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62Witnessing, Recognition, and Response EthicsPhilosophy and Rhetoric 48 (4): 473-493. 2015.For at least the last twenty years, philosophers have attempted various strategies for reviving the Hegelian notion of recognition and redeploying it in discourses centered around social justice, including multiculturalism, feminism, race theory, and queer theory. Hegel’s master-slave dialectic may seem like an obvious place to start to analyze the oppression of one group by another. Given that Hegel is not literally talking about slaves, however, but a stage of consciousness, indeed the onset o…Read more
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211 Knock Me Up, Knock Me Down: Images of Pregnancy in Hollywood Film and Popular CultureIn Sarah LaChance Adams & Caroline R. Lundquist (eds.), Coming to Life: Philosophies of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering, Fordham University Press. pp. 239-262. 2013.
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311 The Uncanny Strangeness of Maternal ElectionIn Richard Kearney & Kascha Semonovitch (eds.), Phenomenologies of the Stranger: Between Hostility and Hospitality, Fordham University Press. pp. 196-212. 2022.
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42 Fatherhood and the Promise of EthicsIn Samuel Clark Buckner & Matthew Statler (eds.), Styles of piety: practicing philosophy after the death of God, Fordham University Press. pp. 35-54. 2006.
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17Whose New Normal?Philosophy Today 64 (4): 901-905. 2020.Belying the rhetoric of “We’re all in this together,” and “COVID as the great equalizer,” the pandemic has brought into focus the “pre-existing conditions” of inequality—poverty, racism, lack of health care, lack of child care, women’s double burden, and the vulnerability of the elderly, among others. The coronavirus reveals gaping inequities in the length and quality of life caused by social and economic “pre-existing conditions.” It is the great unequalizer, the promise and ruse of “We’re all …Read more
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16Deconstructing the Death Penalty: Derrida's Seminars and the New Abolitionism (edited book)Fordham University Press. 2018.This volume represents the first collection of essays devoted exclusively to Jacques Derrida's Death Penalty Seminars, conducted from 1999-2001. The volume includes essays from a range of scholars working in philosophy, law, Francophone studies, and comparative literature, including established Derridians, activist scholars, and emerging scholars.
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15Technologies of Life and Death: From Cloning to Capital PunishmentFordham University Press. 2013.Using deconstruction, this book approaches contemporary problems raised by technologies of life and death from cloning to capital punishment; and thereby, provides new insights into current debates from a perspective outside of mainstream philosophy with its assumptions of individual and political sovereignty.
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25Enigmas: Essays on Sarah Kofman (edited book)Cornell University Press. 2018.The work of the distinguished philosopher Sarah Kofman has, since her tragic death in 1994, become a focus for many scholars interested in contemporary French philosophy. The first critical collection on her thought to appear in English, Enigmas evaluates Kofman's most important contributions to philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, feminism, and literary theory. These insightful essays range from analyses of Kofman's first book, L'Enfance de l'art, to her last, L'Imposture de la beauté. This uniqu…Read more
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26Reading Nietzsche with Irigaray: Not your garden-variety philosophyJournal of French and Francophone Philosophy 27 (1): 50-58. 2019.My short essay on Irigaray’s relation to Nietzsche could be divided into the beginnings of six arguments: First, Nietzsche continues to hold a special place in Irigaray’s thinking. Second, Amante Marine is an important part of Irigaray’s elemental philosophy. Third, Irigaray’s insistence on depth over surface in Amante Marine points to two different ways Nietzsche has been taken up in French Philosophy, which could be characterized as the difference between surface and depth. Fourth, Irigaray’s …Read more
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24On Sharing a World with Other AnimalsEnvironmental Philosophy 16 (1): 35-56. 2019.Challenging Heidegger’s thesis that animals are poor in world while humans are world-building, in The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume II, Jacques Derrida claims that each singular living being inhabits its own solitary world, its own desert island. There, he claims both, on the one hand, that animals share our world and may be world-building and, on the other, that we cannot be certain that human beings share a world or are world-building. In this article, I trace the ethical implications of Der…Read more
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32Rethinking Response EthicsPhilosophy Today 62 (2): 619-626. 2018.Working against both Hegelian recognition and ethics based on vulnerability, I argue for response ethics or an ethics of ambivalence. While the ideal of mutual recognition is admirable, in practice, recognition is experienced as conferred by the very groups and institutions responsible for withholding it in the first place. In other words, recognition is distributed according to an axis of power that is part and parcel of systems of dominance and oppression. I both challenge the concept of vulne…Read more
