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92Kristeva’s Sadomasochistic Subject and the Sublimation of ViolenceJournal of French and Francophone Philosophy 21 (1): 13-26. 2013.Do representations of violence incite or quell violent desires and actions? This question--the question of the relation between mimesis and catharsis--is as old as Western Philosophy itself. In this essay, I attempt to think through how Kristeva might describe the difference between representations of violence that perpetuate violent desires and actions versus representations of violence that sublimate violent desires and thereby prevent violent actions
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28Women: The Secret Weapon of Modern Warfare?Hypatia 23 (2): 1-16. 2008.The images from wars in the Middle East that haunt us are those of young women killing and torturing. Their media circulated stories share a sense of shock. They have both galvanized and confounded debates over feminism and women's equality. And, as Oliver argues in this essay, they share, perhaps subliminally, the problematic notion of women as both offensive and defensive weapons of war, a notion that is symptomatic of fears of women's “mysterious” powers.
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45Ecological Subjectivity: Merleau-Ponty and a Vision of EthicsStudies in Practical Philosophy 4 (1): 102-125. 2004.
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32The Portable Kristeva (edited book)Columbia University Press. 2002.As a linguist, Julia Kristeva has pioneered a revolutionary theory of the sign in its relation to social and political emancipation; as a practicing psychoanalyst, she has produced work on the nature of the human subject and sexuality, and on the "new maladies" of today's neurotic. _The Portable Kristeva_ is the only fully comprehensive compilation of Kristeva's key writings. The second edition includes added material from Kristeva's most important works of the past five years, including _The Se…Read more
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73Bodies against the law: Abu ghraib and the war on terror (review)Continental Philosophy Review 42 (1): 63-80. 2009.In this essay, I argue that the contemporary notion of law has been reduced to regulations and disciplinary codes that do not and cannot give meaning to our emotional lives and moral sensibilities. As a result, we have increasing numbers of what I call “abysmal individuals” who suffer from a split between law—broadly conceived as that which gives form and structure to social life—and personal embodied sensations of pain and pleasure. My attempt to understand the place of Abu Ghraib within Americ…Read more
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28The Colonization of Psychic Space: A Psychoanalytic Social Theory of OppressionU of Minnesota Press. 2004.We are, Julia Kristeva writes, strangers to ourselves; and indeed much of contemporary theory describes the human condition as one of alienation. Eloquently arguing that we cannot explain the developement of individuality or subjectivity apart from its social context, Kelly Oliver makes a powerful case for recognizing the social aspects of alienation and the psychic aspects of oppression.
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15Book review: Tamsin Lorraine. Irigaray and Deleuze: Experiments in visceral philosophy. Ithaca: New York: Cornell university press, 1999 (review)Hypatia 16 (1): 100-102. 2001.
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81Reading Kristeva: Unraveling the Double-BindIndiana University Press. 1993."... both an excellent introduction and a thoroughgoing analysis of Kristeva’s writing." —Signs "The book is a brilliant combination of a recuperative and a critical reading of Kristeva’s work." —Changes: An International Journal of Psychology & Psychotherapy "... a thorough, detailed, and critical analysis of the writings of Julia Kristeva." —Elizabeth Grosz "... the most involved and engaging study of Julia Kristeva’s work to date..." —The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory This first…Read more
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14Nietzsche, Feminism and Political Theory (review)International Studies in Philosophy 28 (4): 138-139. 1996.
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43Conflicted LoveHypatia 15 (3): 1-18. 2000.Our stereotypes of maternity and paternity as manifest in the history of philosophy and psychoanalysis interfere with the ability to imagine loving relationships. The associations of maternity with antisocial nature and paternity with disembodied culture are inadequate to set up primary love relationships. Analyzing the conflicts in these associations, I reformulate the maternal body as social and lawful, and I reformulate the paternal function as embodied, which enables imagining our primary re…Read more
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32The Look of LoveHypatia 16 (3): 56-78. 2001.I begin to suggest an alternative to the notion of vision based in alienation and hostility put forth by Jean-Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, and Jacques Lacan. I diagnose this alienating vision as a result of a particular alienating notion of space presupposed by their theories. I develop lrigaray's comments about light and air to suggest an alternative notion of space that opens up the possibility that vision connects us to others rather than alienates us from them.
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142Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to Be HumanColumbia University Press. 2009.Introduction: The role of animals in philosophies of man -- Part I: What's wrong with animal rights? -- The right to remain silent -- Part II: Animal pedagogy -- You are what you eat : Rousseau's cat -- Say the human responded : Herder's sheep -- Part III: Difference worthy of its name -- Hair of the dog : Derrida's and Rousseau's good taste -- Sexual difference, animal difference : Derrida's sexy silkworm -- Part IV: It's our fault -- The beaver's struggle with species-being : De Beauvoir and t…Read more
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121Stopping the Anthropological Machine: Agamben with Heidegger and Merleau-PontyPhaenEx 2 (2): 1-23. 2007.Agamben maintains that Heidegger continues the work of the anthropological machine by defining Dasein as uniquely open to the closedness of the animal. Yet, Agamben’s own thinking does not so much open up the concept of animal as it attempts to save humanity from the anthropological machine that always produces the animal as the constitutive outside within the human itself. Agamben’s return to religious metaphors at best displaces the binary man-animal with the binary religion-science, and at wo…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
Continental Philosophy |