Deconstructing the Feminine looks beyond impasses of binary thought and essentialist conceptions of women and the feminine from a contemporary perspective. With a multicentred and complex approach, and an ongoing dialogue with Freud, Leticia Glocer Fiorini addresses questions relating to love, sexual desire, maternity, beauty, and the passing of time by reconsidering the gender binary and underlying power relations. Glocer Fiorini's work highlights current debates concerning women, the feminine, and sexual difference, as well as discussing topics which have caused controversy (...) throughout the history of the psychoanalytic movement. The updated and expanded edition distinguishes between the concept of sexual difference and the category of 'difference' as it applies at various heterogenous levels and includes new approaches reflecting on the 'feminine enigma', hysteria, feminine masochism, and masculinity. Deconstructing the Feminine will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in clinical practice and in training, as well as to scholars of gender, sexuality, and women's studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Womb as Synecdoche: Introduction to Irigaray’s Deconstruction of Plato’s CaveKristi L. Krumnow (bio)“Le prisonnier n’était déjà plus dans une matrice mais dans une caverne, tentative de figuration, de métaphorisation, de la cavité utérine.”(347)1Entering the used bookstore in a university city not too far from Paris, I was anxious to find a copy of a certain Luce Irigaray book. When asked, the bookstore owner politely mocked me about wanting (...) one of her books. What could I possibly want that for? After all, the study of Irigaray was very popular in the 1970s and 1980s, but today, “C’est bien passé, Madame,” he enlightened me. While the bookshop owner was correct in assessing a time frame of the academic popularity of Irigaray’s work, I would argue that the work she did at the onset of 1970s feminism is no more passé than the philosophers she deconstructed. For this reason, I read Irigaray’s work alongside the work of founder-philosopher-father Plato, in order to highlight the timeless relevance of a supposed irrelevant work as “passé” as Luce Irigaray’s Spéculum de l’autre femme. In this analysis, I argue that the negligence of her reading of Plato’s cave and subsequent amnesia of it clearly substantiate her steadfast claim that masculine universality eradicates the feminine and does so quite ironically and even jarringly, as shown by the critical dismissal of Plato’s cave in Spéculum.2Irigaray’s work does indeed come out of a French national context highly invested in the studies of antiquity and, by the postwar ’60s and ’70s, in the questioning of social, cultural, and political institutions (Egéa-Kuehne 200; Leonard, “Irigaray’s Cave” 159–64; Leonard, “Classics” 143; Leonard,Athens 1–14), but this historical fact does not marginalize her work nor subject it to a mere temporal estrangement of feminism, as the male bookstore owner had insinuated. It certainly is a point of fact that Irigaray questioned the father of Western philosophical truth. In fact, reconsidering Plato was tempting to someone, like Luce Irigaray, invested in cultural and academic revolutions, someone who questioned and doubted, like other cultural revolutionaries3 of the late 1960s and early ’70s. The bookstore owner seemed to be saying that the tide has returned to normal, that is, the “normal” that signifies complacency, the “normal” that no longer questions the supposed truth-bearers. He seemed to be pontificating, “it is no longer status quo not to be status quo,” or more precisely, “The revolution is over. Now, go home, girls.” [End Page 69]Spéculum de l’autre femme, the WholeLuce Irigaray’s work Spéculum de l’autre femme [Speculum of the Other Woman]4 is anything but status quo. In an idiosyncratic prose indicative of her deconstructive project, Irigaray daringly reads untouched historical and philosophical works, ones that for millennia have remained a critical and foundational part of Western discourse. Her methodology is complex and knotty because the rhetoric used twists and winds through its own words, sentences, scenes, and discourse, thereby intentionally effecting an implosion within language.5 While on the one hand she innocently participates in an evaluation of Platonism that Derrida made fashionable a few years prior with “deconstruction” of “La Pharmacie de Platon” (Leonard, Athens 190), what she unveils by rereading Plato’s work à la Derrida is the proliferation and predominance of certain philosophical images and ideas. She names this proliferation “patriarchy,” referencing the “phallus” as the symbol of patriarchy and its dominant masculine discourse, thereby calling every thing masculine-related “phallologic,” all of which are neologisms borrowed and employed from either Derrida or her teacher Lacan. Inevitably, she centers her whole argument on certain Western texts as the cause and consequent advancement of the masculine. Spéculum appears daunting in its 462-page French original,6 although no less truncated, albeit ordered, footnoted, and proportionally spaced, in the English translation (Gill 9). In order to facilitate comprehension of a charged and impressive topic, Irigaray relies on images to elucidate her reading by employing ambitious albeit ancient Greek philosophical metaphors of light, sun, and vision. As she does... (shrink)

ABSTRACT Social media has given way to information and prosumption-oriented discursive fields wherein individuals construct their own social identities. Although interactivity, multimodality, user-centeredness and accessibility are the unique aspects of digital media but the fact that digital media as effective spaces for representing extreme self/other representation while being anonymous and free from following social norms, can cause dysfunctional social behaviours such as cyber hate. Mirroring the normative notions of femininity, masculinity and gender stereotype allows groups and individuals to connect (...) and express similar manifestations of hate, which, often result in the emergence of a ‘discursive spiral of hate’, misogyny and sexism. This paper draws on the important caveats discussed around Social Media-Critical Discourse Studies understanding of the contemporary digital discourses to deconstruct the complex relations between gender, hate speech and celebrities’ discourses on social media. In particular, how Lena Dunham, American celebrity, portrays herself on her Instagram page by going against the hegemonic views and how the audiences, i.e. the digital prosumers perceive that portrayal. Analysing 2000 user-generated comments deconstruct how women are required to suppress their feeling and limit their authentic online presentation to maintain the outward countenance that matches the stereotypical gender roles in audiences’ state of mind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Homo-Ness” and the Fear of FemininityPatrick Paul Garlinger (bio)Leo Bersani. Homos. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995.Homos is a disturbing book, in the most literal sense of the word, for Leo Bersani’s goal throughout much of his text is precisely to disturb some of the widely accepted precepts of queer theory and gender performativity. As if the title alone were not enough to signal the text’s contestatory tone, the first sentence (...) of the prologue boldly declares that “no one wants to be called a homosexual” [1]. While many scholars might disagree with such an overwhelming generalization (myself included), it nonetheless reminds us that homosexuality continues to occupy an ambiguous position within contemporary society, an ambiguity perhaps most powerfully punctuated by the recent failure of gays and lesbians to secure legal access to the institution of marriage. In the first three chapters, Bersani interrogates topics such as gay identity, AIDS, queer theory, and sadomasochism. In the final chapter, “The Gay Outlaw,” he addresses the literary representation of homosexuality through radical rereadings of Gide, Proust, and Genet. Although no one single thesis coherently unites these chapters, a healthy spirit of suspicion begs the thorny question of what it means to be gay, and in so doing, explores the tenability of identity politics. Rejecting a politics of opposition that would bind our theorizations to the very heteronormative paradigms that they are attempting to resist, Bersani argues instead for ways to “explore the links between a specific sexuality, psychic mobility, and a potentially radical politics” [56].Identity, for Bersani (and other critics following Foucault), is an operation of power, a “disciplinary project” that is a tool at the service of identification and containment [3]. 1 Seen as essentialist, universalizing, or ontological, identity has received a bad rap. Indeed, the notion of a sexual identity as a fixed category invariably fails in its performative capacity to capture the myriad array of sexual acts that a given individual may feel compelled to perform. The failure of identity, however, should not lead to its elimination from our theoretical frameworks, Bersani proposes. He claims instead that the critique of identity in feminist and queer theory is ultimately destructive rather than liberating. At the [End Page 57] source of this dismissal of identity is the fear that visibility will result in “discipline and punishment,” but Bersani argues quite convincingly that this retreat from the domain of the visible colludes with the homophobic goal of eliminating homosexuality. On the other hand, Bersani acknowledges that identity and visibility are not wholly benevolent either: “[o]nce we agreed to be seen, we agreed to be policed” [12]. Visibility allows for domination and even annihilation, a possibility that Bersani considers in his discussion of AIDS, in which visibility can be seen as providing straight America with a front-row seat at the spectacle of gay death [21]. Nevertheless, that is a risk that must be taken. While not proposing a return to regulatory identity categories, Bersani wants to return to a gay specificity to prevent gays and lesbians from “performing” themselves out of existence. Responding to David Halperin and Judith Butler, for example, he argues that the rejection of essentializing identities as a mode of resisting homophobia erases the very agent of that resistance [56]. Fearful that the attacks on the notion of identity in the academy have simply collaborated in the marginalization of homosexuality, Homos attempts to offer “homo-ness” as an “anti-identitarian identity” [101], one that risks the pitfalls of essentialism and simultaneously transcends the limits of sexual orientation.Nowhere is his desire to rethink identity more clear than in his trenchant critique of the dismantling of gender by critics such as Butler, Monique Wittig, and Michael Warner. Suspicious of their deconstructive strategies, he argues that the undoing of the categories of gender inevitably leads to the elimination of homosexuality. The critique of gender in discussions of sexuality endangers any specificity that same-sex sexuality might have. For example, he writes, “‘men’ and ‘women’ in Wittig’s radical argument are political creations designed to give a biological mandate to social arrangements in which one group of human beings oppresses another” [38]. Within the social domain of... (shrink)

It is difficult to overstate music's persistent and uneasy relationship with homosexuality in Western society. Associated with femininity for centuries, particularly in North America, participation in music has been believed to emasculate and thus homosexualize men and boys. The linking of music to women and emotion (as opposed to men and reason) contributes to the conflation of misogyny and homophobia in North American society generally and music and music education particularly. One effect of music's conflicted relationship with and to (...) homosexuality for lesbians and gay men is to "disappear" them in both professions. As a function of disappeared positionalities, subject positions of homosexualities and potentialities of creating lives worth living are also disappeared. I explore ontological effects of disappeared in the world and music and music education, and reconceptualize "disappeared" in terms of Jacques Derrida's concept of "under erasure"—sous rature—in ways that may signal other ontological potentialities. (shrink)

Mutual feedback between human-made environments and facets of thought throughout history has yielded two myths: the Garden and the Citadel. Both myths correspond to Jung’s feminine and masculine collective subconscious, as well as to Nietzsche’s premise of Apollonian and Dionysian impulses in art. Nietzsche’s premise suggests, furthermore, that the feminine myth of the Garden is time-bound whereas the masculine myth of the Citadel, or the Ideal City, constitutes a spatial deportment. Throughout history the two myths have continually molded the built (...) environment and thought, but the myth of the Ideal City – from Plato to Descartes to modernity – came to dominate city-form and ensuing aspects of contemplation. This relationship seems to have shifted during the twentieth century. Intellectual dispositions have begun to be largely nurtured by an incongruous city-form emerging from the gap between the incessant promise for an automated, well-functioning city, on the one hand, and looming alienation, coupled with the factual, malfunctioning city, on the other hand. Urban decay, a persisting and time-bound urban event that is a byproduct of this configuration, suggests the ascent of the Garden myth in post-modern city-form. (shrink)

In the post-feminist age the fact that 'woman' finds herself deprived of her 'essence' only confirms, paradoxically, a very ancient state of affairs: 'woman' has never been able to define herself in any other way than in terms of the violence done to her. Violence alone confers her being - whether it is domestic and social violence or theoretical violence. The critique of 'essentialism' (i.e. there is no specifically feminine essence) proposed by both gender theory and deconstruction is just (...) one more twist in the ontological negation of the feminine. (shrink)

Analyzes Aristotle's natural philosophy and metaphysics from a feminist, deconstructive, psychoanalytic perspective, showing that Aristotelian teleology relies on the disparagement of chance and the feminine simultaneously and finding resources therein for contemporary feminist thought.

This essay considers the social effects of the strategy of "speaking out" about sexual violence to transform rape culture. I articulate the paradox that women's identification as victims in the public sphere reinscribes the gendered norms that enable the victimization of women. I suggest we create a more diversified public narrative of sexual violence and sexuality within the context of the movement against sexual violence in order to deconstruct masculinist power in feminine victimization.

This new edition of Drucilla Cornell's highly acclaimed book includes a substantial new introduction by the author, which situates the book within current feminist debates. In Beyond Accommodation, Drucilla Cornell offers a highly original vision of what feminist theory can give contemporary women. She challenges essentialist and naturalist accounts of feminine sexuality, arguing that any attempt to affirm woman's value and difference by either emphasizing her maternal role or repudiating the feminine only entraps women, once again, in a container that (...) curtails feminine sexual difference, legitimates the masculine fantasy of woman, and reinstates, rather than dismantles, the gender hierarchy. (shrink)

Creating a snapshot of current thinking about psychoanalysis, this lively collection examines the legacy of Freud and Lacan. Through provocative and penetrating arguments, the contributors take psychoanalysis to task for 0ts dark view of human nature, theoretical sorcery, devaluation of femininity, self-referentiality, discipleship, negativity, ignorance of history and more. The essays also examine the complex relationships between Freudian and Lacanian theory and philosophy, feminism, anthropology, communications theory, deconstruction, Foucauldian genealogy and medical history. The outstanding list of contributors includes (...) Paul Roazen, Francois Roustang, John Forrester, Rodolphe Gasche, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen and Jacques Derrida. (shrink)

This article had several purposes. First, I wanted to highlight the work of Esther Bubley, an American photographer whose documentary work for the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information in the early 1940s is largely unknown. Second, I wanted to show how her images complicated and undermined the traditional themes of Depression era photography in the United States, Third, by looking at her images of women, my intention was to reveal how she worked against depictions of (...) class='Hi'>femininity during the Depression, and in confrontation with one-dimensional portrayals of women as America entered the Second World Wan In conclusion, I contend that Bubley's images were fundamentally portrayals of working-class femininity represented as being an individual – rather than a symbolic – experience. Most specifically in the images I have examined, Bubley deconstructs an ideological image of female working-class identity which was central to documentary photography in 1930s America. For example, unlike in photographs by Dorothea Lange, Bubley did not portray working-class women as metaphoric sites of passive endurance which would eventually lead to the rejuvenation of American nationalism. Rather, she showed working-class women to be potentially subversive in the ways they defined themselves against the legacy of 1930s photography and in opposition to the ideological impositions of wartime propaganda. As a result, Bubley's images of working-class women waiting in bars for lonely soldiers, or looking for a future beyond the confines of their boarding house existences while remaining outside the middle-class boundaries defined by capitalist consumerism, set out a pictorial foundation for working-class female identity which exists beyond the context in which the photographs were taken. Consequently, Bubley's work highlights individual self-identity, personal empowerment and self-conscious desire in working-class women which was – and still is – confined and repressed by economic disadvantage and systematic marginalization from an American society defined from a middle-class point of view. (shrink)

To determine whether or not Buffy Sommers represents a successful subversion of femininity, I draw extensively upon seminal works in feminist phenomenology, which describe feminine embodiment as a collection of disciplinary practices that produce a subordinate subject. In sections one and two below, I use these aspects of feminine embodiment to analyze how Buffy the Vampire Slayer both reflects and challenges these norms, concluding that Buffy represents a gender hybrid, one who melds feminine and masculine being-in-the-world. Then, in section (...) three, I examine what this depiction of gender hybridity offers for ordinary young women, that is, those without the mystically endowed powers of the Slayer, through a deconstruction of the episode “Helpless” (3.12). I argue that, instead of presenting a “docile body” inspiring sexual objectification and victimization, Buffy the Vampire Slayer offers viewers a representation of female resilience. (shrink)

The feminist significance of the Goddess Kali lies in an indigenous worshipful attitude of “Kali-bhakti” rather than in the mere image of the Goddess. The peculiar mother-child motif at the core of the poet Ramprasad Sen's Kali-bhakti represents, I argue, not only a dramatic reconstruction of femininity but of selfhood in general. The spiritual goal of a devotee here involves a deconstruction of “master identity” necessary also for ethico-political struggles for justice.

The "ruin" of the transcendental tradition -- Freud and the transcendental relation -- Derrida: Differance and the "plural logic of the aporia" -- The im-possibility of the psyche -- The death drive and the im-possibility of psychoanalysis -- Institutional psychoanalysis and the paradoxes of archivization -- The Lacanian real -- Sexual difference -- Feminine sexuality -- The transcendental relation in Lancanian psychoanalysis -- The death drive and ethical action -- The "talking cure": language and psychoanalysis.

If, as Anthony Elliot argues, `the [symbolic] law of the father triumphs over the loss of the maternal body' in the making of men, how is the masculine body possible? The answer would appear to be, on condition that it becomes implacably hard, disciplined, an object of work. On the other hand, excessive interest in the body, as in the case of bodybuilding, would appear also to betoken narcissism and femininity. Drawing on the notions of the `hard man', the (...) significance of muscle, bodybuilding and the case of `Iron' Mike Tyson, this article attempts to come to grips with the complex and contradictory relations among desire, anxiety and the embodiment of masculinity. Specifically, this entails focusing on the deconstruction of discourses relating to muscle and `hardness', and on how identifications with such discourses are made and sustained. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 35.1 (2005) 71-98MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Hospitality after the Death of GodTracy McNultyPierre Klossowski's fiction has been only sporadically published in English, and largely dismissed as perverse erotica or soft-core porn. When his 1965 trilogy Les lois de l'hospitalité was partially translated in English (under the title Roberte, ce soir & The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes), its Library of Congress classification characterized it simply as "erotic (...) fiction—French." Even in France, Klossowski has become the very signifier of perversion. His artwork graces the cover of Serge André's L'imposture perverse and of numerous erotic novels, he has been "diagnosed" as a pervert by writers on both sides of the Atlantic, and unironic readers of his Sade mon prochain hail him as Sade's disciple and heir.1Admittedly, the larger stakes of Klossowski's work are easily obscured by its free adaptation of the stock themes of libertine literature. His fictional works, like his visual compositions (essentially representations of rape scenes, often on historical themes—Diana and Actaeon, the Rape of Lucretia), explore the conflict between a woman's chaste moral attitude and her gradual surrender to an assailant's advances. The Laws of Hospitality concerns the erotic awakening of "hospitality" in a woman, which exposes a contradiction within her moral character and reveals her symbolic identity to be without foundation. Its protagonist Octave, who bears more than a passing resemblance to his creator, is a collector of artworks that eroticize the moment of moral hesitation experienced by women submitting to the sexual advances of a chance stranger—or even a "spiritual" apparition. His "laws of hospitality" are the fruit of his desire to experience this operation firsthand; they name a practice wherein the master of the house "offers" his wife to fortuitous guests, in order to savor the moment of her surrender.However, the stakes of Klossowski's "perverse" meditations are very different from the Sadeian project of uprooting religious morality. Sade challenges the patriarchal and religious authorities of his day by demonstrating that the paternal signifier on which their laws are based is without foundation. In proving that the law cannot hold [End Page 71] up against the repeated assaults of libertinage, he mounts a systematic deconstruction of the symbolic order of language by the real of jouissance. But although Klossowski may share Sade's perverse drive to "humiliate the law with the object,"2 his target is not the signifier as such, but rather the imaginary consistency afforded by what he calls the "grammatical fiction of the 'I,'" the illusion of autonomous personhood. The "object" he confronts it with is not the natural "truth" of jouissance, but rather the feminine object who disrupts the identity of the "master" who offers her.Klossowski's reflections on the special status of femininity in Enlightenment culture—at once marginal and singularly "extimate"—have never been fully appreciated, despite their enormous interest for the study of culture. In a way unique among contemporary authors, Klossowski sheds light on Jacques Lacan's enigmatic insight that the cultural importance of the feminine object consists in its sublimated status as an "object raised to the dignity of the Thing" [Lacan 112]. His fiction underscores the close ties between the feminine and what Freud called das Ding, the Thing uncannily internal to subjectivity that Lacan later identified with the function of the Nebenmensch, as the apotheosis of the Christian idea of the prochain, or neighbor [Lacan 151–52].Although Klossowski's erotic scenario invites comparisons with Sade's and Fourier's utopian calls to dissolve the privative boundaries between subjects, what he understands by "hospitality" is not the abolition of personal identity, but rather the staging of its internal contradiction.Hospitality, at the Limits of the LawThe act of hospitality—whose theological and philosophical origins this former Dominican novice and Latin scholar was intimately acquainted with—concerns a very particular tension. Etymologically, the host is the "master," the one who "eminently personifies" identity: not only his own identity, but also that of the group in whose... (shrink)

시몬 드 보부아르가 현대 페미니즘 철학의 시원을 이루었다는 데는 이론의 여지가 없지만, 오늘날 보부아르의 페미니즘은 시대에 맞지 않은 철 지난 이론으로 취급되면서 거의 논의의 대상이 되고 있지 못하다. 물론 그 이유는 ‘여성성의 인정’과 ‘여성성의 해체’라는 대안적 패러다임이 페미니즘 논의를 주도하고 있기 때문이다. 그러나 보부아르는 사르트르와 구별되는 독창적 실존주의 철학을 발전시켰을 뿐만 아니라, ‘여성성의 인정’이나 ‘여성성의 해체’를 주장하는 새로운 페미니즘의의 한계를 넘어설 수 있는 유용한 개념 틀을 제공한다. 본 논문에서는 이를 보여주기 위해 첫째, 보부아르의 실존주의를 윤리학이란 관점에서 소개함으로써 사르트르의 실존주의와 차별화시킬 (...) 것이다. 둘째, 이러한 시각에 따라????제2의 성????을 재구성함으로써 보부아르가 제시한 실존주의적 페미니즘이 무엇인지를 밝힐 것이다. 셋째, ‘여성성의 인정’과 ‘여성성의 해체’라는 입장에 대해 보부아르가 어떤 장점을 가질 수 있는지를 보여줄 것이다. (shrink)

This article explores rage in the context of Korean feminist movements. Rage as a corporeal force can be combined with other emotional modalities to achieve consistency, durability, efficiency, and intensity. These modalities are interdependent, and rage, in relation to indignation, becomes a revolutionary affect that changes power dynamics. Women's indignant rage challenges the patriarchal value system and increases women's agency. Korean women deploy the politics of rage to “Escape the Corset” and free themselves from the oppressive devices—patriarchal family structures and (...) traditional notions of femininity and beauty—that oppress women's bodies. The “Escape the Corset” movement, driven by indignant rage, materializes the possibility of resistance and creation that puts an end to the phallic economy of desire and meaning, and it elaborates a new modality of women's life cycle and relation to the world. Unlike indignant rage, a feminist revolutionary tool, rage combined with hatred is a conservative affect that annihilates the possibility of change and maintains the status quo. The politics of rage promotes a deconstruction of the patriarchal system, joining with a subversive and cathartic joy that contains hope for a more just future. (shrink)

: The feminist significance of the Goddess Kali lies in an indigenous worshipful attitude of "Kali-bhakti" rather than in the mere image of the Goddess. The peculiar mother-child motif at the core of the poet Ramprasad Sen's Kali-bhakti represents, I argue, not only a dramatic reconstruction of femininity but of selfhood in general. The spiritual goal of a devotee here involves a deconstruction of "master identity" necessary also for ethico-political struggles for justice.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:158 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. María Fernanda Olarte-Sierra and Tania Pérez-Bustos Careful Speculations: Toward a Caring Science of Forensic Genetics in Colombia Feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS) has recently opened up the question of care as a set of practices related to the sustainability of life.1 The field of feminist studies more broadly has extensively 1. This literature mostly comes from (...) Northern contexts and started to flourish with the seminal work of María Puig de la Bellacasa, “Matters of Care in Technoscience: Assembling Neglected Things,” Social Studies of Science 41, no. 1 (2010): 85–106. This essay gathers scattered feminist STS reflections on these issues and looks at them through the lens of care, including authors such as Susan Leigh Star, Donna Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, Hilary Rose, and Annemarie Mol. The concept of care orienting this exercise of rereading these authors is proposed by Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto, “Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring,” in Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women’s Lives, ed. Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 35–62. Before and after that essay came out, Puig de la Bellacasa published several other papers related to this issue, including “Touching Technologies, Touching Visions. The Reclaiming of Sensorial Experience and the Politics of Speculative Thinking,” Subjectivity 28, no. 1 (2009): 297–315; “‘Nothing Comes without Its World’: Thinking with Care,” The Sociological Review 60, no. 2 (2012): 197– 216; “Ethical Doings in Naturecultures,” Ethics, Place & Environment 13, no. 2 (2010): 151–69; “Making Time for Soil: Technoscientific Futurity and the Pace of Care,” Social Studies of Science 45, no. 5 (2015): 691–716; and Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017). All these publications have been widely cited by other authors, particularly in a special issue of Social Studies of Science on the politics of care published in 2015 (volume 45, issue 5). Other examples María Fernanda Olarte-Sierra and Tania Pérez-Bustos 159 studied how care, and associated practices such as transnational care chains, are feminized and precarious—involving an ethos embodied by those who actively work to maintain or preserve another’s life. Feminists have focused on the politics of care embedded in invisible jobs related to aesthetics, domestic work, child and elder care, and sexual activities and see all these tasks as related to the reproduction of life and culture.2 Central to this conceptualization of care is the understanding that these jobs are typically women’s work. There is a common association between this care and notions of “motherhood” as it relates to values such as compassion, love, and respect, which have been constructed as universally feminine. However, the main goal of feminist studies of care has been to deconstruct this association, particularly because it is imbued with the white, wealthy, heteronormative ideal of femininity that underlies a gendered division of labor. The reality is that class, race, nation, and gender determine who cares for whom, whether or not labor is paid, and to what extent care is exploitative. One strand of recent research problematizes both valorizing and criticizing care practices on the grounds that they are based on a rather homogeneous understanding of the feminine. Instead, these scholars seek to resurrect valuable feminist work without relying on essentialism of authors contributing to this discussion on care as an ethos for science include Ruth Müller and Martha Kenney, “Agential Conversations: Interviewing Postdoctoral Life Scientists and the Politics of Mundane Research Practices,” Science as Culture 24, no. 4 (2014): 537–59; Charis Thompson, Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013); and Carrie Friese, “Realizing Potential in Translational Medicine: The Uncanny Emergence of Care as Science,” Current Anthropology 54 (S7): S129-S138. 2. From Latin America, see, for example, Luz Gabriela Arango Gaviria, Adira Amaya Urquijo, Tania Pérez-Bustos, and Javier Pineda Duque, eds., Género y cuidado: teorías, escenarios y políticas (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2018); Pascale Molinier and Luz Grabriela Arango Gaviria, eds., El trabajo y... (shrink)

Describes what the author sees as a suppression of the feminine in Western culture, technology, and philosophy and opens a feminist postmodern space from which fresh differences may emerge. This title explores underdeveloped themes in American and Canadian feminism. It offers a deconstruction of the phallocentric dichotomies of nature and culture.

Reuven Leigh provides the first in-depth introduction to the pioneering philosophy of Rabbi Shalom Schneersohn. Bringing him into dialogue with key continental philosophers Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva, this book reveals how Schneersohn's views anticipated many prominent themes in 20th-century thought. Shalom Schneersohn (1860-1920) was the fifth Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. He was a traditional, kabbalistic thinker and yet, beyond mysticism, he wrote extensively on speech, gender and the body. So why is he not better known? Leigh (...) begins by uncovering and contesting numerous scholarly assumptions that have operated to exclude traditional rabbinic thinkers from contemporary philosophical debates. Seeking to correct this, this book offers a close reading of Schneersohn's 1898 discourses. With the disruption of traditional binary structures being the dominant theme pervading Schneersohn's work, Leigh challenges Levinas' controversial ideas on the feminine. Examining Schneersohn on language, too, he highlights how Derridean deconstruction involves a more positive approach to presence that was already anticipated in the writings of Schneersohn. And from the disruption of the hierarchy of signification to the semiotic aspect of language and the maternal body, this book demonstrates how Schneersohn foreshadows a number of Kristeva's central philosophical concerns. A wide-ranging and inclusive volume, The Philosophy of Rabbi Shalom Schneersohn demonstrates not only how forward-thinking Schneersohn's ideas were a century ago, but how relevant they still are today. (shrink)

In 1970, the Italian feminist Carla Lonzi published her now-classic polemic urging women to “spit on Hegel”. Disregarding her advice, many subsequent feminist theorists and philosophers have engaged substantially with Hegel's thought, and a wide variety of feminist readings of Hegel have sprung up. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of these different feminist criticisms and interpretations of Hegel. In introducing these various interpretations, I will show how they reflect a range of divergent feminist approaches to (...) the history of philosophy as a whole. My aim is not only to describe but also to evaluate these approaches, with respect to their capacity to generate insightful and productive readings of Hegel's philosophy. I shall argue that what I will call the “essentialist” feminist approach to Hegel is the most fruitful, doing most to illuminate the contours of his thought and to open up new and creative ways of reading his works.To anticipate, in surveying the various feminist interpretations of Hegel, I will classify them as reflecting four different types of feminist approach to the history of philosophy. The first, “extensionist” approach draws upon the history of philosophy for conceptual resources to understand and explain women's social situation. The second approach is more critical, tracing the pervasiveness of “masculinist” assumptions and biases in the history of philosophy. To call views “masculinist” is to say that they uphold systematic and hierarchical contrasts between masculinity and femininity, contrasts which need not be explicit but may be sustained through contrasts between other ostensibly neutral concepts which actually have tacit gender connotations. This critical approach generates an overwhelmingly negative picture of the philosophical tradition. The third, “essentialist” approach complicates this picture, recovering and highlighting the strands within historical texts which revalorise concepts or items that are given feminine connotations. These often overlooked strands oppose the dominant masculinist tendencies in texts by assigning equal importance and value to “symbolically feminine” concepts. However, proponents of the fourth, “deconstructive” approach object that essentialist readings of philosophical texts accept and reinforce patterns of gender symbolism which feminists ought to challenge. Deconstructive feminists seek to expose and exacerbate the instability within these patterns of gender symbolism by tracing how philosophical texts continuously undermine the gender contrasts present within them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.3 (1999) 81-101 [Access article in PDF] Sex without Sex, Queering the Market, the Collapse of the Political, the Death of Difference, and AIDS: Hailing Judith Butler Brett Levinson It is interesting to note that in Judith Butler's study of the social construction of sex, Gender Trouble (as well as in the sequel, Bodies That Matter), one finds barely a trace of sex. Or to put matters more (...) bluntly: in Butler's study of gender critiques that avoid or dismiss the matters of hetero- and homosexuality, in her examination of the relationship of gayness and lesbianism to feminism, and in her exposition of a politics of queerness--as to fucking, not a word. This omission is not tangential to Gender Trouble. It determines Butler's entire undertaking. 1. The (In)difference of Performance By illustrating that sex, like gender, is a social construction, Butler strives to tear not sex but both sex and gender from biological essentialism. For as Butler insists, as soon as we imagine sex (woman/man) as naturally given, and gender (feminine/masculine) as a product of social forces, we fall into the very gender essentialism that we seemingly called into question. This is because the sex/gender binary makes sex the ground of gender: a woman may be masculine or feminine, and she may subvert the social norms that demand that women act in a certain manner. But throughout all of these gender reversals, she remains a woman. Her behavior, therefore, is either far from her sex (if she is subversive) or close to it (if she conforms). But in either case, it is measured in terms of that sex, which stands as the essence or foundation of the conduct. Hence, within such a discourse, gender stereotypes do not actually emerge as social (thereby deconstructible) constructs since the substructure (sex) of their edifice is given prior to production.This thesis, which ultimately reveals that the sex/gender split reproduces the woman/man binary--the foundation of sexism--opens the way for one of Butler's most renowned interventions: her theory of performativity. Butlerian performance traces the intersection of Derrida's concept of mimesis and Foucault's understanding of power. Derrida argues that if a mark (in writing) or a sound (in speech) is to form part of a language, it must be iterable. Language hinges on social conventions, and social conventions on repetition, ritual. Repetition, therefore, does not follow (from) a pregiven [End Page 81] [Begin Page 83] sign but is a condition of its possibility: a sign must be repeatable before it is a sign. 1Derrida often translates these ideas into an analysis of "the citation," a fact Butler fully exploits. An articulation, Derrida argues, must be a priori citable (again, iterable) if it is to function as an articulation, as a "speech act." This means that deviance, miscitation, recontextualization, and the possible transformation or loss of an enunciation--any or all of which could occur via a citation--belong essentially to that enunciation. The repetitions that yield rituals, habits, and then norms are the same iterations that undermine those norms. But this is true not only for speech. It holds as well for the law: the citing, execution, reading, writing, and acknowledgment of the law, hence the possibility of the law's shift and even disappearance, pertain to the law's groundwork.Gender Trouble posits patriarchy and compulsive heterosexuality as two such citable laws. And as laws, they are powerful but not inevitable. Indeed, because the law of normalcy harbors its own deviance as a condition of its public emergence or deployment, this normalcy opens the way for its own transgression. One is indeed subject to the law of the norm. But this subjection cannot not grant the very alternative agency/subjectivity it strives to suppress.Hence for Butler, queer types such as the "femme" or the "butch," as they perhaps flaunt (through dress, bodily image, or public demonstration) the constructed character of their own sexual identities, recite and dis-cover the constructed, artificial... (shrink)

This article seeks to identify and address the normative void that resides at the heart of postmodernist-feminist theory, and to propose a philosophical framework – beyond postmodernism, but incorporating its central insights – for thinking through the normative questions with which feminists are inevitably confronted in their engagements with positive law. Two varieties of postmodernist-feminism are identified and critically analysed: the ‘corporeal feminism’ of Elizabeth Grosz and Judith Butler, which seeks to ground feminist critical practice in the irruptive capacities of (...) the material body considered as an arte fact of social construction; and the deconstructionist feminism of Drucilla Cornell, for whom ‘the feminine’ is an indeterminate but disruptive force beyond its construction in law and in other social sites. The first component of the argument elaborated here is that each of these approaches ultimately reduces to a form of aestheticism which is incapable of generating a worthwhile and workable feminist approach to the restructuring of politics and law. The second component of the argument involves a return to aesthetics, in particular to the philosophical aesthetics of Kant’s Critique of Judgement. Kant’s aesthetic philosophy, it will be suggested, yields a framework of concepts which, duly re-manipulated, could speak to the very concerns that have inspired postmodernist-feminism: how to attend to (bodily) particularity while avoiding the dangers associated with ‘essentialism’; and how to theorise the propensity of the unrepresentable power of the feminine to exceed both embodied human capacities and the confining rein of socially privileged rationalities. Crucially, however it also responds to a set of preoccupations – those of the feminist lawyer – that cannot be accommodated by postmodernism: how to translate embodied experience into (legal) norms; generalise from the particular; seek consensus; and codify an endless potentiality in the form of law. (shrink)

This paper argues for the active participation of women in philosophy of education and the importance of their sexually differentiated positions in pluralising knowledge. Drawing on the philosophical work of Luce Irigaray it explains how the feminine as other, has been symbolised as a dark epistemological cave from which those seeking universal truths ought to escape. Within such phallogo-centric systems of knowledge, women’s thoughts have been excluded from philosophy, and the feminine became un-representable as philosophical. This scenario raises important political (...) and ethical questions related to women’s place in philosophy of education and calls for deconstructive strategies aimed at using feminised locations to challenge phallogocentrism. The paper argues that a simple inclusion of women’s thoughts or the replacement a masculine-dominated philosophy with feminine ones do not suffice to disrupt the order that establishes what counts as philosophy. It therefore explores how sexual difference can rethink the traditional tenets of philosophy. The idea that women need a place that they can call home for such practices and whether this space can really differentiate knowledge is debatable and controversial. In considering this possibility, however, sexual difference is not considered a subject for thought in philosophy of education but a question that rethinks and engenders it. (shrink)

Women's games refers to a category of games developed and marketed exclusively for the consumption of women and girls in the Japanese gaming industry. Essentially gender-specific games comparable to the `games for girls' proposed by the girls' game movement in the USA, Japanese women's games are significant for their history, influence and function as a site for female gamers to play out various female identities and romantic fantasies within diverse generic structures. This article will first review previous research and literature (...) on women and gaming, analyze the key issues raised in the discourse concerning femininity and electronic games, outline the history and development of women's games, explain how multiple factors contributed to the appeal of women's games by analyzing the games Angelique and Harukanaru Tokino Nakade3 and, lastly, discuss the meaning and significance of women's games in the larger context of women and gaming. The 1994 game Angelique succeeded in establishing a loyal and close-knit fan base by actively utilizing popular female culture such as shoujo manga (girls' comics) and the fan base for voice actors. Angelique also set up the specifics and conventions of women's games: a focus on romance, easy controls and utilizing other multimedia. In 2004, Harukanaru Tokino Nakade3 deconstructed the genre and gender conventions of women's games and shoujo manga, while developing a new type of feminine identity and narrative. Women's games indicate that genderspecific games can be more than educational tools to familiarize girls with technology or perpetuate stereotypes; they can be a significant extension of female culture into the realm of gaming, and contribute to the development of women's culture and the diversification of the gaming industry. (shrink)

The psychopathological analysis of hysteria is a victim of narrow conceptualizations. Among these is the inscription of hysteria in the feminine sphere, about body and sexuality, which incentivized conceptual reductionism. Hysteria has been mainly considered a gendered pathology, almost exclusively female, and it has been associated with cultural and/or religious features over time rather than treated as a psychopathological world. Further, hysteria has been dominated by conceptual inaccuracies and indecision, not only in terms of clinical features but also in terms (...) of its definition. For this reason, it seems necessary to “undress” hysteria from this feminization, sexualization, and corporealization with which it has been abundantly clothed over the years. “Undressing” hysteria will make possible a reconfiguring and deconstructing of the explanatory-causal model of Charcot and Freud. However, if we take out this cultural heritage, the stigma accompanying this diagnosis, and the weight of the enormous historical tradition that hysteria carries, the world of hysteria continues to constitute a domain full of complexity and nosographic challenges. Hysteria has been considered a sum of psychological behaviors and states illustrated by drama, mystery, or falsity. The difficulty in understanding the multiple somatic manifestations which characterize this clinical condition created several controversies and much confusion. In the current nosography, the personological component of hysteria has been separated from its symptomatic manifestation, in the Histrionic Personality Disorder and Conversion Disorder categories, respectively. This segmentation by descriptive nosography does contribute to a unitary understanding of the phenomenon and, consequently, of daily clinical practice. Clinical complexity can be grasped and deciphered only if the symptom is inscribed in the patient’s lifeworld and his/her subjective life history. Clinical practice is thus thought of in terms of a structural aggregation of a homogeneous set of phenomena, together constituting a specific way of being in the world. The starting point of this article is the evident modalities characterizing this life-world, taking care not to confuse the point of origin with the point of expression. (shrink)

Scientific interest in hysteria began in Mexico at the end of the 19th-century, as the medical profession expanded. The Mexican doctors studied madness, drawing on what was confidently regarded as a firm basis of epistemological knowledge. Using modern physiology they entered a discussion that had begun some time before in Europe. Encountering hysteria, an illness presumed to be caused by ‘over-civilization’, they searched for a universal definition. The doctors tried to impose a unifying concept onto the diverse symptoms of hysteria, (...) and, although imitating European ideas, the discourse became distinctive in its attempts to relate hysteria to science and modernity so that all three would make sense. My interest in this article is the feminine; not a reconstruction of the relationship that medicine established between hysteria and the feminine, but a search for a space within the discourse that deconstructs identity and stereotypes. The feminine appears when the coherence of medical discourse is ruptured and when, to explain the illness, the doctors stop attempting to define it. This eventually occurs when the medical discourse considers the subject as unidentifiable and deceptive. (shrink)

This paper argues for the active participation of women in philosophy of education and the importance of their sexually differentiated positions in pluralising knowledge. Drawing on the philosophical work of Luce Irigaray it explains how the feminine as other, has been symbolised as a dark epistemological cave from which those seeking universal truths ought to escape. Within such phallogo-centric systems of knowledge, women’s thoughts have been excluded from philosophy, and the feminine became un-representable as philosophical. This scenario raises important political (...) and ethical questions related to women’s place in philosophy of education and calls for deconstructive strategies aimed at using feminised locations to challenge phallogocentrism. The paper argues that a simple inclusion of women’s thoughts or the replacement a masculine-dominated philosophy with feminine ones do not suffice to disrupt the order that establishes what counts as philosophy. It therefore explores how sexual difference can rethink the traditional tenets of philosophy. The idea that women need a place that they can call home for such practices and whether this space can really differentiate knowledge is debatable and controversial. In considering this possibility, however, sexual difference is not considered a subject for thought in philosophy of education but a question that rethinks and engenders it. (shrink)

It is my contention that there is a significant relationship between “Phenomenology of Perception” (Merleau-Ponty) and “The Second Sex” (de Beauvoir). The two authors give great importancc to the lived body (Leib), either from a neutral perspective, either from a perspective feminine. This key concept of the phenomenology allows us to understand the lived experience of women and their possible relationship with feminism. From this corporeal sense we analyze the Merleau-Pontinian redefinition of subjectivity and reason. We emphasize his criticism of (...) reductionism, both epistemological as ontological. We refute certain feminists accusations against Merleau-Ponty. To do this, we study all his work in search of traces of women, we place them in context, while we study his own hermeneutics of psychoanalysis in order to highlight the contribution of it to the deconstruction of stereotypes about femininity. We conclude by showing the main keys of this phenomenology for· the current feminist Philosophy. (shrink)

This essay explores the important role played by the figure of the virgin girl at the centre of The Beast and The Sovereign. Derrida hints that she may offer a figure between the beast and the sovereign, between the two marionettes of Nature and Culture. Moreover, it seems that she is both what props up the fabled distinction between man and animal and at the same time that upon which man erects himself as sovereign lord and master. Taking Derrida's suggestions (...) further, I argue that the virgin girl both does and undoes sovereign power as phallic power. She is the figure behind the erection of sovereignty. Indeed, her appearance is both necessary and threatening insofar as she both erects sovereign phallic power and threatens to reveal its impotence. In this way, the girl operates between feminine and masculine, between Nature and Culture, between the beast and the sovereign, particularly as her virginity and its deflowering are essential to the cut between the two sides of these traditional binaries. Finally, her appearance is telling in relation to the movements and rhythms of Derrida's deconstructive approach to philosophy and literature in this seminar and in his work more generally. (shrink)

Purpose. The paper aims at examining the phenomenon of the rebirth of the Goddess in the contemporary world. The author has used the hermeneutic approach and cultural-historical method, as well as the anthropological integrative approach. Theoretical basis. The study is based on the ideas of Carol Christ, Margot Adler, Miriam Simos, and Jean Shinoda Bolen. Originality. The rebirth of the Goddess is not a deconstruction of the God. The face of the Goddess is one side of the binary opposition (...) "Goddess – God". Life on the earthly plane presupposes masculine and feminine dualism. However, these polarities are not mutually exclusive and mutually suppressive, but complementary to each other. The return of the Goddess to the throne and a profound appreciation of Femininity is a necessary step forward in establishing true equality and restoring lost harmony. As humanity returns to the Absolute that transcends duality, as divinity is revealed in feminine and masculine forms, and, finally, as humans get in touch with their true self, the two faces, feminine and masculine, will inevitably merge. Conclusions. Identifying herself with the images of the Goddesses, a woman develops self-awareness and self-acceptance that contribute greatly to her reintegration with a wider spiritual reality. The cult of the Goddess finds practical application in women’s lives. These are magical rituals, work with the archetypes, life-changing tours. Recognizing her right to the fullness of being, a woman overcomes rigid gender roles and stereotypes, ceases to be an object of manipulation and becomes the supreme arbiter of her own life. (shrink)

This book deals with the relationship between feminism and liberalism in theory and practice. The author argues that rather than seeing liberalism as exclusionary of women's specificity, as many contemporary feminists do, we should look at variations in liberalism, and in particular at its democratization in the nineteenth century and how feminists have used liberalism as a resource. Liberalism is analyzed using a post-structuralist theory of hegemony: texts of liberal political philosophy are deconstructed to show how the term "women" is (...) used as an "undecidable" in the Derridean sense to produce the opposition between feminine private and masculine public spheres; these texts are then linked to liberal-democratic social and political practices, including feminism as a social movement. (shrink)

Although Nietzsche's writings clearly deliver an unhealthy dose of misogyny, it must be noticed that they also contain the seeds of a deconstruction of that misogyny. This paper exposes one set of deconstructing elements of Nietzsche's works with respect to his views on women. The wider philosophical context of Nietzsche's thought provides grounds for taking seriously several passages of The Gay Science that reveal a more sympathetic understanding of women, since these passages take seriously Nietzsche's anti-dualism, his perspectivism, and (...) his early existentialist notion of the self. The destabilizing force of these passages, combined with Nietzsche's remarks about women within this philosophical context, reveals that Nietzsche's works promise more insight than many feminists have previously noted. A feminist analysis of Nietzsche's anti-dualism, perspectivism and discussion of the power of naming promises to inform contemporary feminist concerns about the importance of women's articulating our lives. (shrink)

In his 1992 text ‘Force of Law’ Jacques Derrida makes the radical claim that the aura of law’s legitimacy is always achieved by virtue of an ideological sleight of hand. I argue that the radicality of this claim does not lie in its abandonment of the rule of law, nor is this claim a call to political quietism. Rather, Derrida charges us with the responsibility of interrogating the moments of law’s force or ideology. Following this suggestion I argue that one (...) important way that the law has maintained its aura of legitimacy is on the basis of an ideological appeal to the presumed natural or transparent nature of sexual complementarity. Through a reading of Hegel’s use of the Greek mythological Antigone, I argue that one important way that the im possibility of the necessary encounter between law and the singular case has been covered over, is by way of an appeal to the presumed naturalness of heterosexuality. The conclusion of my analysis is that the illusion of law’s legitimacy is not necessarily achieved with reference to the feminine, nor by virtue of an appeal to the transparency of heterosexuality, but it is no coincidence that it has been achieved in this way so often in the history of political philosophy either. However, no matter how the illusion of law’s legitimacy is achieved, it will always require a sleight of hand; it will always be ideological and therefore political. This analysis therefore serves as an example of how deconstruction can be mobilized as much more than a philosophical meditation on the impossibility of justice; rather, it offers a mode of analysis of critical importance to social and legal theorists. Key Words: Antigone • Derrida • Hegel • sexual difference. (shrink)

This intervention queries whether subjecting feminist jurisprudence to a methodological transfiguration toward pragrammatology (Derrida, in Smith and Kerrigan 1984) holds liberating potential for f (be it ‘woman’, ‘female’ or ‘feminine’) as both a signifier and a subject to be read with lucidity and nuance in feminist justice claims. I examine feminist jurisprudence’s methodological challenges in the settler colonial context of Alaska with respect to the murders of Della Brown (in 2000) and Mindy Schloss (in 2007). I advance my case for (...) pragrammatology as a critical methodology for feminist jurisprudence by subjecting the case(s) of Brown and Schloss to a more lucid (re)reading in two related and intersecting moves. First, I trace and deconstruct the citations of Brown and Schloss’ legal narratives to expose violence in the systemisation of f as a power and legal relation (Ahmed in Soc Legal Stud 4:55–73, 1995). I then examine the paradoxical nature of f justice claims which necessitate a pragrammatological approach. I conclude by advancing counsel on how we might move within paradox. (shrink)

Femininity and whiteness dominate Western nursing, silencing ontologies and epistemologies that do not align with these dominant norms while perpetuating systemic racism and discrimination in nursing practice, education, research, nursing activism, and sociopolitical structures. We propose Black feminist thought as a praxis to decenter, deconstruct, and unseat these ideologies and systems of power. Drawing from the work of past and present Black feminist scholars, we examine the ontological and epistemological perspectives of Black feminist thought. These include (i) the uniqueness (...) and particular experiences of people, (ii) the acceptance of ontological and epistemological pluralism of truths and ways of knowing, and (iii) the mandate for equity in the health, social, political, and environmental structures of society. By focusing our attention on lived experiences and voices of those systematically excluded in nursing practice, education, research, and society, Black feminist thought offers an anticolonial, antiracist, and antidiscriminatory foundation for more effectively upholding nursing's disciplinary mandate for social justice and equity. (shrink)

While working on the Italian translation of Life Death, I became aware of some inaccuracies on Derrida’s part that might weaken the effectiveness of his deconstruction of the notion of ‘reproduction’. Not only, such inaccuracies seem to lead Derrida’s interpretation of reproduction toward a conception of ‘life’ that might even hint at an undeconstructed metaphysical background. I have already dealt with such inaccuracies in detail in two articles published in French, here I will recall their outcomes in order to (...) try to test the most problematic hypothesis they have led me to formulate: the Derridean conception of ‘life’ implies a metaphysical background. (shrink)

Charity, as a social construct, is considered in various interpretative contexts, in a subjectively manner, social progress. The meta-narration about charity as Christian duty, by passing through the secular interpretive and atomizer context of postmodernity, becomes a narrative about social responsibility and equity in ethical dimension, and is translated into restorative community practices in social action plan. We will pursue the constructive interpretive contexts that generated the idea of social policies and social work practice as a contemporary deconstruction of (...) charity. The thesis of the article is that the process of deconstruction of charity, as a religious value which regulates in a Christian manner the reference to the other, is the foundation of restorative social policies and professionalized social work as a social action. We will analyze the deconstruction of Christian idea of charity from two perspectives, namely the secularization of charitable practices and constructive foundation of a particular meta-story of our times which we call secular society and/or knowledge society. (shrink)

This essay traces the origin of feminine thought in poststructuralism, which opens up new vistas of experience that differ from traditional philosophical thinking based on a conceptual grasp of the world. Rather than viewing the feminine as the essence of the woman gender, it is seen here as the experience of a plurality of truths produced in the affectedness of the human body by the world. The representative function of language and methodology in traditional philosophy cannot capture the plurality of (...) truths. Feminine experience is not a prerogative of women philosophers or feminist writers. It is accessible even to male philosophers. Since it is the outcome of the affectedness of the body by phenomena, it is accessible to all human beings, irrespective of their gender identities. The construction of the truth of entities in terms of their universal essence has a significant role in forming masculine and feminine experiences. Masculine experience is produced by the representation of conceptual truth by the self. Feminine is a kind of existence prior to self-formation that is in operation in all humans. The linguistic turn in philosophy created by Nietzsche and Saussure is the main force behind the growth of feminine thinking in poststructuralism. It marks the end of the abstract, concept-based thinking of the masculine sort and the formation of the differential thought of the feminine. (shrink)

In _The Deconstruction of Sex_, Jean-Luc Nancy and Irving Goh discuss how a deconstructive approach to sex helps us negotiate discourses about sex and foster a better understanding of how sex complicates our everyday existence in the age of #MeToo. Throughout their conversation, Nancy and Goh engage with topics ranging from relation, penetration, and subjection to touch, erotics, and jouissance. They show how despite its entrenchment in social norms and centrality to our being-in-the-world, sex lacks a clearly defined essence. (...) At the same time, they point to the potentiality of literature to inscribe the senses of sex. In so doing, Nancy and Goh prompt us to reconsider our relations with ourselves and others through sex in more sensitive, respectful, and humble ways without bracketing the troubling aspects of sex. (shrink)