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25Death as a Penalty and the Fantasy of Instant DeathLaw and Critique 27 (2): 137-149. 2016.In this essay I take up the question of how death can be a penalty, given that each of us will eventually die. I argue that capital punishment in the United States rests on contradictory demands for painless death delivered humanely through pharmaceuticals and yet denies the accused the possibility of natural death. The death penalty must be at once humane and punishing. Analyzing what we mean by ‘botched’ executions, along with the language of the Supreme Court in upholding lethal injection as …Read more
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7Rethinking Response EthicsPhilosophy Today 62 (2): 619-626. 2018.Working against both Hegelian recognition and ethics based on vulnerability, I argue for response ethics or an ethics of ambivalence. While the ideal of mutual recognition is admirable, in practice, recognition is experienced as conferred by the very groups and institutions responsible for withholding it in the first place. In other words, recognition is distributed according to an axis of power that is part and parcel of systems of dominance and oppression. I both challenge the concept of vulne…Read more
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16On Sharing a World with Other AnimalsEnvironmental Philosophy 16 (1): 35-56. 2019.Challenging Heidegger’s thesis that animals are poor in world while humans are world-building, in The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume II, Jacques Derrida claims that each singular living being inhabits its own solitary world, its own desert island. There, he claims both, on the one hand, that animals share our world and may be world-building and, on the other, that we cannot be certain that human beings share a world or are world-building (at least not in Heidegger’s sense as set apart from anim…Read more
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23Earthquakes: Deconstructing HumanitarianismDerrida Today 10 (1): 38-50. 2017.In this paper I develop a deconstructive analysis of the relationship between humanitarian aid and state sovereignty. First, I sketch Derrida's analysis of the Christian roots of contemporary concepts of tolerance, forgiveness, and hospitality. Second, I trace the history and etymology of the word ‘humanitarian’ to reveal its Christian heritage; and argue that ‘humanitarian’ is bound to the violence of Christ's crucifixion, on the one hand, and to the sovereignty of God, on the other. Third, I s…Read more
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51Service Dogs: Between Animal Studies and Disability StudiesphiloSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism 6 (2): 241-258. 2016.
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32Deconstructing “Grown versus Made”Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry 7 (16): 42-52. 2011.In this essay, I consider what happens to debates over genetic enhancement when we “deconstruct” the opposition between “grown and made” and the notion of freedom of choice that comes with it. Along with the binary grown and made comes other such oppositions at the center of these debates: chance and choice, accident and deliberation, nature and culture. By deconstructing the oppositions between grown versus made (chance versus choice, or accident versus deliberate), and free versus determined, …Read more
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15Strange KinshipEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 13 (1): 101-120. 2008.The development of the emerging science of ecology influenced the later work of both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Both use zoology, biology, and ecology intheir attempts to navigate between mechanism and vitalism, but their interpretations and use of the life sciences take them on divergent paths and lead them to radically different conclusions regarding the relationship between man and animal. This essay takes up the problematic of kinship with animals in Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Beyond the…Read more
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2Starting at Home: Caring and Social PolicyPolitical Theory 31 (6): 859-870. 2003.Nel Noddings, one of the central figures in the contemporary discussion of ethics and moral education, argues that caring--a way of life learned at home--can be extended into a theory that guides social policy. Tackling issues such as capital punishment, drug treatment, homelessness, mental illness, and abortion, Noddings inverts traditional philosophical priorities to show how an ethic of care can have profound and compelling implications for social and political thought. Instead of beginning w…Read more
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43Knock Me Up, Knock Me Down: Images of Pregnancy in Hollywood FilmsColumbia University Press. 2012.No longer is pregnancy a repulsive or shameful condition in Hollywood films, but an attractive attribute, often enhancing the romantic or comedic storyline of a female character. Kelly Oliver investigates this curious shift and its reflection of changing attitudes toward women's roles in reproduction and the family. Not all representations signify progress. Oliver finds that in many pregnancy films, our anxieties over modern reproductive practices and technologies are made manifest, and in some …Read more
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5The Morality of American Manhood, Responsibility, and VirilityIn Ann Cahill & Jennifer Hansen (eds.), The Continental Feminism Reader, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 43--4. 2003.
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
Continental Philosophy |