The “Home” is ideologically understood as a place of safety and refuge. Such an account cloaks violence against women. The voices of battered women can disrupt that dominant construction of the space of the home, a construction typified by the work of Gaston Bachelard. The space that Bachelard presupposes and theorizes as given is in fact being-produced, cleaned, and organized by people who themselves may not find in it any solace or respite.

: The "Home" is ideologically understood as a place of safety and refuge. Such an account cloaks violence against women. The voices of battered women can disrupt that dominant construction of the space of the home, a construction typified by the work of Gaston Bachelard. The space that Bachelard presupposes and theorizes as given is in fact being-produced, cleaned, and organized by people who themselves may not find in it any solace or respite.

: Linda Nicholson's book The Play of Reason: From the Modern to the Postmodern admirably integrates history and philosophy to demonstrate the historical characteristics of reason and arguments in its name. I argue that she nonetheless retains a modernist dependence on the specter of unreason to document the reasonableness of her own positions. This specter continually recreates hegemonic "reasons." Feminist theory, I argue, should confront more fully its continued dependence on the other of reason.

Linda Nicholson's bookThe Play of Reason: From the Modern to the Postmodernadmirably integrates history and philosophy to demonstrate the historical characteristics of reason and arguments in its name. I argue that she nonetheless retains a modernist dependence on the specter of unreason to document the reasonableness of her own positions. This specter continually recreates hegemonic “reasons.” Feminist theory, I argue, should confront more fully its continued dependence on the other of reason.

: Abstract: This essay is a response to comments made by Shane Phelan, Cheshire Calhoun, and Naomi Scheman on my book The Play of Reason: From the Modern to the Postmodern (1999). I reiterate my belief that we best approach the issue of consensus and dissension in second-order justifications of social and political claims not philosophically but sociologically, politically, historically. I suggest similar approaches for dealing with the question of meaning. This move signals an endorsement not of indifference but rather (...) of commitment and humility. (shrink)

This essay is a response to comments made by Shane Phelan, Cheshire Calhoun, and Naomi Scheman on my book The Play of Reason: From the Modern to the Postmodern. I reiterate my belief that we best approach the issue of consensus and dissension in second-order justifications of social and political claims not philosophically but sociologically, politically, historically. I suggest similar approaches for dealing with the question of meaning. This move signals an endorsement not of indifference but rather of commitment and (...) humility. (shrink)

This essay is a response to comments made by Shane Fhelan, Cheshire Calhoun, and Naomi Scheman on my bookThe Play of Reason: From the Modern to the Postmodern. I reiterate my belief that we best approach the issue of consensus and dissension in second’ Order justifications of social and political claims not philosophically but sociologically, politically, historically. I suggest similar approaches for dealing with the question of meaning. This mow signals an endorsement not of indifference but rather of commitment and (...) humility. (shrink)

One of the main purposes of feminist jurisprudence is to create or find better ways of being and living for women through the analysis, critique, and use of law. Rich work has emerged, and continues to emerge, from feminist theorists exploring conceptions of the self, personhood, identity and subjectivity that could be used to form a basic unit in law and politics. In this article, it is argued that a strong sense of human subjectivity needs to be retained to enable (...) the human potentiality of women and men to flourish. This can be done in a way which is not essentialist, yet does not dissolve the subject out of existence, issues pertinent to feminist jurisprudence in recent years. (shrink)

In recent years, numerous articles and books in the humanities and the social sciences have been devoted to understanding the ascription of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, mental illness, and other ‘human kind’ concepts to persons. What may be more surprising given the enormous volume of this research and the diversity of its sources is that much of it shares a common commitment to understanding the categories picked out by these concepts in an non- essentialist way. For example, Iris Marion (...) Young suggests of social groups (including races, genders, classes, age groups, and ethnicities) that they. (shrink)

Although feminists have spilled a great deal of ink criticizing Enlightenment conceptions of rationality, the time has come to consider constructing a positive account. Recent attempts to construct an account of rationality as a virtue concept reflect many feminist complaints concerning Enlightenment rationality, and, thus, I maintain that feminism should take seriously such a conception. Virtue rationality offers a more diverse account of rationality without sacrificing the fundamental normativity of the concept. Furthermore, the narrower concept of reasonableness, promises to provide (...) a ground for distinguishing among better and worse epistemic perspectives, which is a task critical to the success of the feminist project. (shrink)

