Feminist Approaches to Philosophy

While it is uncontroversial to point to the liberal roots of feminism, a major issue in English-language feminist political thought over the last few decades has been whether feminism's association with liberalism should be relegated to the past. Can liberalism continue to serve feminist purposes? This book examines the positions of three contemporary feminists - Martha Nussbaum, Susan Moller Okin and Jean Hampton - who, notwithstanding decades of feminist critique, are unwilling to give up on liberalism. This book examines why, (...) and in what ways, each of these theorists believes that liberalism offers the normative and political resources for the improvement of women's situations. It also brings out and tries to explain and evaluate the differences among them, notwithstanding their shared allegiance to liberalism. In so doing, the books goes to the heart of recent debates in feminist and political theory. (shrink)

Unlike predominant Butlerian scholarship located in Eureocentric and Science Fiction ideologies, my writing on Octavia Butler makes Africana womanist analysis central. It brings together literary, cultural, historical and theological research in an interdisciplinary exploration of hermeneutics of Butler's creativity. Since Butler's creativity communicates relations of power and knowledge and the historical conditions producing them in her literature, I locate Butler's fiction at the site of African American women's literary tradition for my reading of psios and conjuration. Furthermore, I have coined (...) the term transgressive creativity as rubric, since it helps to delineate precisely what it is her narrative consciousness transgresses. The concept of transgressive creativity is a black womanist reading of meaning in Butler's fiction. It allows me to isolate, analyze, and interpret radical fissures and divergences in her temporal and spatial cultural critiques, an alternately exciting and destabilizing project. As example of her treatment of gender, I use transgressive creativity to examine her feminist philosophy, and by so doing have arrived at the conclusion that it would be more accurate to say that Butler's narrative feminism includes yet transcends Alice Walker's definition of "womanist." In fact, judging by her fine-tuned multicultural, multilingual, multiethnic, and often working class community of women, Butler's feminism is more akin to malidoma consciousness. Directly translated from the Dagara culture in Burkina Faso, malidoma means making friends with the stranger or enemy. Hence I argue that Butler's fiction imbibes a larger cultural ideological construct that is African American cultural philosophy or Africentrism. Rich threads of West African spiritual tradition are interwoven throughout complex metaphors in black women's fiction. Hence, this project excavates Butler's magic from science fiction's paradigm of impossible occurrence in order to show that, when grasped from the depth of traditional West African cosmology and Black women's writing, magic may be read as signification of re-inscribed possibility in the present-day rituals of spirituality throughout the African diaspora. (shrink)

The discourse of identity in the Arab context in general and in the Maghrebi context in particular is a modern phenomenon and is of central importance. In the Maghreb this discourse is related to modernization efforts, with the de-colonization struggle and its ideology, and with the nation-state-building genesis, process, and legitimisation after independence. A fundamental part in the developmental process of this discourse, there-fore, is the difference from, as well as the non-negotiable and hegemonic presence of, the "Other". The evolution (...) of a Maghrebi discourse of identity in this instance is a peculiar formation of consciousness or awareness with regard to a self-evident constancy, namely, the own identity, which had not been in doubt up to that point. From the challenging encounter with the western European hegemonic "Other" comes the necessity to bring forth such a discourse. The Difference is thus a fundamental aspect in the beginnings of the Maghrebi discourse of identity. (shrink)

Artificial Knowing challenges the masculine slant in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) view of the world. Alison Adam admirably fills the large gap in science and technology studies by showing us that gender bias is inscribed in AI-based computer systems. Her treatment of feminist epistemology, focusing on the ideas of the knowing subject, the nature of knowledge, rationality and language, are bound to make a significant and powerful contribution to AI studies. Drawing from theories by Donna Haraway and Sherry Turkle, and (...) using tools of feminist epistemology, Adam provides a sustained critique of AI which interestingly re-enforces many of the traditional criticisms of the AI project. Artificial Knowing is an esential read for those interested in gender studies, science and technology studies, and philosophical debates in AI. (shrink)

