"... some very serious critiques of French existential phenomenology and post-structuralism... the contributors offer some refreshingly new insights into some tried and 'true' philosophical texts and more recent works of literary theory." -- Philosophy and Literature "By bridging the gap between 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophy, the authors of The Thinking Muse: Feminism and the Modern French Philosophy largely overcome the cultural polarity between 'male thinker' and 'female muse'." -- Ethics "These engaging essays by American Feminists bring toether feminist philosophy, existential (...) phenomenology, and recent currents in French poststructuralist thought. The editors provide an excellent introductory overview, making this an ideal book for courses in feminist theory and philosophy and modern French thought." -- Philosopher's Index "The concerns raised in this volume are substantial.... a solid addition to the canon of American feminist philosophy." -- Philosophy and Literature "... a forum for feminist appropriations of existential and post-structuralist philosophy." -- Canadian Philosophical Reviews Marking a radical shift in the traditional philosophical separation between muse (female) and thinker (male), The Thinking Muse revises the scope and methods of philosophical reflection. These engaging essays by American feminists bring together feminist philosophy, existential phenomenology, and recent currents in French poststructuralist thought. (shrink)

This paper explores the poetic politics of lesbian and feminist writing, the textual violence that writing exercises and the amazon intertext it creates. In this particular essay, Jeffner Allen takes as her point of departure the writing of Hélène Cixous and Monique Wittig.

This is a groundbreaking work of poetry, autobiography, lesbian studies, multicultural writing, feminist philosophy, and postmodernism. Jeffner Allen achieves a crossing of borders and complex worlds often heralded in feminist theory but rarely attempted These abundance writings are intimate chattings that celebrate collisions transitions unexpected that welcome fluidity a breathing that traverse deaths and lives How to love where there may be nothing in common or this today and (not) that tomorrow?

"Allen’s work is virtually unique among American writers. It illustrates a deep knowledge of the issues raised by the postmodernists, yet she does not succumb to the playing field, constructing instead her own philosophical direction and aesthetic." —Sarah Hoagland Jeffner Allen shapes a poetic politics that transforms textual and everyday realities. The surprising, resilient, and transformative windings of lesbian writing and lesbian lives—a poetics of sinuous movement, the turning of women to women—informs these reflections.

S. A. Erickson's recent book continues several of the themes introduced in Language and Being, especially that of the question of meaning. Erickson's approach to this question develops further his presupposition that to ask what entities mean is to inquire into their functions within the context of human presence. A shift in Erickson's focus is indicated, however, by his claim that human presence, a term used by Erickson to refer to human being, is even more fundamental to the question of (...) meaning than he had thought previously. Hence, this study which articulates the notion of human presence and analyzes the experience of its interconnected moments: interpretation, self-deception, and time-consciousness. Interpretation is presented as the prime cognitive relation that connects linguistic and extralinguistic items, the former interpreting the latter within the situation of human presence. Self-deception, the ground of interpretation, is understood in light of the tenuous human capacity to come to terms with mortality. One of the most interesting sections of the book is a psychoanalytic and an existential account of ways of dealing with the experience of time, without which human action would be unintelligible. "Existential time" is identified as that which is ingredient both in the direct experiencing of time and in time as it is experienced. An original concept of "timing" is set forth as the ways in which existential time is structured and lived, the manner in which time is used and the way in which items dealt with "in time" are reacted to and acted upon. Erickson claims as the goal of his account a conceptually restructured philosophy of mind and a propaedeutic to a new psychiatry of human being. Philosophy must, Erickson argues, change its direction, for the separation of philosophy from psychology, in both the phenomenological and the analytic traditions, has resulted in the loss to philosophy of empirical content. The prize of saving the integrity of logic as an a priori discipline and isolating the conceptual has been the increasing absence of the direct relevance of philosophy to the human situation. Erickson proposes that philosophy should return to the domain of psychology, not, as is the current practice, by pointing out instances of conceptual confusion and clarifying terms, but by recognizing the valuable experiential base that psychiatry provides for the examination of conceptual problems involved in understanding the human. Perhaps the most debatable aspect of the book is its study of 'presence' in the recent history of philosophy and its claim that philosophical problems, such as presence, have been ignored in recent times rather than resolved. For Erickson, the substitution of the term 'presence' for 'experience' or 'consciousness' indicates the direction in which an existentially enriched phenomenology must move. For this reader, however, contemporary continental philosophy has not so much ignored, as endeavored to think through the issue of presence. The critique of the metaphysics of presence, made by some phenomenologists and deconstructionists, suggests that the thematics of presence cannot be resolved, but must be abandoned. Erickson's statement, "Experience is experience. Though capable of being disliked or transformed, it makes no conceptual sense to speak of refuting, much less ignoring it," may appear to some readers as unduly assertorical. Nevertheless, Erick Erickson's "conversational" methodology, expressly developed to foster the reader in a point of view, impels an active rethinking of the grounds for rejecting philosophical anthropology and a positive demonstration of the philosophical accomplishments that can be effected within that domain.--Jeffner Allen, California State University. (shrink)