise. (shrink)

: The history of modern feminist political theories is often framed in terms of the already existing theories of a number of radical nineteenth-century men philosophers such as James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Charles Fourier, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. My argument takes issue with this way of framing feminist political theory by demonstrating that it rests on a derivation that remains squarely within the logic of malestream political theory. Each of these philosophers made use of a particular discursive trope (...) that linked the idea of women's emancipation with the idea of social progress. I argue that this trope reproduced the masculinist signification and symbolism inherent in their particular political philosophies. I argue for a more positive, less masculinist, account of the history of feminist political thought. (shrink)

The history of modern feminist political theories is often framed in terms of the already existing theories of a number of radical nineteenth-century men philosophers such as James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Charles Fourier, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. My argument takes issue with this way of framing feminist political theory by demonstrating that it rests on a derivation that remains squarely within the logic of malestream political theory. Each of these philosophers made use of a particular discursive trope that (...) linked the idea of women's emancipation with the idea of social progress. I argue that this trope reproduced the masculinist signification and symbolism inherent in their particular political philosophies. I argue for a more positive, less masculinist, account of the history of feminist political thought. (shrink)

: Liberal philosopher James Mill has been understood as being unambiguously antifeminist. However, Terence Ball, supposedly informed by a feminist perspective, has argued for a new interpretation. Ball has reconceptualized Mill as a feminist and the sole source of the feminism of his son (J. S. Mill), suggesting a revision of the received wisdom about their relationship to the development of nineteenth century feminist thought. This paper takes issue with Ball's "new interpretation" and its presumed feminist basis.

Liberal philosopher James Mill has been understood as being unambiguously antifeminist. However, Terence Ball, supposedly informed by a feminist perspective, has argued for a new interpretation. Ball has reconceptualized Mill as a feminist and the sole source of the feminism of his son, suggesting a revision of the received wisdom about their relationship to the development of nineteenth century feminist thought. This paper takes issue with Ball's “new interpretation” and its presumed feminist basis.

Maternal health has become a top global priority. In contrast to the decline of the maternal subject (Stephens, 2011), and despite previous evidence that maternal health has struggled to find a place on the global policy agenda (Shiffman and Smith, 2007), it is now clear that the promotion of health for mothers and children is a staple of both government and private donor commitments. On humanitarian grounds, it makes sense to focus on maternal health and survival in the Global South. (...) Death related to pregnancy or childbirth is a disheartening example of needless suffering. But beyond the initial impulse to reduce suffering, what motivates and/or requires action for addressing injustice in the form of distributional inequities for maternal and reproductive health? In this article, I make a case for the necessity and validity of transnational cooperation to address maternal mortality and morbidity in the Global South. The first component of my argument addresses the transnational elements of both global interconnectedness and responsibility to act. These elements are drawn from Iris Marion Young’s philosophical justification for North-South responsibility-taking. The second component of my argument adds the concept of affective solidarity to that of transnational responsibility. My argument in this section draws from Iris Marion Young’s earlier work on identity (Young, 1990) and embodiment (Young, 1984) and expands the analysis of affective solidarity as a form of both embodiment and political commitment in order to explain the mechanism for transnational connection and understanding. And the final component of my argument explains how both of these elements – transnational responsibility and affective solidarity – support a theory of transnational maternal feminism. (shrink)

Feminist critics of the stigmatization of prostitution such as Martha Nussbaum and Sybil Schwarzenbach argue that the features of the practice do not, or at least need not, differ essentially from those of other more respected sorts of labor. I argue that even the least degraded forms of the current practice of prostitution remain objectionable on feminist grounds because patrons demand a semblance of sexual self-expression that engages discriminatory beliefs about women's sexuality.

