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25Recognition, Responsibility, and Rights: Feminist Ethics and Social TheoryRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2002.This collection of papers by prominent feminist thinkers advances the positive feminist project of remapping the moral by developing theory that acknowledges the diversity of women
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75Diana Tietjens Meyers examines the political underpinnings of psychoanalytic feminism, analyzing the relation between the nature of the self and the structure of good societies. She argues that impartial reason--the approach to moral reflection which has dominated 20th-century Anglo-American philosophy--is inadequate for addressing real world injustices. ____Subjection and Subjectivity__ is central to feminist thought across a wide range of disciplines.
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47Mother Time: Women, Aging, and Ethics (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1999.Fifteen original essays open up a novel area of inquiry: the distinctively ethical dimensions of women's experiences of and in aging. Contributors distinguished in the fields of feminist ethics and the ethics of aging explore assumptions, experiences, practices, and public policies that affect women's well-being and dignity in later life. The book brings to the study of women's aging a reflective dimension missing from the empirical work that has predominated to date. Ethical studies of aging ha…Read more
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1157Narrative Structures, Narratives of Abuse, and Human RightsIn Lisa Tessman (ed.), Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Theorizing the Non-Ideal, Springer. 2009.This paper explores the relation between victims’ stories and normativity. As a contribution to understanding how the stories of those who have been abused or oppressed can advance moral understanding, catalyze moral innovation, and guide social change, this paper focuses on narrative as a variegated form of representation and asks whether personal narratives of victimization play any distinctive role in human rights discourse. In view of the fact that a number of prominent students of narrati…Read more
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58Part III. Section 1. Theories of Socialization. Autonomy as autonomy competency acknowledges the necessity of socialization for autonomy. Preliminary to considering this claim in relation to gender, Meyers sketches three social scientific models of socialization - psychoanalysis, social learning, and cognitive development.
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21Intersectional Identity and the Authentic Self? Opposites AttractIn Catriona Mackenzie & Natalie Stoljar (eds.), Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self, Oxford University Press. 2000.
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36Part III. Section 4. Full Autonomy - An Attainable Ideal: Maximal or full autonomy is an unrealistic goal for all people. Contrary to a common assumption, however, masculine socialization does not generally result in full autonomy, but rather in medial autonomy. Conformism is as much of an obstacle to the full autonomy of men as it is for women. Still, men in western cultures are more likely to be more autonomous than women, and this discrepancy calls for change.
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7Women Philosophers, Sidelined Challenges, and Professional PhilosophyHypatia 20 (3): 149-152. 2005.
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1370Feminism and Women’s Autonomy: The Challenge of Female Genital CuttingMetaphilosophy 31 (5): 469-491. 2000.Feminist studies of female genital cutting (FGC) provide ample evidence that many women exercise effective agency with respect to this practice, both as accommodators and as resisters. The influence of culture on autonomy is ambiguous: women who resist cultural mandates for FGC do not necessarily enjoy greater autonomy than do those women who accommodate the practice, yet it is clear that some social contexts are more conducive to autonomy than others. In this paper, I explore the implications f…Read more
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7083Poverty, Agency, and Human Rights (edited book)Oxford University Press USA. 2014.Poverty, Agency, and Human Rights collects thirteen new essays that analyze how human agency relates to poverty and human rights respectively as well as how agency mediates issues concerning poverty and social and economic human rights. No other collection of philosophical papers focuses on the diverse ways poverty impacts the agency of the poor, the reasons why poverty alleviation schemes should also promote the agency of beneficiaries, and the fitness of the human rights regime to secure both …Read more
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18The socialized individual and individual autonomy: An intersection between philosophy and psychologyIn Women and Moral Theory, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 146. 1987.
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1183Artifice and Authenticity: Gender Technology and Agency in Two Jenny Saville PortraitsIn Laurie Shrage (ed.), You’Ve Changed: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity, Oup Usa. 2009.This paper addresses two related topics: 1. The disanalogies between elective cosmetic practices and sex reassignment surgery. Why does it seem necessary for me – an aging professional woman – to ignore the blandishments of hairdressers wielding dyes and dermatologists wielding acids and scalpels? Why does it not seem equally necessary for a transgendered person to repudiate sex reassignment procedures? 2. The role of the body in identity and agency. How do phenomenological insights regardi…Read more
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105Part II. Section 4. Autonomy Competency: Meyers takes John Rawls to task for giving a superficial account of autonomy. Endorsing deliberative rationality, he furnishes no account of how to achieve it. Meyers argues that her conception of autonomy competency fills the gap in Rawls's theory. Moreover, it is compatible with the emotional bonds of a relational self, and, acknowledging human fallibility, it provides an account of how autonomous people can recognize and correct their missteps. In the …Read more
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18Liberty, Market and State: Political Economy in the 1980's, James M. Buchanan, New York: New York University Press, 1986, 320 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 3 (2): 351. 1987.
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61Rights in collision: A non-punitive, compensatory remedy for abusive speech (review)Law and Philosophy 14 (2). 1995.
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28Part II. Section 6. Responsibility for Self: Meyers criticizes Derek Parfit's arguments against the rationality of temporal neutrality -- in other words, the principle of responsibility to self. She urges that autonomy requires providing for one's future.
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Recognition, Responsibility, and Rights: Feminist Ethics and Social TheoryRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2002.In the words of Catharine MacKinnon, "a woman is not yet a name for a way of being human." In other words, women are still excluded, as authors and agents, from identifying what it is to be human and what therefore violates the dignity and integrity of humans. Recognition, Responsibility, and Rights is written in response to that failure. This collection of essays by prominent feminist thinkers advances the positive feminist project of remapping the moral landscape by developing theory that ackn…Read more
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75Gender in the Mirror: Cultural Imagery and Women's AgencyOup Usa. 2001.The cultural imagery of women is deeply ingrained in our consciousness. So deeply, in fact, that feminists see this as a fundamental threat to female autonomy because it enshrines procreative heterosexuality as well as the relations of domination and subordination between men and women. Diana Meyers' book is about this cultural imagery - and how, once it is internalized, it shapes perception, reflection, judgement, and desire. These intergral images have a deep impact not only on the individual …Read more
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Paul BloomfieldIn Paul Bloomfield (ed.), Morality and Self-Interest, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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24Victims' Stories and the Advancement of Human RightsOxford University Press USA. 2016.Victim's Stories and the Advancement of Human Rights takes on a set of questions suggested by the worldwide persistence of human rights abuse and the prevalence of victims' stories in human rights campaigns, truth commissions, and international criminal tribunals: What conceptions of victims are presumed in contemporary human rights discourse? How do conventional narrative templates fail victims of human rights abuse and resist raising novel human rights issues? What is empathy, and how can vict…Read more
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35Commentary on Entangled Empathy by Lori GruenHypatia 32 (2): 415-427. 2017.This essay explores four aspects of Gruen's theory. The first section considers her analysis of the concepts of sympathy, pity, and emotional contagion. The second section outlines the main features of her conception of empathy and highlights some worries about empathy that her theory addresses. The third section examines empathy's contributions to moral epistemology. The fourth section queries Gruen's contention that empathy is morally motivating.
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192Personal Autonomy and the Paradox of Feminine SocializationJournal of Philosophy 84 (11): 619-628. 1987.
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59The Politics of Self‐Respect: A Feminist PerspectiveHypatia 1 (1). 1986.Recent liberal moral and political philosophy has placed great emphasis on the good of self-respect. But it is not always evident what is involved in self-respect, nor is it evident how societies can promote it. Assuming that self-respect is highly desirable, I begin by considering how people can live in a self-respecting fashion, and I argue that autonomous envisaging and fulfillment of one's own life plans is necessary for self-respect. I next turn to the question of how societal implementatio…Read more
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17Economic Justice: Private Rights and Public Responsibilities : An Amintaphil Volume (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1985.Twenty distinguished philosophers and social theorists have contributed original papers to this stimulating investigation into the nature of the economically just society. Collectively, and in a remarkably coherent fashion, these papers set out the problems of contemporary social theory within the context of the distributive justice vs. property rights debate initiated by the works of John Rawls and Robert Nozick
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21Kindred Matters: Rethinking the Philosophy of the FamilyPhilosophical Quarterly 45 (180): 405. 1995.
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29No safe passage: ‘the mapping journey project’Journal of Global Ethics 12 (3): 252-259. 2016.This essay examines ‘The Mapping Journey Project’, an installation artwork by Bouchra Khalili. It consists of eight large video screens and headsets. In each video, a migrant draws a map of her/his journey to and in Europe and narrates her/his route. In collaboration with Khalili, I argue, these storyteller/draftspersons create a dissident cartography that superimposes their lived geography on the background of legal geography. Thus, ‘The Mapping Journey Project’ is a work of art that is also a …Read more
Storrs, Connecticut, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |