Back in thirteenth-century Europe, in the early years of the great universities, learning was spiced with the danger of mob violence and a terrifyingly repressive religious censorship. Roger Bacon, a humble and devout English friar, seems an unlikely figure to challenge the orthodoxy of his day - yet he risked his life to establish the basis for true knowledge. Born c.1220, Bacon was passionately interested in the natural world and how things worked. Such dangerous topics were vetoed by his Order, (...) and it was only when a new Pope proved sympathetic that he began compiling his encyclopaedia on everything from optics to alchemy - the synopsis took a year and ran to 800,000 words and he was never to complete the work itself. Sadly, the enlightened Pope died, and Bacon was tried as a magician and incarcerated for ten years. Legend transformed Bacon into a sorcerer, 'Doctor Mirabilis', yet he taught that all magic was based on fraud, and his books were the first flowering of the scientific thinking that would transform our world. He advanced the understanding of optics, made geographical breakthroughs later used by Columbus, predicted everything from horseless carriages to the telescope, and stressed the importance of mathematics to science, a significance ignored for 400 years. His biggest contribution was to insist that a study of the natural world by observation and exact measurement was the surest foundation for truth. Clegg uncovers the realities of life in a medieval university and friary, setting out the shadowy facts of Bacon's life alongside his writings. The result is both a fascinating biography and a picture of the age. (shrink)

Ethical codes have been hailed as an explicit vehicle for achieving more sustainable and defensible organizational practice. Nonetheless, when legal compliance and corporate governance codes are conflated, codes can be used to define organizational interests ostentatiously by stipulating norms for employee ethics. Such codes have a largely cosmetic and insurance function, acting subtly and strategically to control organizational risk management and protection. In this paper, we conduct a genealogical discourse analysis of a representative code of ethics from an international corporation (...) to understand how management frames expectations of compliance. Our contribution is to articulate the problems inherent in codes of ethics, and we make some recommendations to address these to benefit both an organization and its employees. In this way, we show how a code of ethics can provide a foundation for ethical sustainability, while addressing management intentions and employees’ ethical satisfaction. (shrink)