I argue that sound-centric scholarship can be of use to feminist theorists if and only if it begins from a non-ideal theory of sound; this article develops such a theory. To do this, I first develop more fully my claim that perceptual coding was a good metaphor for the ways that neoliberal market logics (re)produce relations of domination and subordination, such as white supremacist patriarchy. Because it was developed to facilitate the enclosure of the audio bandwidth, perceptual coding is especially (...) helpful in centring the ways that patriarchal racial capitalism structures our concepts and experiences of both sound and technology. The first section identifies sonic cyberfeminist practices that function as a kind of perceptual coding because they subject ‘sound’ and/or ‘women’ to enclosure and accumulation by dispossession. The second section identifies a type of sonic cyberfeminism that tunes into the parts of the spectrum that this perceptual coding discards, building models of community and aesthetic value that do not rely on the exclusion of women, especially black women, from both humanist and posthuman concepts of personhood. Here I focus especially on Alexander Weheliye’s ‘phonographic’ approach to sound, technology and theoretical text. This approach, which he develops in his 2005 book of that title and in recent work in collaboration with Katherine McKittrick, avoids fetishising tech and self-transformation and focuses on practices that build registers of existence that hegemonic institutions perceptually code out of circulation. I conclude with examples of such phonographic compression, including Masters At Work’s ballroom classic ‘The Ha Dance’ and Nicki Minaj’s ‘Anaconda’. (shrink)

This article reviews the feminist theorization of the concept of citizenship in an attempt to contextualize it in a situation where the basic ingredients for a sovereign state do not exist. The formation of the Palestinian Authority included the reconstruction of the Palestinian ‘imagined’ community within which approaches to gender policies were reformulated to suit a new era. However, the feminist use of the concept of citizenship itself comes into question under conditions of prolonged Occupation. In this analysis, I submit (...) that while women’s NGOs and grass-roots organizations have an important role to play in creating space for women to politicize their demands in advocating full citizenship rights, there are serious limits to what institutions of civil society can achieve when the basic foundations for the state are in a precarious situation. (shrink)

The part anger plays in motivating political action is frequently noted, but less is said about ways in which anger continues to be a part of how people do politics. This article critically assesses approaches to emotions that emphasize managing anger in accordance with ‘feeling rules’. It reflects on the utility of Marxist notions of conflict as the engine of change for the understanding of how anger operates in political life. This involves understanding the ambivalence of anger and its operation (...) within particular power relations. Shifting sets of conventions have had some continuity in discouraging women in Western nations (particularly white and middle-class women) from showing anger. But clearly, women do get angry and feminists have drawn on anger in acting politically. New Zealand feminist writings from the ‘second wave’ are taken as illustrative of the common difficulties Western feminists faced in dealing with anger. These difficulties were due to trying to juggle social conventions about femininity, the political ideal of sisterhood, and the realities of dealing with other women in often new and experimental political processes. Anger could be personalized and hurtful, but in certain cases its expression was constructive in producing more respectful relations. Exploring these cases makes it clear how anger produces, and is produced by, relations with others. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that contemporary democratic theory gives insufficient attention to the important contributions dissenting citizens make to democratic life. Guided by the dissident practices of activist women, I develop a more expansive conception of citizenship that recognizes dissent and an ethic of political courage as vital elements of democratic participation. I illustrate how this perspective on citizenship recasts and reclaims women's courageous dissidence by reconsidering the well-known story of Rosa Parks.

This essay is part of a recent version of a talk I have given by way of introducing Lesbian Ethics. I mention ways in which lesbian existence creates certain conceptual possibilities that can effect conceptual shifts and transform consciousness.

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.

: Articulating heterosexualism is not to supplicate for gays (that's the work of 'heterosexism' and 'homophobia') 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.

Here, Hirschmann responds to Marilyn Friedman and Susan J. Brison's comments on The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom. She clarifies some aspects of her social construction argument, articulates the role of discourse and its relation to material reality, and explicates the potentially paradoxical case of support for women's choices when those choices produce harm.

