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The flesh become word: The body in Kristeva's theoryIn Simon Critchley (ed.), The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Blackwell. pp. 341--352. 1999.
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Between the Psyche and the Social: Psychoanalytic Social Theory (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2001.Between the Psyche and the Social is the first collection that specifically features the field of psychoanalytic social theory emerging in and between psychoanalysis, feminism, postcolonial studies, and queer theory, and across the disciplines of philosophy, literary, film, and cultural studies. This collection of essays takes the psychoanalytic study of social oppression in some new directions by engaging—indeed, stirring up—unconscious fantasies and ethical tensions at the heart of social subj…Read more
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Nietzsche's woman: The poststructuralist attempt to do away with womenRadical Philosophy 48 25-29. 1988.
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106Keller's Gender/Science System: Is the Philosophy of Science to Science as Science is to Nature?Hypatia 3 (3): 137-148. 1988.I argue that although in “The Gender/Science System,” Keller intends to formulate a middle ground position in order to open science to feminist criticisms without forcing it into relativism, she steps back into objectivism. While she endorses the dynamic-object model for science, she endorses the static-object model for philosophy of science. I suggest that by modeling her methodology for philosophy on her methodology for science her philosophy would better serve her feminist goals.
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82Womanizing Nietzsche: Philosophy's Relation to the "Feminine"Routledge. 1994.In ____Womanizing Nietzsche,__ Kelly Oliver uses an analysis of the position of woman in Nietzsche's texts to open onto the larger question of philosophy's relation to the feminine and the maternal. Offering readings from Nietzsche, Derrida, Irigaray, Kristeva, Freud and Lacan, Oliver builds an innovative foundation for an ontology of intersubjective relationships that suggests a new approach to ethics.
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18Earth and World: Philosophy After the Apollo MissionsCambridge University Press. 2015.Critically engaging the work of Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida together with her own observations on contemporary politics, environmental degradation, and the pursuit of a just and sustainable world, Kelly Oliver lays the groundwork for a politics and ethics that embraces otherness without exploiting difference. Rooted firmly in human beings' relationship to the planet and to each other, Oliver shows peace is possible only if we maintain our ties to earth and…Read more
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15The maternal operation: Circumscribing the allianceIn Ellen K. Feder, Mary C. Rawlinson & Emily Zakin (eds.), Derrida and Feminism: Recasting the Question of Woman, Routledge. pp. 53--68. 1997.
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25See topsy “ride the lightning”: The scopic machinery of deathSouthern Journal of Philosophy 50 (s1): 74-94. 2012.abstract: This essay explores the connections between speculation, spectacle, and the death penalty, particularly insofar as they bear on what is “proper to man” and on the man–animal distinction. Returning to a scene of death from Derrida's seminar The Beast and the Sovereign, specifically the scene of an elephant's autopsy, we see how what he calls “the globalization of the autopsic model” of sovereignty requires the death of the animal (Derrida 2009, 296). Following Derrida, we see how man's …Read more
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83Antigone's Ghost: Undoing Hegel's Phenomenology of SpiritHypatia 11 (1). 1996.This essay argues that Hegel's discussion of the family in "The Ethical Order" section of Phenomenology of Spirit undermines the entire project of that text. Hegel's project demands that every element of consciousness be conceptualizable, and yet, woman, an essential unconscious element of consciousness, is in principle unconceptualizable. The end of the essay attempts to relate Hegel's discussion of the family to contemporary discussions of family values
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943Rape as Spectator Sport and Creepshot Entertainment: Social Media and the Valorization of Lack of ConsentAmerican Studies Journal (10): 1-16. 2015.Lack of consent is valorized within popular culture to the point that sexual assault has become a spectator sport and creepshot entertainment on social media. Indeed, the valorization of nonconsensual sex has reached the extreme where sex with unconscious girls, especially accompanied by photographs as trophies, has become a goal of some boys and men.
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116Media Representations of Women and the “Iraq War”Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry 5 (12): 14-22. 2010.This essay examines media images of women in recent conflicts in the Middle East. From the Abu Ghraib prison abuses to protests in Iran, women have become the public face of violence, carried out and suffered. Women’s bodies are figured as sexual and violent, a potent combination that stirs public imagination and feeds into stereotypes of women as femme fatales or “bombshells.”
