This article is an exploration of the ways in which maternal subjectivity is negotiated and defined in the context of the act or process of giving birth. As such, it is offered as a contribution to and discussion of recent feminist evaluation of childbirth management systems. Written from the partial perspective of my own experiences of pregnant and maternal embodiment, the article considers whether the ethic of the birth plan is a satisfactory representation of consumer needs and participation in contemporary (...) maternity care. By way of a selective personal account of various models of consumer-orientated and woman-centred childbirth management services that exist in Australia and New Zealand, I draw on ideas from feminist theories of corporeality and the dialogical tradition of social thought in order to rethink the ethical encounter between the labouring woman or consumer and her care provider or practitioner. (shrink)

This paper problematises the ways women’s leadership has been understood in relation to male leadership rather than on its own terms. Focusing specifically on ethical leadership, we challenge and politicise the symbolic status of women in leadership by considering the practice of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. In so doing, we demonstrate how leadership ethics based on feminised ideals such as care and empathy are problematic in their typecasting of women as being simply the other to men. We apply (...) different strategies of mimesis for developing feminist leadership ethics that does not derive from the masculine. This offers a radical vision for leadership that liberates the feminine and women’s subjectivities from the masculine order. It also offers a practical project for changing women’s working lives through relationality, intercorporeality, collective agency and ethical openness with the desire for fundamental political transformation in the ways in which women can lead. (shrink)

The central notion of my analysis is that the relational values that are privileged by the feminine, if properly addressed in school, could foster a more inclusive and embodied way of addressing the fundamentally masculine origin of knowledge, curriculum planning as well as daily school rituals and cultures. For this reason I evoke the horizon of sense as captured by Irigaray in her two-ness of the world to designate a positive place for feminine subjectivity in the relational economy of the (...) you and I, her and him. The economy of the placenta is evoked as a new form of connectedness enfolding a new kind of communication in a pedagogical interaction - where multiplicities and differences are privileged over sameness. ‘Touch’ is given primacy in the formation of a dialogue that does not appropriate but instead evokes the sharing of a desire in the two-ness of the world. (shrink)

: Drawing on Adriana Cavarero's account of natality, Guenther argues that Martin Heidegger overlooks the distinct ontological and ethical significance of birth as a limit that orients one toward an other who resists appropriation, even while handing down a heritage of possibilities that one can—and must—make one's own. Guenther calls this structure of natality Being-from-others, modifying Heidegger's language of inheritance to suggest an ethical understanding of existence as the gift of the other.

The founding of the Carnegie Institute’s Department of Embryology in 1913, alongside its systematization of embryo staging, contributed to the mechanization of developmental stages of embryo growth in the early 20th century. For a brief period in the middle of the century, attention to the detailed interrelation between embryo development and time made pre-existing ideas about pregnancy ends less determinative of ideas about that developmental course. However, the turn to the genetic scale led to the disappearance of this attention, replaced (...) by a sense of biological life as seamlessly scripted. This study examines the history of what I refer to as temporal attention: attention to the live, unfolding potentialities within vital matter. The reintroduction of temporal attention to discussions of development allows us to more fully consider non-human vitality and the experiences of beings that house or otherwise intimately intersect with that vital tissue, regardless of outcomes. (shrink)

With almost a century of historical distance between Heidegger’s retrieval of the question of being and contemporary concern about the Other, we have accrued invaluable experiences for critical leverage about what it is to ask one another questions. I offer a sketch aimed at adapting Tillich’s theological system grounded in existential questioning to today by juxtaposing him with Levinas’ philosophical ethics. Tillich and Levinas provide motive for reflection on the topic of questioning in particular. In the case of Tillich, questions (...) constitute a crucial moment in the dialogue between our contemporary existential situation and religious symbols, or in what he called the ‘method of correlation.’ Furthermore, Tillich locates in the very structure of questioning the germ of our participation in our essential nature despite existential disruption. Beneath his more provocative and prophetic discourse on the absolute desolation and height of the Other, Levinas sees in questions a different kind of possibility. It is not our essential and existential selves, but oneself and the absolutely Other who come together in the question yet retain their infinite difference. Heidegger is the immediate predecessor from whom both Tillich and Levinas inherit a predilection for reflection on questioning. What is at stake is not merely the legacy of Heidegger’s construal of questioning, but, more importantly here, the fundamental sources Tillich and Levinas posit as the origin of our questioning. (shrink)

For my invited contribution to this special issue of Religions on “Feminisms and the Study of ‘Religions,’” I focus on philosophy of religion and contestations over its relevance to the academic field of Religious Studies. I amplify some feminist philosophers’ voices—especially Pamela Sue Anderson—in corroboration with recent calls from Religious Studies scholars to diversify philosophy of religions in the direction of locating it properly within the current state of Religious Studies. I want to do this by thinking through two proposals (...) in productive tension: first, any philosophy of religions worthy of the name is intrinsically feminist; second, any philosophy of religions worthy of the name is intrinsically traditional. I want to use the productive tension between these two to illuminate ways calls for broadening the field can be enhanced when such calls are seen as both feminist and traditional. I proceed as follows. First, I note three instances of explicitly feminist work in philosophy of religions that do not suffer from the same narrowness as so-called “traditional” philosophy of religion. Religious Studies critics of philosophy of religion overstate the case in claiming feminist philosophy of religion is too narrow. Second, I develop a useful distinction between the concepts of “tradition” and “institution” to locate forces of oppression more precisely in dynamics of institutionalization so that we might rehabilitate tradition as a resource for combating institutionalized oppressiveness. I do this in response to the hegemony of current philosophers of religion who claim to speak about “the traditional god.” And third, I briefly coordinate four topics in religions from diverse feminist perspectives to help refine paths of inquiry for future philosophy of religions that is both feminist and traditional. My hope is that these clarify a philosophy of religions renewed through feminisms—moving from fringe to normative topics in institutionalized philosophy of religion, maintaining focus on actually existing human beings rather than hypothetically existing transcendent entities. I turn our attention to technical issues surrounding the status of mae chis, Buddhist laity who seek monastic recognition in Theravada. I turn our attention to struggles over fitting criteria for leadership between Mary Magdalene and Peter in early Christian contexts. I have us listen to Muslim women who seek to speak for themselves, many of whom describe Muhammad as a feminist. I have us listen to Anderson’s criticism of arguments about the (non)existence of a god and her promotion of human yearning as guided by regulative ideals as a pointed challenge to institutionalized philosophy of religion. In all these ways and more, feminist challenges to institutionalized philosophy of religion further contribute to diversifying field. (shrink)