Over the recent decades, the concept of resilience has spread from environmental science to a number of disciplines dealing with crisis and disaster management. From psychology, public health, and human resource management to development and security studies, resilience is replacing an earlier focus on resistance and adaptability within these fields. There exist several studies dealing with resilience discourse as a key to a diagnostic of the present. While some hail resilience as a new register of ecological resistance for social movements, (...) other decries resilience as a discourse legitimating the neoliberal state’s abandonment of the poor to catastrophe. This article proposes a framework for reading together these highly diverging interpretations of resilience through a historicising of the concept of resilience, tracing its rise genealogically in relation to the concepts of resistance and adaptability. Through readings of authors such as Thomas Hobbes, Carl von Clausewitz, Herbert Spencer, and C.J. Holling, the article shows how these concepts were imported from scientific materialism into pragmatic and normative discourses of defence of life against shifting threats to individual and social life. The article shows how the shifting importance of the concepts of resistance, adaptability and resilience must be related to changing social-ecological problems and the forms of contestation and governance that respond to them. (shrink)

The scholarship on Mary Wollstonecraft is divided concerning her views on women's role in public life, property rights, and distribution of wealth. Her critique of inequality of wealth is undisputed, but is it a complaint only of inequality or does it strike more forcefully at the institution of property? The argument in this article is that Wollstonecraft's feminism is partly defined by a radical critique of property, intertwined with her conception of rights. Dissociating herself from the conceptualization of rights in (...) terms of self-ownership, she casts economic independence—a necessary political criterion for personal freedom—in terms of fair reward for work, not ownership. Her critique of property moves beyond issues of redistribution to a feminist appraisal of a property structure that turns people into either owners or owned, rights-holders or things acquired. The main characters in Wollstonecraft's last novel—Maria, who is rich but has nothing, and Jemima, who steals as a matter of principle—illustrate the commodification of women in a society where even rights are regarded as possessions. (shrink)

: Catharine Macaulay's first political pamphlet, "Loose remarks on certain positions to be found in Mr. Hobbes's philosophical rudiments of government and society with a short sketch for a democratical form of government in a letter to Signor Paoli," published in London in 1769, has received no significant scholarly attention in over two hundred years. It is of primary interest because of the light it sheds on Macaulay's critique of patriarchal politics, which helps to establish a new line of thinking (...) about the historian as an early feminist writer. It appears she was working from an unauthorized edition of the Thomas Hobbes's De Cive (1647) entitled Philosophicall Rudiments of Government and Society, printed by a royalist bookseller in London 1651. Some errors in this translation may explain Macaulay's skewed understanding of Hobbes's argument in support of the premises of monarchy. Her intriguing analysis of paternal authority in "Loose Remarks" anticipates recent feminist explorations of Hobbesian political thought. (shrink)

Catharine Macaulay's first political pamphlet, “Loose remarks on certain positions to be found in Mr. Hobbes's philosophical rudiments of government and society with a short sketch for a democratical form of government in a letter to Signor Paoli,” published in London in 1769, has received no significant scholarly attention in over two hundred years. It is of primary interest because of the light it sheds on Macaulay's critique of patriarchal politics, which helps to establish a new line of thinking about (...) the historian as an early feminist writer. It appears she was working from an unauthorized edition of the Thomas Hobbes'sDe Cive entitledPhilosophicall Rudiments of Government and Society, printed by a royalist bookseller in London 1651. Some errors in this translation may explain Macaulay's skewed understanding of Hobbess argument in support of the premises of monarchy. Her intriguing analysis of paternal authority in “Loose Remarks” anticipates recent feminist explorations of Hobbesian political thought. (shrink)

Sociologists of education often emphasize goods that result from a practice (external goods) rather than goods intrinsic to a practice (internal goods). The authors draw from John Dewey and Alasdair MacIntyre to describe how the same practice can be understood as producing “skills” that center external goods or as producing habits (Dewey) or virtues (MacIntyre), both of which center internal goods. The authors situate these concepts within sociology of education’s stratification paradigm and a renewed interest in the concept of alienation, (...) contrasting the concepts of skills, habits, and virtues to capital, credentials, and habitus. They close by connecting the argument to broader critiques of procedural liberalism and the ideology of meritocracy, then giving suggestions for an expanded sociology of education beyond the stratification paradigm. (shrink)

Referencing ‘Simone de Beauvoir’ is to reference a stage in the history of feminist philosophy; when one cites the name ‘Simone de Beauvoir’, as the signature of The Second Sex, one is also citing...