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140Julia Kristeva's Feminist RevolutionsHypatia 8 (3): 94-114. 1993.Julia Kristeva is known as rejecting feminism, nonetheless her work is useful for feminist theory. I reconsider Kristeva's rejection of feminism and her theories of difference, identity, and maternity, elaborating on Kristeva's contributions to debates over the necessity of identity politics, indicating how Kristeva's theory suggests the cause of and possible solutions to women's oppression in Western culture, and, using Kristeva's theory, setting up a framework for a feminist rethinking of poli…Read more
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Tracing the signifier behind the scenes of desire: Kristeva's challenge to Lacan's analysisIn Hugh J. Silverman (ed.), Cultural Semiosis: Tracing the Signifier, Routledge. pp. 83--128. 1998.
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32Contemporary French Feminism (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2004.Have we entered a historical moment of 'post-feminism'? This volume presents a timely and convincing 'no'. These essays demonstrate that there is a new generation of French women who take up questions of equality and difference from a position distinct from either first or second wave feminism, a position that often attempts to move beyond the binary of equality and/or difference to a new form of the individual.
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50French FeminismIn Robert C. Solomon & David Sherman (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Continental Philosophy, Blackwell. 2003.This chapter contains sections titled: Simone de Beauvoir Luce Irigaray Colette Guillaumin Hélène Cixous Julia Kristeva Monique Wittig Sarah Kofman Michèle Le Doeuff Christine Delphy Conclusion.
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8Repetition to Working-ThroughIn Ann Cahill & Jennifer Hansen (eds.), The Continental Feminism Reader, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 168. 2003.
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6Psychoanalysis, Aesthetics, and Politics in the Work of Julia Kristeva (edited book)State University of New York Press. 2009.Considers the social and political significance of Kristeva’s oeuvre
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22Kristeva's ReformationJournal of French and Francophone Philosophy 22 (2): 20-25. 2014.In my brief remarks, I consider what it means to return and rebind—that is to say, the significance of the re for Kristeva’s thought. Kristeva does not just talk about binding or birth, or unbinding or death, but rather rebinding and rebirth, suggesting that it is a retrospective return rather than an original moment that is crucial. The most significant moment, then, is not the moment of imaginary plenitude, nor the moment of originary loss, but rather the moment of rebirth that comes through r…Read more
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603Women: The secret weapon of modern warfare?Hypatia 23 (2). 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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11Ethics, Politics, and Difference in Julia Kristeva's Writing (edited book)Routledge. 1993.First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
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19The Poetic Axis of EthicsDerrida Today 7 (2): 121-136. 2014.In The Poetic Axis of Ethics, Kelly Oliver argues that in Derrida's The Beast and the Sovereign Volume II, a line of poetry from Celan becomes the axis around which Derrida's analysis of world, death, and ethics revolves: ‘Die Welt ist fort, ich muß dich tragen’ [The world is far away, I must carry you]. Oliver maintains that the Celan fragment, which is repeated in nearly every session, is not only the axis around which Derrida binds the unlikely duo Robinson-Heidegger, but also it is a perform…Read more
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5BandagesJournal of French and Francophone Philosophy 22 (2): 70-83. 2014.“The bandages signify death,” says Derrida, “the condemnation to death; when they fall away, out of use, undone, untied, untying, they signify, like a detached signifier, that the dead one is resuscitated." Like a detached signifier, indicating a metaphorical relationship between signification and the bandages. But, when we follow the metonymy of bandages in Derrida’s Death Penalty seminar volume one, the bandages appear as the figure for figuration itself. More specifically, they are a sign tha…Read more
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56Subjectivity Without Subjects: From Abject Fathers to Desiring MothersRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1998.In Subjectivity without Subjects, well-known philosopher and feminist theorist Kelly Oliver looks at aspects of popular culture, film, science, and law to examine contemporary notions of paternity and maternity. Oliver studies the roles of paternal responsibility, virility, and race in such events as the Million Man March and the Promise Keeper's movement and suggests alternative ways to conceive of self-other relations and the subjective identity at stake in them. In addition she offers a detai…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
Continental Philosophy |