Female genital mutilation is a contentious and controversia11ssue. It has generated a lot of arguments in favour of and against 1t. Female genital mutilation is a harmful tradition'al ;practice against women. It should be stated categorically that female genital mutilation is notthe most lethal o the practices affecting women health, hut is still theme>st humiliating accompanied by severe physical and mental torment for women Thou h he practice has been abolished in the western world, it is s ill a source (...) of terror for Afr.ican women. In most communities in "' ica, female genital mutilation is seen as rite of passage from • i ood to adulthood and, hence, their resolve not to do away wit e harmful practice. The present study, which is a general ove ~"' ,' of female genital mutilation , is designed to sensitize the ge e:a o ·c especially the t~ ~male folks about the issues surroundrng · cumcision. (shrink)

(2006). BOOK REVIEW: Perspectives on Pedagogy: Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds: Gender, Race, and the Schooling of Pregnant Teens, by Wendy Luttrell. Educational Studies: Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 313-317.

In recent social theory, there has been an emphasis on the emergence of non-market, non-cash nexus or what are sometimes referred to as `traditional' forms of organization in the economic sphere. These are sometimes represented as vital to innovation and as constituting the cutting edge of socioeconomic change. In this article, my concern is to interrogate these new modes of organization. Its main argument is that such traditional forms may go hand in hand with a retraditionalization of gender in terms (...) of employment. The innovation and creativity associated with such new economic formations is therefore called into question. (shrink)

In my dissertation, I examine an ethic of care through the lens of professional nursing. First, I review the work done by Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings, Sara Ruddick and Joan Tronto towards the development of an ethic of care. Second, I review the social and historical development of the nursing profession in the United States. Third, I explore the meaning of care-giving through qualitative interviews with working nurses. I find that nursing provides a particularly compelling example of the dilemma of (...) powerless responsibility, inherent in care-giving work in our society. I develop a feminist understanding of care, grounded in a thorough understanding of the concrete realities of care-giving work. I argue that in order to affirm the moral value of care, an ethic of care must take these concrete realities seriously. An ethic of care grounded in care-giving work challenges the powerless responsibility of care-givers, and the inequitable distribution of care-giving in our society. (shrink)

Contrary to the neo-liberal thesis that entrepreneuring is an open and accessible endeavour where personal effort alone determines reward and status, it has been demonstrated that there is a persistent, but occluded, gender bias within the entrepreneurial discourse. Accordingly, women are positioned as lacking and incomplete men; however, despite calls to employ feminist theory as an analytical frame to demonstrate the reproduction of such subordination, there is scant evidence this has emerged. Within this article, we respond to this call by (...) demonstrating how post structural feminist analysis reveals the gendered assumptions informing entrepreneurship theory that embed prevailing hetero-normative assumptions. These assumptions limit the epistemological scope of contemporary research which positions women as failed or reluctant entrepreneurial subjects; as such, in the absence of feminist theorizing these analyses remain descriptive rather than explanatory. Accordingly, the current entrepreneurial research agenda is in danger of reaching an epistemological dead end in the absence of a reflexive critical perspective to inform the idea of who can be and what might be an entrepreneur. Finally, we draw upon these arguments to reflect upon current approaches to theorizing within the broader field of entrepreneurial enquiry. (shrink)

In _Willful Subjects_ Sara Ahmed explores willfulness as a charge often made by some against others. One history of will is a history of attempts to eliminate willfulness from the will. Delving into philosophical and literary texts, Ahmed examines the relation between will and willfulness, ill will and good will, and the particular will and general will. Her reflections shed light on how will is embedded in a political and cultural landscape, how it is embodied, and how will and willfulness (...) are socially mediated. Attentive to the wayward, the wandering, and the deviant, Ahmed considers how willfulness is taken up by those who have received its charge. Grounded in feminist, queer, and antiracist politics, her sui generis analysis of the willful subject, the figure who wills wrongly or wills too much, suggests that willfulness might be required to recover from the attempt at its elimination. (shrink)