This paper explores two phases of the early modern genre wars. The first was fought by Marie de Gournay, in her “Preface” to Montaigne's Essays, on behalf of her adoptive father and in defense of his naked and masculine prose. The second was fought half a century later by Nicholas Boileau in opposition to Gournay's feminizing successor, Madeleine de Scudéry. In this debate Gournay's position is egalitarian, whereas Scudéry's approximates to a feminism of difference. It is claimed that both female (...) protagonists in this early debate occlude the female body. The far more sexually explicit prose of Mary Delarivier Manley is then used to raise the question: is it genre, or is it, rather, the very nature of erotic sexuality, that makes it so difficult for women to masterfully expose themselves as authoritative subjects? (shrink)

This article focuses on John Locke's understanding of the student as a natural learner and on the ambiguous utopia of childhood that underpins this understanding. It draws a parallel between the educational utopia of natural learning and colonization, and then investigates ethico-political implications. Locke politicizes natural learning in ways that normalize exclusions at the level of intersubjective ethical relations and naturalize colonial expansion at the level of cosmopolitan right. Thought through to its implications, this claim leads to exploring connections between (...) Locke's educational philosophy and his multiple and ambiguous utopianisms. Thus examined, the political operations of Locke's pedagogy bring to the fore the subtle though no less important performativity of Locke-inspired, modern educational utopianism that remains so far under- or non-theorized in educational philosophy. (shrink)

This review essay considers three prominent recent works in the philosophy of race: Mills's The Racial Contract, Outlaw's On Race and Philosophy, and McGary's Race and Social Justice. Each of these books has played an important role in convincing social and political philosophers to take race more seriously as a category for theoretical analysis rather than simply as a subject related to certain applied moral and political problems such as affirmative action. Each of these works also wrestles with the question (...) of whether the dominant theoretical traditions in modern Western political philosophy, and particularly liberalism, are capable of addressing the wide range of forms of social injustice that are linked to racism. The author indicates a number of differences between the books' approaches and argues that the conclusions at which they arrive are subject to different shortcomings. The author also shows that all three books raise sharp challenges to the liberal tradition at the same time that they remain ambivalent about the risks of departing altogether from that tradition. Key Words: justice • liberalism • modernity • race. (shrink)

This essay focuses on some important concepts in Beauvoir's philosophy: ambiguity, desire, and appeal (appel). Ambiguity and appeal, concepts originating in Beauvoir's moral philosophy, are in The Second Sex connected to the female body and feminine desire. This indicates the complexity of Beauvoir's image of femininity. This essay also proposes a comparative reading of Beauvoir's and Sartre's concepts of appeal, a reading that indicates differences in their views of the relationship among ethics, desire, and gender.

In this article, I examine the legal position of those who perform caregiving work within the context of a cohabiting relationship through a novel relational vulnerability lens. I argue that the state, through privatising and devaluing caregiving labour, situates carers within an unequal and imbalanced relational framework, exposing them economic, emotional, and spatial harms. Unlike universal vulnerability, which is inherent and unavoidable, relational vulnerability can be avoided and reduced if the state were to acknowledge that humans are embodied and relational (...) rather than self-sufficient and rational. Law’s treatment of cohabiting carers reflects the state’s broader tendency to value economic self-sufficiency, while confining caregiving to the private family. I argue that the state has a duty to respond directly to relational vulnerability and should aim to make cohabiting carers resilient. Resilience must involve the provision of material resources but should also have a normative commitment to achieving autonomy and equality for those marginalised by law and state policies. (shrink)

In this article I explore one core feature of contemporary campaigns for justice for Ireland’s Magdalen women concerning their deaths and disappearances, which continue to be denied by a State that has only recently started to acknowledge civilian deaths in other contexts such as armed conflict. I examine the treatment of the disappeared and deceased Magdalen women in the economic and political context of the Irish use of religious institutions and consider the significance of this regime for women’s citizenship in (...) the postcolonial nation-building processes of the twentieth century. I aim to illustrate the connections between gender, violence and citizenship that are implicated in outcomes for justice for Magdalen survivors and victims, as well as conceptions of Irish women’s citizenship in general. In this discussion I consider the Magdalen campaigns for justice as significant for the individual women and families involved, as well as the entire nation’s conception of self as represented in history. (shrink)

Some Romanian feminist scholars argue that welfare policies of post-communist states are deeply unjust to women and preclude them from reaching economic autonomy. The upshot of this argument is that liberal economic policy would advance feminist goals better than the welfare state. How should we read this dissonance between Western and some Eastern feminist scholarship concerning distributive justice? I identify the problem of dependency at the core of a possible debate about feminism and welfare. Worries about how decades of communism (...) have shaped citizenry feed feminists' suspicion of the welfare state and fears of paternalist policies. I criticize the arguments in favour of neoliberal policies and I suggest a crucial distinction between legitimate, universal forms of human dependency and dependencies that result from particular social arrangements. (shrink)

This paper reads Deleuze through a Spinozist lens to conceive of the human being as a dynamic and complex whole in constant interchange with its environment. The author thus moves beyond philosophical dualisms, and challenges the assumption that a hierarchical normative organization is the only possible world. Using the example of rape, she argues that micropolitical strategies might disrupt and “pass” the juridical order and open up alternative, more equitable, forms of sociability.

This paper reads Deleuze through a Spinozist lens to conceive of the human being as a dynamic and complex whole in constant interchange with its environment. The author thus moves beyond philosophical dualisms, and challenges the assumption that a hierarchical normative organization is the only possible world. Using the example of rape, she argues that micropolitical strategies might disrupt and “pass” the juridical order and open up alternative, more equitable, forms of sociability.

: This paper reads Deleuze through a Spinozist lens to conceive of the human being as a dynamic and complex whole in constant interchange with its environment. The author thus moves beyond philosophical dualisms, and challenges the assumption that a hierarchical normative organization is the only possible world. Using the example of rape, she argues that micropolitical strategies might disrupt and "pass" the juridical order and open up alternative, more equitable, forms of sociability.

While the common law may result in justice between heterosexual intimate partners in particular claims for a beneficial interest in the family home, it does so on its own terms—terms drawn up according to contractarian principles reflecting male sex-right, that subsist even as the world and the institution of marriage (and marriage-like relationships) have changed. This paper uses examples from the case law across four common law jurisdictions to expose the terms on which the contractarian nature of intimate partner trusts (...) permits claims for a distribution of intimate partners’ property, and how it excludes. In particular, it identifies the pervasiveness of the sexual contract in subsuming women’s expression of individualism to those of her intimate partner, and the implications of this for the derivation of a property interest in the family home. (shrink)

“Women and the Law in Irigarayan Theory” by Gail Schwab is a reading of French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray's writings on law together with texts of American feminist jurisprudence. The first part of the article summarizes many of the conflicts surrounding the concept of equality in American feminist legal thought and attempts to move beyond them with the Irigarayan principle of equivalence or equivalent rights. The second part of the article deals more generally with the symbolic changes that will be (...) necessary in order to change the law, and with the cultural evolution that changes in the law can bring about, and more specifically with two areas of Irigarayan legal theory that are central to cultural change and evolution: the concept of female identity or virginity, and the relationship to the mother. In the conclusion, a new utopian vision of what law might be‐the cultural mediation for an evolved intersubjectivity‐is developed through Irigaray's most recent texts. (shrink)

