An examination of the Scientific Revolution that shows how the mechanistic world view of modern science has sanctioned the exploitation of nature, unrestrained commercial expansion, and a new socioeconomic order that subordinates women.

I. Nature as a System of Production and Reproduction 1. Animal Sociology and a Natural Economy of the Body Politic 2. The Past Is the Contested Zone 3. The Biological Enterprise II. Contested Readings: Narrative Natures 4. In the Beginning Was the Word 5. The Contest for Primate Nature 6. Reading Buchi Emecheta III. Differential Politics of Innappropriate/d Others 7. ’Gender’ for a Marxist Dictionary 8. A Cyborg Manifesto 9. Situated Knowledges 10. The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies.

In an age marked by profound rifts and tensions on both political and philosophical levels, a fundamental debate affecting virtually the whole of Western intellectual culture is currently taking place. In one camp are those who would defend traditional metaphysics and its ties to the rise of modernity; in the other camp, those who reject the possibility of foundational thought and argue for the emergence of a postmodern order. Can we still defend the notion of critical reason? How should we (...) grasp the significance of the embeddedness of language and thought in specific historical contexts? Can we rationally defend the possibility of human freedom? In this book, Fred Dallmayr goes beyond conventional discussion of these issues by tracing them back to their origins. Drawing on his unrivaled knowledge of Continental philosophy, he explores the underlying connections between the phenomenologists of the Freiburg School and the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School, thus steering a course toward a "critical ontology" that bridges reason and the world. This book will be essential reading for sociologists, philosophers, and political theorists. (shrink)

The current feminist debate over ecology raises important and timely issues about the theoretical adequacy of the four leading versions of feminism-liberal feminism, traditional Marxist feminism, radical feminism, and socialist feminism. In this paper I present a minimal condition account of ecological feminism, or ecofeminism. I argue that if eco-feminism is true or at least plausible, then each of the four leading versions of feminism is inadequate, incomplete, or problematic as a theoretical grounding for eco-feminism. I conclude that, if eco-feminism (...) is to be taken seriously, then a transformative feminism is needed that will move us beyond the four familiar feminist frameworks and make an eco-feminist perspective central to feminist theory and practice. (shrink)