Although studies in organizational storytelling have dealt extensively with the relationship between narrative, power and organizational change, little attention has been paid to the implications of this for ethics within organizations. This article addresses this by presenting an analysis of narrative and ethics as it relates to the practice of organizational downsizing. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s theories of narrative and ethics, we analyze stories of organizational change reported by employees and managers in an organization that had undergone persistent downsizing. Our (...) analysis maintains that the presence of a dominant story that seeks to legitimate organizational change also serves to normalize it, and that this, in turn, diminishes the capacity for organizations to scrutinize the ethics of their actions. We argue that when organizational change narratives become singularized through dominant forms of emplotment, ethical deliberation and responsibility in organizations are diminished. More generally, we contend that the narrative closure achieved by the presence of a dominant narrative amongst employees undergoing organizational change is antithetical to the openness required for ethical questioning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 99-102 [Access article in PDF] Living with Contested Knowledge and Partial Jennifer Clegg and Richard Lansdall-Welfare THESE CAREFUL AND CONSTRUCTIVE comments bring grist to our mill. Before responding to them, we observe first that they offer no substantive challenge to our thesis: ambiguities associated with meaning in the disabled life make it more likely that professional service providers will make dogmatic responses (...) to bereavement, and perhaps other essentially contested topics, responses that are defended by isolationism.Some welcome ideas came from left field to refresh our thinking, such as Colman's observations on the gendered nature of care. She reminded us that although the audit from which these cases came was established to investigate bereavement in general among adults with intellectual disability, its rough and ready sampling failed to ensure the expected range of bereavement types. Somehow the bereavements constructed as relevant for audit all transpired to concern the death of mothers. Moreover, of the six relatives who agreed to be interviewed concerning these bereavements, two were stepfathers and four were sisters. Colman underlines the invisibility of care work usually done by female family members: how wise or less wise decisions create the conditions for bereavement reactions, and how changes to care arrangements following bereavement fall most heavily on them. Traustadottir (2002) discussed the way new care initiatives often put pressure on female family members and staff to do more unpaid work. For example, Circles of Support encourages them to include people with intellectual disability in their personal social networks, without considering the personal costs. Such observations have yet to emerge from the umbrella of feminist research. Separatism has served feminism well, but issues of women and care do need to find their place in mainstream reviews.Another useful reminder from Colman is that the person with intellectual disability is not the only concern to families, although only a few adult services manage to hold wider systemic factors in mind (Clegg and Burnham 2000). If the person may make naïve comments at a funeral that would devastate family members whose needs take priority, the person will be excluded.The potency of bereavement was discussed twice. Casenave suggests that because "disability is a loss experience" bereavement resonates with it, casting some doubt onto the suggestion that our thesis generalizes to other contested topics. Reinders criticizes clinicians for being purblind to the tragic. The anonymous reviewer who questioned [End Page 99] the relevance of our discussion of the quality of "presence," a quality Reinders considers highly relevant, illustrates the point better than we can. Recognizing the way clinicians have little "patience with the notion of the tragic" encourages reflection on what other human experiences fail to capture our attention.Although these are all potentially valuable directions, we focus here on comments that may enhance our ability to work without dogma. Since at least the 1980s, clinicians in intellectual disability have criticized the discipline for using linear and univariate rather than complex and multivariate theories, and for a naïve search for magic answers (reviewed in Clegg 1993). It is our contention that little has changed, and that uncertain meaning and normalization combine to create ideal conditions for dogma. Reinders' exposition of the various uses of meaning in our article and in different linguistic and historical traditions develops a vital but neglected topic in intellectual disability, which we consider in some detail. We conclude by arguing that developments require us to distance ourselves from the universality and commonality inherent to normalization, and create new ways to appreciate particularity and diversity.The gist of Reinders' complex argument appears to be that the problems we identify in managing bereavement in intellectual disability stem from a modernist understanding of meaning that is erroneous. Implicitly, those who eschew its pursuit demonstrate the greater wisdom, because neither dialogue nor activities such as reflection can generate meaning that is unattainable. If we understand his position correctly, he contrasts two principal understandings of meaning: comprehension and apprehension.Comprehension is the illusory modernist idea that humans are agents who make sense of themselves... (shrink)

Mourning exists at the nexus between individual experience, professional discourses, research, and culture, making it a complex issue for health services that has shown vibrant change in recent years. By contrast, bereavement discourse in intellectual disability is suffused by dogmatic assertions about correct intervention: we describe four vignettes to illustrate bereavement issues in intellectual disability. Suggestions concerning issues and management are made, but the article focuses primarily on the conceptual issues that underpin clinical intervention. The analysis shows how challenges to (...) the meaning of the disabled life, and to the understandings carers and staff draw on, tend to be resisted. We hypothesize this is most likely to surround issues that evoke cultural uncertainty, such as bereavement. The thesis is that the field of intellectual disability tends to be isolationist because meaning is difficult to create and easily dissolved, especially when addressing culturally contested topics. Dialogue with other disciplines is necessary to stop the field from atrophying, but needs to be carried out in ways that enable carers and clinicians to continue providing the support that people with intellectual disability require. (shrink)

In the creation myth of the Timaeus Plato describes God as wishing that all things should be good so far as is possible. Wherefore, finding the whole visible sphere of the world not at rest, but moving in an irregular fashion, out of disorder He brought order, thinking that this was in every way an improvement. To achieve His end He placed intelligence in soul and soul in body, reflecting that nothing unintelligent could ever be better than something intelligent . (...) From this account of creation it would seem that God confronted a chaotic world whose disorderly motions existed in full independence of the principle of soul. Yet, in his doctrinal pronouncements in the Laws and the Pbaedrus on the origin of motion, Plato declares soul to be elder born than bodies and the prime source of all their changes and transformations. (shrink)

In this empirical paper, we present a model of the dynamic legitimizing processes involved in the receiving and giving of compassion. We focus on the idea of being ‘worthy of compassion’ and show how ideas on giving and receiving compassion are highly contestable. Recognition of a worthy recipient or giver of compassion constitutes a socially recognized claim to privilege, which has ethical managerial and organizational implications. We offer a model that assists managers in fostering ethical strength in their performance by (...) encouraging reflection on the ethical complexity involved in compassion relations. The model emphasizes the dynamics of both the givers and receivers of compassion and so can also be used by organizations to both assess how others may view the legitimacy of their compassion relations and also to develop a positive organizational ethic of compassionate conduct. (shrink)

The promotion of rights, autonomy and choice reacts against paternalism, an early twentieth-century response to intellectual disability that suppressed individual personhood through a combination of resource limitations and poor administration. These liberal individualist concepts reflect the contemporary zeitgeist of Anglophone nations, although the strength and certainty with which these concepts are expressed in ID policy when compared with policy for other vulnerable groups suggests that they also serve a secondary function. It has been argued that excessive certainty in ID evidences (...) a feared drop... (shrink)

This study employed the Duquesne method of phenomenology to explore eight participants' experiences of not belonging. These experiences began with a discomforting sense of difference that then developed into self-conscious, wary behavior. This experience was followed by attempts at interpersonal transformation whose success led to an episodic view of not belonging and whose failure led to a more dramatic, personalized, isolating, and permanent view of not belonging. Such a view was also accompanied by a profound transformation in how the participants (...) experienced themselves, others, and their social environments. Among the most interesting findings in this research were the descriptions of isolated belonging—a pattern of relating involving many interpersonally distant relationships—and consistent, generalized not belonging—an experience where not belonging is the primary mode of interpersonal relation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CONRAD'S REPLY TO KIERKEGAARD by Jerry S. Clegg Varied answers to a fixed question have often guided interpretations of Conrad's novella, Heart ofDarkness. Who, that question has been, was Conrad's model for the enigmatic colonial official he calls Kurtz? Hannah Arendt has speculated that it was Carl Peters, an early explorer of east Africa.1 Norman Sherry has picked Arthur Hodister, a Belgian officer, as his candidate.2 Ian Watt (...) has likewise suggested historical figures: Henry M. Stanley and King Leopold of Belgium.3 Since all these men had a reputation for cruelty, those thinking that Conrad had them in mind when describing Kurtz have stressed the political message of his story; for them it is basically an indictment of colonialism. Stephen Reid has argued for a mythic model. Kurtz, he holds, was meant to be seen as one of the man-gods of Frazer's Golden Bough—a primitive king who is obliged to maintain his political position by engaging in certain bestial rites.4 Kenneth Bruffee has recendy cast Kurtz as Conrad's version of Byron's Childe Harold, arguing that the eventualjudgment on him by the character Marlow represents the effort of a squire-narrator to free himself from the pernicious influence of his knight-hero.5 For Bruffee Heart of Darkness is the prototype of a genre oftwentieth-century literature thatrejects the values ofaristocratic romance in favor of democratic norms. There may be truth in all these associations of Kurtz with known colonizers, mythical kings, and fictional knights, but they share a pair of deficiencies. They do not clarify the argument of Heart ofDarkness and so do not dojustice to its copious philosophical content. They also 280 Jerrys. Clegg281 fail to note those features ofKurtz that identify his model most precisely. The prototype of Conrad's famous character is biblical. He is a modern version of Abraham, and the work most intimately related to Heart of Darkness is Kierkegaard's panegyric on Abraham: Fear and Trembling. Conrad's story is, in fact, an addendum to Fear and Trembling written from the point of view of a poet-narrator—Marlow—who has accepted some, but not all, of the tenets of Kierkegaard's own poet-narrator, Johannes de Silentio. It is Marlow's quarrel with de Silentio that explains the structure of Heart ofDarkness, that constitutes its deepest message, and that tells the reader who the model for Kurtz was. An appreciation of that quarrel also helps clarify other matters. It makes plain, for example, the symbolism of light and dark that Conrad uses as an accompaniment to his argument.6 Heart of Darkness is, unarguably, a meditation on several subjects. It is about the Belgian Congo under the administration of King Leopold. It is also about European colonialism in general. It may be about other matters as well. Its primary subject, however, is the relationship of the religious to the ethical and the aesthetic. Since for Conrad the ethical and the aesthetic were allied, this subject may be best cast as the relationship ofreligion to art. It is introduced at the very start ofthe novella. Conrad's primary narrator there offers a theme for his seafaring friend, Marlow, to meditate on aloud: the great English knights-errant of the sea who, like "jewels flashing in the night of time," have born the torch of civilization into the mystery of an unknown earth.7 As this theme is announced, what was a mournful gloom that had hung over London becomes a lurid glare under the stars, and Marlow begins to talk of these, and still other, kinds of light and their relationship to the dark. The primary narrator has already identified what the dark stands for: time. Marlow does not challenge that equation. He only asks who, and with the aid of what kind of light, effectively combats "the night of time." During his meditation he considers four answers to his question, three of which are of primary importance. Certain "redeeming facts," illustrated by the restraint shown by hungry cannibals, quietly dazzle with reassurance, and so what mightbe called the person ofethical conduct— when stripped bare of pretense and the opaque "cloak of time... (shrink)

In his still-authoritative history of science essay, Kuhn showed that scientific discoveries commence with awareness of anomaly that researchers initially struggle to notice. Kuhn drew on a psychological study to illustrate the problem. Bruner and Postman asked people to name playing cards on brief exposure. Most cards were normal, but some were anomalous, such as a red six of spades and a black four of hearts. On brief exposure all participants fitted the anomalous cards unhesitatingly into their existing cognitive scheme, (...) identifying them as, for example, a six of spades or a four of hearts. With longer exposures subjects began to hesitate: ‘That’s a six of... (shrink)

In spite of claims made by Freud himself and others in his behalf that psychoanalysis rests on clinical investigations alone, free of historical influence, there is good reason to believe that Freud's work belongs to the mainstream of Western intellectual history. His theories on the psychology of artistic creation, for instance, indicate that he was deeply influenced by Nietzsche but was moved to quarrel with him in behalf of even older contentions which date back to Plato. The very structure of (...) Freud's theory of the mind can, indeed, be seen as the result of adjustments made in Nietzsche's psychology - adjustments which, in effect, amount to restatements of Platonic esthetic, political and social doctrine. (shrink)

This paper examines ethics in organizations in relation to the subjectivity of managers. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault we seek to theorize ethics in terms of the meaning of being a manager who is an active ethical subject. Such a manager is so in relation to the organizational structures and norms that govern the conduct of ethics. Our approach locates ethics in the relation between individual morality and organizationally prescribed principles assumed to guide personal action. In this way (...) we see ethics as a practice that is powerfully intertwined in an individual’s freedom to make choices about what to do and who to be, and the organizational context in which those choices are situated, framed and governed. (shrink)

This paper examines ethics in organizations in relation to the subjectivity of managers. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault we seek to theorize ethics in terms of the meaning of being a manager who is an active ethical subject. Such a manager is so in relation to the organizational structures and norms that govern the conduct of ethics. Our approach locates ethics in the relation between individual morality and organizationally prescribed principles assumed to guide personal action. In this way (...) we see ethics as a practice that is powerfully intertwined in an individual’s freedom to make choices about what to do and who to be, and the organizational context in which those choices are situated, framed and governed. (shrink)

To achieve effective stakeholder governance in the context of international social accountability certification requires constructing a network of agreement. In a case study of a small-to-medium-sized enterprise, we examine managers’ attempts at enrolling participants in the supply chain to investigate how they strive to engage these stakeholders. We adopt actor-network theory and sensemaking theory to develop a novel approach to understanding social accountability standards’ certification in stakeholder networks. We argue that the design and operation of any SA standard across a (...) network requires not only attempts at enrolling other participants in the supply chain but management contextualizing and problematizing the terms of their involvement. (shrink)

We applaud Dienes & Perner's efforts while raising some concerns regarding their assimilation of diverse data into a unifying framework. Some of the findings need not fit the framework they suggest. It is also not always clear what, above logico-semantic consistency, assimilation adds to the data that do fit their framework. These concerns are highlighted with reference to their arguments regarding the developmental data and the neuropsychological data, respectively.

The purpose of this edited book is to provide new insight into the understanding of ethics as they relate to organization practice and managerial behavior in todays economy. It provides an overview and critique of ethics as it relates to key contemporary challenges and issues for organizations these include globalization, sustainability, consumerism, neo-liberalism, corporate collapses, leadership and corporate regulation. The book is organized around the core question: What are the ethics of organizing in todays institutional environment and what does this (...) mean for the practice of management and the organization of business? In responding to this question, the contributors examine ethics as it is deeply embedded in the everyday practice of management. Interdisciplinary contributions from sociology, philosophy, management, organization studies, and public administration provide unique perspectives, while case studies and examples drawn from practice illustrate the challenges and dilemmas faced in practice. Each chapter has a brief overview and introduction written by the editors which summarize the main points of each chapter in terms of their contributions to the overall aims of the book as well as drawing connections between the different chapters. (shrink)

An adequate theory of rights ought to forbid the harming of animals to promote trivial interests of humans, as is often done in the animal-user industries. But what should the rights view say about situations in which harming some animals is necessary to prevent intolerable injustices to other animals? I develop an account of respectful treatment on which, under certain conditions, it’s justified to intentionally harm some individuals to prevent serious harm to others. This can be compatible with recognizing the (...) inherent value of the ones who are harmed. My theory has important implications for contemporary moral issues in nonhuman animal ethics, such as the development of cultured meat and animal research. (shrink)

Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in (...) our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests. (shrink)

Good Science is an account of psychological research emphasizing the moral foundations of inquiry. This volume brings together existing disciplinary critiques of scientism, objectivism, and instrumentalism, and then discusses how these contribute to institutionalized privilege and to less morally responsive research practices. The author draws on historical, critical, feminist, and science studies traditions to provide an alternative account of psychological science and to highlight the irreducibly moral foundations of everyday scientific practice. This work outlines a theoretical framework for thinking about (...) and practicing psychology in ways that center moral responsibility, collective commitment, and justice. The book then applies this framework, describing psychological research practices in terms of the their moral dilemmas. Also included are materials meant to aid in methods instruction and mentoring. (shrink)

During the century before its final evacuation in 1930 the population of St Kilda declined from over 100 to 36. While undoubtedly emigration and natural disasters played a part in this depopulation, ongoing processes were also important. In particular, replacement levels were never sufficient to maintain a constant population size. In the early part of this period the main factor responsible was heavy neonatal mortality, almost all from tetanus (), but latterly the fertility of those who survived was low, even (...) though mortality rates had declined. In part at least, this decline in fertility could be ascribed to a lower frequency of marriage—a phenomenon seen elsewhere in the Outer Hebrides during the latter part of the 19th century. (shrink)

In The Case for Animal Rights, Tom Regan argues that although all subjects-of-a-life have equal inherent value, there are often differences in the value of lives. According to Regan, lives that have the highest value are lives which have more possible sources of satisfaction. Regan claims that the highest source of satisfaction, which is available to only rational beings, is the satisfaction associated with thinking impartially about moral choices. Since rational beings can bring impartial reasons to bear on decision making, (...) Regan maintains that they have an additional possible source of satisfaction that nonrational beings do not have and, consequently, the lives of rational beings turn out to have greater value.. (shrink)

Drawing on Durkheim's concept of anomie, we address the under‐explored phenomenon of anomic suicide in contemporary organizations and discuss the consequences of solidarity for organizations and society. The relations of social solidarity to issues of identity and insecurity are explored through the cases of France Telecom Orange and Foxconn. Remedial implications for organizing, considered as community building, are discussed. Durkheim wrote not only about anomic but also altruistic suicide. We will also analyze examples of this type of suicide. Some tentative (...) suggestions are made for how to organize to minimize the incidence of suicidal violence in organizations. (shrink)

Анотація. У статті проаналізовані досягнення Соціального Вчительства Католицької Церкви, репрезентовані працями Лева ХІІІ, Пія ХІ, Пія ХІІ, Івана Павла ІІ, що розкривають змістовні характеристики поняття «принцип субсидіарності», його роль і значення в системі християнських цінностей. Принцип субсидіарності робить можливими такі взаємовідносини в соціальному житті, коли спільнота вищого порядку не втручається у внутрішнє життя спільноти нижчого порядку, перебираючи на себе належні тій функції; заради спільного добра, спільного блага вона надає їй у разі потреби підтримку й допомогу, узгоджуючи у такий спосіб її (...) взаємодію з іншими соціальними структурами. Принцип субсидіарності скеровує соціальну практику на утвердження спільного блага в людському співтоваристві. Поширення і застосування принципу субсидіарності протистоїть небезпеці «одержавлення» суспільства та найзагрозливіших проявів колективізму, обмежує абсолютизацію влади, бюрократизацію державних і соціокультурних структур, стає одним із гарантів дотримання прав і свобод громадян своєї країни. (shrink)

Although studies in organizational storytelling have dealt extensively with the relationship between narrative, power and organizational change, little attention has been paid to the implications of this for ethics within organizations. This article addresses this by presenting an analysis of narrative and ethics as it relates to the practice of organizational downsizing. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur's theories of narrative and ethics, we analyze stories of organizational change reported by employees and managers in an organization that had undergone persistent downsizing. Our (...) analysis maintains that the presence of a dominant story that seeks to legitimate organizational change also serves to normalize it, and that this, in turn, diminishes the capacity for organizations to scrutinize the ethics of their actions. We argue that when organizational change narratives become singularized through dominant forms of emplotment, ethical deliberation and responsibility in organizations are diminished. More generally, we contend that the narrative closure achieved by the presence of a dominant narrative amongst employees undergoing organizational change is antithetical to the openness required for ethical questioning. (shrink)

In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O’Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transparency. People think that trust and transparency go together but in reality, says O'Neill, they are deeply opposed. Transparency forces people to conceal their actual reasons for action and invent different ones for public consumption. Transparency forces deception. I work out the details of her argument and worsen her conclusion. I focus on public transparency – that is, transparency to the public over expert domains. (...) I offer two versions of the criticism. First, the epistemic intrusion argument: The drive to transparency forces experts to explain their reasoning to non-experts. But expert reasons are, by their nature, often inaccessible to non-experts. So the demand for transparency can pressure experts to act only in those ways for which they can offer public justification. Second, the intimate reasons argument: In many cases of practical deliberation, the relevant reasons are intimate to a community and not easily explicable to those who lack a particular shared background. The demand for transparency, then, pressures community members to abandon the special understanding and sensitivity that arises from their particular experiences. Transparency, it turns out, is a form of surveillance. By forcing reasoning into the explicit and public sphere, transparency roots out corruption — but it also inhibits the full application of expert skill, sensitivity, and subtle shared understandings. The difficulty here arises from the basic fact that human knowledge vastly outstrips any individual’s capacities. We all depend on experts, which makes us vulnerable to their biases and corruption. But if we try to wholly secure our trust — if we leash groups of experts to pursuing only the goals and taking only the actions that can be justified to the non-expert public — then we will undermine their expertise. We need both trust and transparency, but they are in essential tension. This is a deep practical dilemma; it admits of no neat resolution, but only painful compromise. (shrink)

One of the achievements of feminist politics, in a range of disciplines and practices, has been to secure a hearing for traumatic narratives of incest. Recently, however, the debate in the public domain seems overwhelmed by what has come to be known as ‘the memory wars’. Fathers accused by adult daughters have dismissed the possibility that traumatic childhood memories can be recovered, largely on the grounds of science and reason. This response of accused fathers would seem to drive out other (...) ways of reading and interpreting the traumatic histories of the cultures we inhabit. On the other hand, feminist responses to narratives of incest are complicated by the desire for appropriate endings. Taking Sylvia Fraser's autobiography, My Father's House: A Memoir of Incest and Healing (1989, 1992) as an exemplary text, this article explores the difficult implications for adult women who commit to literary writing their memories of incest. In particular, how can feminism respond to an incest survivor who wants to forgive her father? (shrink)