This article considers how the concept of desire can be theorized in light of recent work on emotion and affect. In so doing, it questions what desire does and how desire can be theorized, particularly within cinema. Instead of arguing that we must move away from a psychoanalytic interpretation of desire, I ask how this approach can be revitalized and reconsidered through work on affect. This article also highlights the way in which Lacanian and Deleuzian models of desire are constantly (...) set in opposition to each other; in so doing, it seeks to move beyond this impasse and gesture towards alternative ways of theorizing desire. One of the central issues foregrounded within psychoanalytic theory is the process of remembering and forgetting: the method through which the subject can ‘let go’ and move forward. This relationship is figured primarily in terms of the discourse between self and other. Marguerite Duras’ work questions this process of ‘letting go’ and offers an alternative conceptualization of desire through her use of melancholia. Beyond an intrinsic interest in her work, because Duras has been admired by psychoanalytic, feminist and Deleuzian scholars, her films present an opportunity to rethink a theorization of desire in light of competing interpretations. In discussing melancholia in terms of Duras’ work, this paper also considers the extent to which her use of Hiroshima as a backdrop to the affair presented in the film colonizes desire and its transformative potential. (shrink)

Linda Nicholson argues that because gender is socially constructed, feminist theorizing must be about an expansive multiplicity of subjects called “woman” that bear a family resemblance to each other. But why did feminism expand its category of analysis to apply to all cultures and time periods when social constructionism led lesbian and gay studies to narrow the categories “homosexual” and “lesbian”? And given the multiplicity of genders, why insist that feminist subjects are different, resembling women rather than a multiplicity including (...) women as well as not-women and not-men? (shrink)

With its implicit vilification of materiality, the notion of objectification has failed to produce a coherent and effective ethical analysis of heterosexual sex work. The concept of derivatization, grounded in an Irigarayan model of embodied intersubjectivity, is more effective. However, queer sex work poses new and different ethical challenges. This paper argues that although queer sex work can entail both objectification and derivatization, the former is not ethically objectionable, and the latter, although the cause for some justified ethical concern, must (...) be analyzed within the context of structural sexual injustice. (shrink)

The challenges posed by postmodern and poststructural theories profoundly disrupt the certainties of feminist and nursing research, yet at the same time offer possibilities for developing new epistemologies. While there are an increasing number of accounts discussing the theoretical implications of these ideas for nursing research, I wish to discuss the practical and the methodological implications of using postmodern feminist theories within empirical research. In particular, I identify the challenges I encountered through an examination of specific aspects of the research (...) process and through examples drawn from empirical research. I conclude that using postmodern feminist theories requires a continuous engagement with, and interrogation of, the modern epistemological and ontological assumptions of qualitative, feminist nursing research and, in so doing, presents the possibility for nurse scholars to begin to develop a ‘passionately interested’ methodological approach to nursing inquiry. (shrink)

The main goal of the article is to reconstruct the conceptual bases of the original sociological project contained in David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature. The core of Humean sociology is a meticulously designed doctrine of passions. The foci of the Humean doctrine of passions are the questions of influences observed between the emotional component of human nature and the multiple forms of human actions. According to David Hume, the faculty of imagination, which operates on ideas, is not by itself (...) able to supply a set of regular and uniform practices for an agent. The real foundations for any agent’s habitual form of action are always emotions and passions. The influences of emotions and passions on an agent have various natures: emotions as the primary impressions initiate actions performed by an agent, and passions, as secondary impressions, put these activities into a regular and uniform shape. These very passions define the nature and structure of an agent’s habits, avoiding the traditional logical difficulties in solving the riddle of induction. A habit does not arise as a simple result from the multiple performances of these or that actions, but it is formed by predilections of an agent of activity. Against the backgrounds of a burgeoning interest in contemporary social sciences and a variety of practice-oriented theories and concepts, Humean sociology finds a new theoretical practicality, demonstrating the strength of its arguments and the ability to become a new important source of conceptual intuitions in the social sciences. (shrink)

In this thesis I discuss personal identity as it relates to authoritative contexts. I show how these contexts confer meaning on personal and cultural narratives, which in turn confer meaning on facts and knowledge claims. I outline three conceptions of the self and sublime, and address the implications of these for education. In conclusion I isolate a common product of all three perspectives---unconditional love---and recommend a 'will to positive description' as a necessary and desirable pedagogical goal.