ISSN:0026-1068    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9973.1996.tb00863.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract:Over the last twenty‐five years, feminist theory has been at the forefront of cultural, disciplinary, and philosophical critique. Yet feminists continue to be represented as engaged in specialized projects of concern only to women or, at best, those interested in “gender issues.” I argue that this is not merely a bit of residual sexism, but a powerful conceptual map which keeps feminist scholarship, no matter how broad its concerns, located in the region of what Simone de Beauvoir called “the Other.” I expose, critique, and explore the consequences of this construction in several contemporary intellectu

ISSN:0026-1068    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9973.1996.tb00864.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract:Many recent theorists have argued that the self is socially constituted, or “decentered” by its social world. With surprising consistency, and in various ways, this decentered self has been gendered feminine, by feminists and non‐feminists alike. In this paper I explore whether there is any special link between femininity and decenteredness. I distinguish between two different ways that the self might be decentered – by its position within a cultural order, or by its interactions and relations with particular others. I then ask whether either of these potential forms of decenteredness bear a specific connection to femininity, and I try to spell out several such connections that are suggested by contemporary feminist theoretical writings. I argue that most of these cannot be made plausible or coherent. However, I conclude that there are some senses in which feminine selves are especially decentered, although it appears that the link depends upon women's disempowered social position, and not upon anything to do with femininity as a distinctive i

ISSN:0026-1068    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9973.1996.tb00865.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract:This paper breaks ranks with those philosophers and feminists who either ignore de Beauvoir or find her passé. It argues that de Beauvoir is fundamentally a philosopher; that one of her crucial contributions to philosophy was to identify the erotic as a philosophical category; and that we best understand de Beauvoir's place in the feminist and philosophical fields if we read her as a phenomenologist who reworks Husserl's theory of intentionality and who, in this reworking, steps out of Sartre's shadow to develop an ethic of erotic generosity. This argument depends on reading de Beauvoir's texts with an ear for her two voices. It develops the idea that de Beauvoir's muted voice, in speaking of the erotic, the gift and generosity, offers us a coherent and fruitful way of thinking through the questions of embodiment, the flesh, the other and the “w

ISSN:0026-1068    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9973.1996.tb00866.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract:In this paper I take issue with Heidegger's use of the concept of death as a means of disclosing human finitude. I argue that Being‐towards‐death is inadequate to the disclosure of Dasein's thrownness which is necessary for the kind of authentic historizing that Heidegger describes and furthermore leads to a reading of authenticity which is preclusive of Being‐with‐Others, I suggest that this difficulty may be alleviated through increased attention to the opposite boundary of Dasein's existence, namely its birth. Although I do not pursue the project here of conducting a phenomenology of birth, I suggest some directions for proceeding with that task, and I illustrate that a greater emphasis on Dasein's beginning will increase the richness of our understanding of our Being‐wi

ISSN:0026-1068    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9973.1996.tb00867.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract:Several decades ago, feminists differentiated between the biologically given basis of sex identity (sex) and the socially constructed cultural practices anchored by sex identity (gender). In recent years, many feminists have challenged that distinction, arguing that biological sex is as much a social construct as are the practices comprising gender. I survey two examples from biological studies of sex identity that, by contrast (I maintain), warrant saving the concept of biologically given sex identity. The result is not antithetical to feminism, however, since these studies also suggest that sex identity proliferates beyond the rigid female/male dichotomy. If articulated carefully, this view can avoid metaphysically essentialist baggage while enriching feminist conceptions of sex identity.

ISSN:0026-1068    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9973.1996.tb00868.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract:This paper traces how the concern with political transformation is central both to arguments for and against essentialism. But while pro‐essential argumentation is concerned with identity, as a condition of change, anti‐essentialist reasoning sees change as dependent on the historical mutability of identity. Using Freud, this paper attempts to reconcile these positions through focusing first, on identification rather than identity; and second, on an unorthodox concept of essence, stressing its energetic commonality between bei

ISSN:0026-1068    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9973.1996.tb00869.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract:In this article, I propose one way of understanding the expression “feminist epistemology.” I begin from the premise that improper philosophical attention has been paid to the implications of what I callThe Fact of Preconditions for Agency:that moral and rational agents become such only through a long, deliberate, and intensive process of intervention and teaching, a process that requires commitments of time, effort and emotion on the part of other agents. I contend that this is a sufficiently important aspect of what it is to be a person that accounting for its philosophical implications may have repercussions not only for moral and political theory, but for epistemology as well. I contend further that, given the current configuration of social possibilities, a theory that acknowledges thisFactmight appropriately be deemed “feminist.”My argument is presented in four segments. In Section II, I show how such a theory could befeministby providing a discussion of categories of social identity; in Section III, I show how such a theory could beepistemologyby describing a strategy of argument from parity. In Section IV, I apply this strategy to a case from political philosophy to show why its counter‐intuitive implications do not provide good grounds for rejecting the suggested redistricting. And in Section V, I apply the same strategy to a case from epistemology to bring out how it might lead to a theory that might legitimately claim to be feminist epi

ISSN:0026-1068    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9973.1996.tb00870.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract:Feminist epistemology and feminist art theory are characterized by an opposition to modernity's separation of art, politics, and knowledge into three autonomous spheres. However, this opposition is not enough to distinguish them from other philosophies. In this paper I examine parallels between the two fields of inquiry in order to discover what makes them distinctively feminist. Feminist epistemology sees interconnections between knowledge and politics, feminist art theory sees connections between art and politics. We need to explore as well connections between art and knowledge.Compared to feminist epistemology, feminist art theory has had much less exposure, and in this paper I emphasize what the former can learn from the latter. In particular, I suggest that feminist art can answer a call made by feminist theories of knowledge for a kind of transformative knowledge. If we focus on the features of activist art explored by feminist art theories, we see that feminist art is particularly suited to engage emotions as well as the intellect. It is an example of nonpropositional knowledge, and is interactive rather than striving to pass down lessons from above. Feminist art celebrates the power of art to “make strange” and to unsettle fixed identities which can transform our understanding of the world.There is a tendency in some feminist art theory to separate the more concrete work (rediscovering women artists, recognizing women's crafts as art forms, and investigating sexist imagery in art), from the theoretical project of reenvisioning the relations of art to its sociopolitical context. I conclude by arguing that without an awareness of the dialectical relationship between the concrete and the theoretical, feminist art theories run the risk of losing their feminist specificity. They would then amount to little more than abstract pronouncements of the interconnections between art, politics, and knowledge. We need to maintain the feminist specificity of feminist politics in our theories of art and knowledge, and I use examples throughout the essay, drawn particularly from feminist activist art, with this goal in m

ISSN:0026-1068    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9973.1996.tb00871.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract:“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 recen

ISSN:0026-1068    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9973.1996.tb00872.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY