Wilson and colleagues (Wilson et al. 2019) argue that an intersectional approach to the clinical encounter can facilitate trust and understanding between patients and clinicians. An intersectional...

In this article we aim to show the potential of cross-continental dialogues for a decolonizing feminism. We relate the work of one of the major critics of the Western metaphysical patriarchal order, Luce Irigaray, to the critique of the colonial/modern gender system by the Nigerian feminist scholar Oyĕrónké Oyĕwùmí. Oyĕwùmí's work is often rejected based on the argument that it is empirically wrong. We start by problematizing this line of thinking by providing an epistemological interpretation of Oyĕwùmí's claims. We then (...) draw Irigaray and Oyĕwùmí into conversation, and show how this bolsters and helps to further illuminate and contextualize Oyĕwùmí's critique of gender. But the dialogue between these thinkers also reveals significant limitations of Irigaray's philosophy, namely her presumption of the priority of sexual difference, its rigid duality, and her failure to take into account the inextricable intertwinement of gender and race in the Western patriarchal order. Relating Irigaray's critique of Western culture's forgetting of sexual difference to Oyĕwùmí's critique hence demonstrates to what extent Irigaray's philosophy remains typically Western and how she therefore fails to escape the paradigm that she is so critical of. (shrink)

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As the COVID-19 crisis unfolded, older people in the Netherlands were framed as essentially vulnerable. In the public discourse, the figure of the “vulnerable senior” rose to unprecedented prominence. Taking a critical-phenomenological approach, we combine an empirical study with philosophical reflection, drawing on phenomenological and post-structuralist work on vulnerability and precarity to interpret quotes from daily newspapers and other media. This approach leads us to distinguish three forms of vulnerability: (1) vulnerability as discursive effect; (2) vulnerability as unrealizable; and (3) (...) vulnerability as creative appropriation. We conclude that the COVID-19 crisis has reinforced the entanglement of age and vulnerability and has led to novel social distinctions and labels. These labels harbor harmful stereotypes and are in constant need of critical evaluation. Still, the people who are affected by them are not passively dominated; rather, they exhibit a certain freedom in re-interpreting and challenging their situation. It is this attention to the entanglement of discourse and lived experience that situates our research in the broader field of critical phenomenology. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a revaluation of Paul Ricoeur’s notion of narrative identity in light of what Miriam Kyselo has coined “the body-social problem” in enactivism (Kyselo 2014). It is my contention that while phenomenological perspectives upon the body and the self are considered relevant in enactivism, the hermeneutical, discursive facets are understood as a less essential facet of the self, for instance as the self’s reflexive side, that gives expression to an experiential self (Zahavi 2007: 182-184, 2014: (...) 57-59). Yet, it is in language that the self is addressed by others and that the self reflects upon itself and understands itself. Especially in order to understand aspects of identity which are of importance for the social situation of the self, such as gender, the way we are addressed by others and address ourselves by means of language need to be taken into account. (shrink)

Since the appearance of her early-career bestseller Gender Trouble in 1990, American philosopher Judith Butler is one of the most influential (and at times controversial) thinkers in academia. Her work addresses numerous socially pertinent topics such as gender normativity, political speech, media representations of war, and the democratic power of assembling bodies. The volume Bodies That Still Matter: Resonances of the Work of Judith Butler brings together essays from scholars across academic disciplines who apply, reflect on, and further Butler's ideas (...) to their own research. It includes a new essay by Butler herself, from which it takes its title. Organized around four key themes in Butler's scholarship - performativity, speech, precarity, and assembly - the volume offers an excellent introduction to the contemporary relevance of Butler's thinking, a multi-perspectival approach to key topics of contemporary critical theory, and a testimony to the vibrant interdisciplinary discourses characterizing much of today's humanities' research. (shrink)

Cis and transgender. Performativity as bodily and social habit In this article, I argue that habit formation provides a good starting point to understand gender identity. Judith Butler’s concept of ‘performativity’ indicates that gender identity comes about through a process of social and linguistic repetition of normative representations of gender. The phenomenological notion of ‘habitual identity’ that Maren Wehrle (2021) suggests, complements this notion of performativity, but should be complemented with a psychic aspect to attain a completer notion of performativity. (...) Understanding performativity in terms of habit formation seemingly also has a downside: does it not lead to repetition of the same in an environment of predominantly cis and binary gender identities? What does this mean now that more and more people identify as trans or non-binary? I argue that performativity does not necessarily involve the reproduction of cis and binary gender identities, because it includes the possibility of variation from the norm. While cis implies that body, identity and social ascriptions coincide, in the case of trans there are discontinuities between these three. Rather than considering cis and trans as opposites, performativity means understanding both as variations, of which the discontinuities between body, self and social ascriptions are more difficult to live. (shrink)

This is the first volume to consider the relevance of hermeneutical philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s thinking for feminist theory. Fourteen renowned scholars, including some young promising ones, critically investigate the gendered aspects of Ricoeur’s main conceptions and explore new possibilities and opportunities for feminist thinking with the help of his philosophy. Among the themes addressed are justice, recognition, critique, discourse, imagination, the capable subject, and universalism.

In het kunstwerk ‘The reincarnation of St. Orlan’ verbeeldt de Franse kunstenares Orlan de consequenties van de gedachte dat het menselijk lichaam construeerbaar zou zijn. Maar haar werk maakt tevens duidelijk waar de grenzen van die maakbaarheid liggen, namelijk in de beleving van het lichaam. In dit artikel licht ik aan de hand van het werk van Descartes en Merleau-Ponty de visie op het lichaam toe die in dit kunstwerk tot uitdrukking komt.

Identity as expression: Narrativity, embodiment, and intersectionality How to understand intersectional aspects of personal identity such as gender, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, age and (dis)ability? In this paper, I argue that it requires a notion of personal identity as expression to do so. Most philosophical theories of personal identity do not take into account social, embodied factors such as the ones named above. In order to consider these, I suggest to start from philosophical accounts of narrative identity, notably Schechtman’s (...) and Ricoeur’s. Instead of taking narrative identity to be exhaustive, I propose to understand it as the expressed aspect of personal identity. Identity as expression does not only pertain to linguistic utterances, but also to the body. In the paper, I derive a notion of the body as ontological ground for sociality from Ricoeur’s philosophy, which includes that our body primordially is body among other bodies and makes us part of a community. Ricoeur still thinks embodiment in a general sense, however, and does not reflect upon its being gendered, being assigned a race or ethnicity, etc.. In the final part of the paper, I suggest to turn to Sartre’s philosophy of the body, because he considers this social dimension of embodiment. His notion ‘unrealizables’ offers interesting opportunities to incorporate the view of others upon us into our self-conception. Intersectional aspects of personal identity such as gender, race, etc. consequently should be seen as factors that we do not experience in the first person, but that form the limits of who we are assigned to by others, that we cannot avoid taking a position towards. (shrink)

This paper aims to show the relevance of Ricœur’s notion of the self for postmodern feminist theory, but also to critically assess it. By bringing Ricœur’s “self” into dialogue with Braidotti’s, Irigaray’s and Butler’s conceptions of the subject, it shows that it is close to the feminist self in that it is articulated into language, is embodied and not fully conscious of itself. In the course of the argument, the major point of divergence also comes to light, namely, that the (...) former considers discourse to be a laboratory for thought experiments, while the latter consider discourse to be normative, restrictive and exclusive. In the second part, the possibility of critique and change are further developed. Ricœur does not rule out critique, rather interpretation includes distanciation and critique. Finally, his notion of productive imagination explains how new identifications become possible. (shrink)