Hypatia articles from June 1996

Hypatia archives from June 1996

Against marriage and motherhood.
June 22, 1996... The title of this essay is deliberately provocative, because I fear that radical feminist perspectives on marriage and motherhood are in danger of being lost in the quest for equal rights. My concerns, however, are specific. I am skeptical of...

Is there a natural sexual inequality of intellect? A reply to Kimura. (response to psychologist Doreen Kimura's assertion that equal representation of men and women in the professions is unattainable due to differences in intellect)
June 22, 1996... At the close of her "Sex Differences in the Brain," Doreen Kimura concludes, after a survey of research concerning sex differences in motor skills, perceptual skills, cognitive skills, brain organization, and so on, that one "would not expect,...

Fetal relationality in feminist philosophy: an anthropological critique.
June 22, 1996... As fetuses figure ever more prominently in the American social imaginary, feminist theorists are compelled to take notice. The many paths through this politically charged terrain are all lined with contradictions, creating a series of persistent...

Relational individualism and feminist therapy.
June 22, 1996... The emergence and growing practice of feminist therapy and counseling in the seventies and eighties were stimulated by, have kept pace with, and often have closely mirrored developments in feminist theory. But after twenty years the relation...

Moral reasoning as perception: a reading of Carol Gilligan.
June 22, 1996... In a series of writings beginning with In a Different Voice, Carol Gilligan has sought to show how moral reasoning originates in the prereflective experiences of early childhood relationships. From these experiences, she has argued, arise two...

The diabolical strategy of mimesis: Luce Irigaray's reading of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
June 22, 1996... Art is not construction, artifice, meticulous relationship to a space and a world existing outside. (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Eye and Mind") Herein lies the diabolical - in mimesis. The appropriation, the very constitution of the same, in which...

Coyote politics: trickster tales and feminist futures.
June 22, 1996... When you're trying to write about tricksters And you go downstairs at 6 A.M. and see Coyote padding up the road, don't think it's a good sign. He's not there to inspire you. Later that day, someone might steal your hubcaps. You might not write...

Reply to Louise Antony. (response to Louise Antony's critique of Naomi Scheman's unpublished work, 'Types, Token, and Conjuring Tricks')
June 22, 1996... Louise Antony and I have a long history of debating issues in analytic epistemology and philosophy of psychology, and I have found her an insightful, challenging, and fair critic of my work. I have always appreciated the seriousness of her...

Friendship across generations. (comments on 'Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt,' edited by Bonnie Honig)
June 22, 1996... Some of the most important work of feminist theorizing in the past two decades has been in intellectual history, especially in revising and reinterpreting the canon of philosophers taken as the foundation for Western culture. In this process...

Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt.
June 22, 1996... Some of the most important work of feminist theorizing in the past two decades has been in intellectual history, especially in revising and reinterpreting the canon of philosophers taken as the foundation for Western culture. In this process...

Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir.
June 22, 1996... It is more than a little ironic that a collection of essays on the philosophy of the decidedly uncanonical Simone de Beauvoir should be issued in Penn State's "Re-reading the Canon" series - and as the second volume, no less, published on the...

Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy.
June 22, 1996... Hannah Arendt neither identified with feminism nor analyzed gender relations; yet her willingness to forgo conventions in order to reckon with the subtleties and complexities of historical experience led her to insights that feminist theory has...

Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics.
June 22, 1996... Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics, edited by Peggy Zeglin Brand and Carolyn Korsmeyer, is an ambitious collection weighing in at nearly five hundred pages and ranging over a variety of issues at the intersection of feminism and philosophical...

Against marriage and motherhood.
June 22, 1996... This essay argues that current advocacy of lesbian and gay rights to legal marriage and parenthood insufficiently criticizes both marriage and motherhood as they are currently practiced and structured by Northern legal institutions. Instead we...

The diabolical strategy of mimesis: Luce Irigaray's reading of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
June 22, 1996... In this essay I explore the dynamic between Luce Irigaray and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as it unfolds in An Ethics of Sexual Difference (1993). Irigaray's strategy of mimesis is a powerful feminist tool, both philosophically and politically....

Coyote politics: trickster tales and feminist futures.
June 22, 1996... This essay is a first attempt at thinking through the ways in which Native American Coyote stories can illuminate options for lesbian and feminist politics. I follow the metaphors of trickery and shape-shifting common to the stories and...

Reply to Louise Antony.(COMMENT/REPLY)
June 22, 1996... In her discussion of Naomi Scheman's "Individualism and the Objects of Psychology" Louise Antony misses the import of an unpublished paper of Scheman's that she cites. That paper argues against token identity theories on the grounds that only...

Friendship across generations.(REVIEW ESSAY)
June 22, 1996... Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, edited by Bonnie Honig, a collection of critical feminist essays on Hannah Arendt, illustrates both the disorientation and the insights that can result when feminist philosophers come to terms with a...

Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir.
June 22, 1996... Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir. Edited by MARGARET A. SIMONS. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. It is more than a little ironic that a collection of essays on the philosophy of the decidedly...

Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy.
June 22, 1996... Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy. By LISA JANE DISCH. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. Hannah Arendt neither identified with feminism nor analyzed gender relations; yet her willingness to forgo conventions in order to...

Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics.
June 22, 1996... Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics. Edited by PEGGY ZEGLIN BRAND and CAROLYN KORSMEYER. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 1995. Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics, edited by Peggy Zeglin Brand and Carolyn Korsmeyer,...

Is there a natural sexual inequality of intellect? A reply to Kimura.
June 22, 1996... The noted psychologist, Doreen Kimura, has argued that we should not expect to find equal numbers of men and women in various professions because there is a natural sexual inequality of intellect. In rebuttal I argue that each of these mutually...

Fetal relationality in feminist philosophy: an anthropological critique.
June 22, 1996... This essay critiques feminist treatments of maternal-fetal "relationality" that unwittingly replicate features of Western individualism (for example, the Cartesian division between the asocial body and the social-cognitive person, or the...

Relational individualism and feminist therapy.
June 22, 1996... My aim here is to clarify the practice of honoring and validating the relational model of self which plays an important role in feminist therapy. This practice rests on a tangle of psychological claims, moral and political values, and mental...

Moral reasoning as perception: a reading of Carol Gilligan.
June 22, 1996... Gilligan's understanding of moral reasoning as a kind of perception has its roots in the conception of moral experience espoused by Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch. A clear understanding of that conception, however, reveals grave difficulties with...