Drawing on feminist labour law and political economy literature, I argue that it is crucial to interrogate the personal and territorial scope of labour. After discussing the “commodification” of care, global care chains, and body work, I claim that the territorial scope of labour law must be expanded beyond that nation state to include transnational processes. I use the idea of social reproduction both to illustrate and to examine some of the recurring regulatory dilemmas that plague labour markets. I argue (...) that unpaid care and domestic work performed in the household, typically by women, troubles the personal scope of labour law. I use the example of this specific type of personal service relation to illustrate my claim that the jurisdiction of labour law is historical and contingent, rather than conceptual and universal. I conclude by identifying some of the implications of redrawing the territorial and personal scope of labour law in light of feminist understandings of social reproduction. (shrink)

Is history a category of reason, or is reason a category of history? These opposing questions have divided the structuralist from the materialist-but neither question is wrong. Analysis of the logic of oppositions challenges feminism, in particular, to find a logic-and a poetics-in which to render its values without historical or theoretical naiveté. I explore the question of the timing of feminism through Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray.

In what ways might we best, and justly, allow for cohabitation between individuals and groups with plural conceptions of the good? Confronting this question, students of political philosophy in the past two decades have encountered a routine contrast between liberal universalism, with a focus on equal individual rights and uniform application of the law, and on the other hand various versions of a 'politics of difference'(...).

: This paper argues that the slogans "A Woman's Right to Choose" and "The Personal is the Political" typify different traditions within feminist thinking; one emphasizing rights and equality, the other the unconscious and the personal. The author responds to both traditions by bringing together mind and body, and reason and emotion, via the figure of the copula. The copula expresses an alternative model of identity which indicates that value can be produced only in relation.

This paper argues that the slogans “A Woman's Right to Choose” and “The Personal is the Political” typify different traditions within feminist thinking; one emphasizing rights and equality, the other the unconscious and the personal. The author responds to both traditions by bringing together mind and body, and reason and emotion, via the figure of the copula. The copula expresses an alternative model of identity which indicates that value can be produced only in relation.Let us say that the problem is (...) violence. At its most naive: how can the sexual relation, which is supposedly full of love, be violent?I mean the sexual relation in its resonances and ambiguity—to indicate the relation between the sexes, and the relation between lovers. In no way can the relation be confined to love, either heterosexual or homosexual, since it is often a contest. It cannot be reduced solely to a social relation, because in one of its aspects it addresses the most intimate subjectivity.In a certain feminist lifestyle advocacy, those women who are in same sex relations avoid sexual violence by avoiding men, and those who are in heterosexual relationships strive to find the “right kind”—that is, relationships of respectful and supportive love—rejecting all signs of aggression, from sexist disparagement and emotional cruelty to sexual humiliation and physical assault, as “abuse.”Strangely, this dichotomy does not explain the proximity of passion and aggression, whether in love between men and women or in same-sex relationships between feminist women. As rational counsel, it resists the important sense in which the erotic is, and is even valued as, the excess of the rational. And as an analysis of the oppression of women it defeats itself, for to insist on masculinity as violence itself, and/or on the sexual relation as properly governed by reason, seems to miss the point of both love and feminism.Stranger still, feminisms, which set out to address and redress the oppression of women, have become rivalrous themselves. Are these aggressions a legacy of the intellectual world they must take place in. Have we overlooked an aspect of the relation between sisters? Feminism has not addressed the question of aggression in feminism as anything more than contamination.Perhaps, after all, the thing that feminism has not yet successfully addressed is love. The “battle between the sexes” has not rendered the ambivalence of the heterosexual relation. As a species of theory, feminism has relished the rigor of distinction and has not found it easy to tolerate the proximity of opposites.And yet, in evoking the body, some feminisms approach closer to this difficulty. It remains to take up the relation between the body and the concept more thoroughly, in order to find out whether sexual difference could ever be philosophical. (shrink)