What happens when well-defined disciplines meet or are confronted with transdisciplinary discourses and concepts, where transdisciplinary concepts are analytical tools rather than specifications of a field of objects or a class of entities? Or, if disciplines reject transdisciplinary discourses and concepts as having no part to play in their practice, why do they so reject them? This essay addresses these questions through a discussion of the relationship between philosophy – the most tightly policed discipline in the humanities – and what (...) I will argue is the emblematically transdisciplinary practice of feminist theory, via a discussion of interdisciplinarity and related terms in gender studies. It argues that the tendency of philosophy to reject feminist theory in fact correctly intuited that the two defining features of feminist theory – its constitutive tie to a political agenda for social change and the transdisciplinary character of many of its central concepts – are indeed at odds with, and pose a threat to, the traditional insularity of the discipline of philosophy. It argues, further, that feminist theory operates with what we should now recognise as a set of transdisciplinary concepts – including, sex, gender, woman, sexuality and sexual difference – and that the use of these concepts in feminist philosophy has been the most far-reaching continuation in the late 20th/early 21st centuries of the critique of philosophy initiated by Marx and pursued by ‘critical theory’. This puts feminist philosophy in a difficult position: its transdisciplinary aspects open it up to an unavoidable contradiction. Nonetheless, this is a contradiction that can and must be endured and made productive. In order to draw out the specificity of the concept of transdisciplinarity at issue the essay begins with a discussion of attempts to define inter- and transdisciplinarity, particularly in gender studies. Arguing for the transdisciplinary origin of the concept of gender, it then suggests one way of understanding its function as a critical concept, before making explicit how this leads to the historical antagonism between traditional philosophy and the critical, transdisciplinary concept of gender and with feminist theory more generally. (shrink)

Gender inequity is a persistent problem in the United States. While the high school social studies classroom should be an important space for addressing gender inequity, there is significant underrepresentation of women in the curriculum. Thus, it is crucial that we understand how self-described feminist social studies teachers present women and gender-equity in their classrooms. In this mixed-methods study, the researchers examined the beliefs and practices of six feminist-identifying teachers. The results reveal commonalities across teachers related to classroom discourses, curricular (...) modifications, and professional practice, yet there were compelling differences based on whether or not the teacher subscribed to a critical feminist perspective or a liberal feminist perspective. While all the teachers in the study saw themselves as change agents, teachers who operated from a critical feminist lens focused more on structural gender inequity as a means to eliminate sexism, whereas teachers who operated from a liberal lens focused more on individual acts of sexism and greater inclusion of women—often individual women—in the curriculum. This study contributes to the scarce research on feminism in social studies and provides tools for practitioners who want practices that are more inclusive. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Ansätze einer globalen Religionsgeschichte haben entscheidend zum Verständnis von Allgemeinbegriffen wie Religion als historisch gewachsen und veränderlich beigetragen. Ebenso haben sie aufgezeigt, dass das Verständnis von Religion in Wechselwirkung mit anderen Allgemeinbegriffen wie Nation geprägt ist. Geschlecht findet in diesen Untersuchungen bislang kaum Berücksichtigung. Dabei bestehen Wechselwirkungen zwischen Geschlecht, Nation und Religion, die wir in diesem Aufsatz in dem Vergleichsmoment von Mutterschaft aufzeigen wollen. Anhand von Fallbeispielen aus Sri Lanka, Israel und Nigeria machen wir deutlich, wie der Vergleichsmoment Mutterschaft (...) in unterschiedlichen Kontexten funktioniert, wie Identitäten daran konstruiert werden, welche Auswirkungen sich dadurch auf Religion, Nation und Geschlecht ergeben und wie Mutterschaft sowohl als Unterdrückungsmechanismus dient, als auch Handlungsmacht darin möglich ist. (shrink)

This thesis defines the philosophical concept of speculation and assessesits emergence in Kantian and post-Kantian German philosophy, in the attempted construction of a post-Enlightenment “scientific” philosophy and alongside early work in anthropology and gynaecology. It argues that in the historical elaboration of the problem of speculation “race” and “sex” emerge as concerns for this newly defined scientific philosophy. Moreover, a concept of performativity is introduced in the attempt to think the ontological implications or “effects” of speculative thought. This thesis proposes (...) that Hegel is the originator of such a concept of performativity, introduced as the conclusion to the Science of Logic. Here, performativity is defined as activity of form or determinate being in contrast to the empty notion of being pure being with which the Logic begins. Speculation, the Logic proposes, is not only a methodological necessity giving rise to an essentially epistemological problem, as Kant had defined it, but is also to be thought as ontological Thätigkeit proper. Rewriting speculation as an ontological concept of form, Hegel uses, among others, social and political examples to illustrate the nature of speculative thought. The surprising appearance of the state and the sexual relation in the Logic, alongside the concepts of violence, resistance, power and freedom, demonstrates that speculative reason necessarily encounters political categories and suggests that these might be exemplary of its nature. While it remains unclear, in Hegel, precisely how the unfolding of conceptual form leads to political categories, both Irigaray and Butler offer answers to this question. In doing so, they separately outline ways of thinking the ontological dimension of speculative thought: Irigaray by modifying speculation as speculation – an attempt to visualise speculation and to render its social dimensions visible; and Butler by formulating the concept of gender performativity. This thesis offers its own answer, too, by situating the emergence of speculation and performativity as philosophical concepts in the context of the history of modern gynaecology and the speculum. It reads these concepts alongside those of sexual difference, Geschlecht and gender, arguing that only in this way can speculation and performativity be thought. (shrink)