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Theorizing Backlash: Philosophical Reflections on the Resistance to Feminism (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2002.Contrary to the popular belief that feminism has gained a foothold in the many disciplines of the academy, the essays collected in Theorizing Backlash argue that feminism is still actively resisted in mainstream academia. Contributors to this volume consider the professional, philosophical, and personal backlashes against feminist thought, and reflect upon their ramifications. The conclusion is that the disdain and irrational resentment of feminism, even in higher education, amounts to a backlas…Read more
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448Visionary Pragmatism and an Ethics of Connectivity: An Alternative to the Autonomy Tradition in Analytic EthicsIn Maurice Hamington Celia N. Bardwell Jones (ed.), Contemporary Feminist Pragmatism, Routledge. pp. 258-287. 2012.In an era of global interdependence, the concept of autonomy may no longer name our core moral need. Shifting friendships and enmities across political boundaries bear significant consequences for the individual. Perhaps social alliances and hostilities have always had an impact on the flourishing of individuals and communities. But globalization (especially as viewed through the technology of the information age) magnifies the impact of external forces on sovereign bodies. These forces remind i…Read more
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76Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A GenealogyJournal of Speculative Philosophy 23 (4): 373-376. 2009.
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33Family Matters: Feminist Concepts in African Philosophy of Culture. By Nkiru Uwechia Nzegwu. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY, 2006Hypatia 23 (3): 224-226. 2008.
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11Philosophical Feminism and Popular Culture (edited book)Lexington Books. 2012.The eight essays contained in this book explore the portrayal of women, and various philosophical responses to that portrayal in contemporary post-civil rights society. They bring feminist voices to the conversation about gender and attests to the importance of feminist critique in what is sometimes claimed to be a post-feminist era
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The Sting of Shame: Ridicule, Rape, and Social BondsIn Naomi Zack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
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27Irony in the Age of Empire: Comic Perspectives on Democracy and FreedomIndiana University Press. 2008.Comedy, from social ridicule to the unruly laughter of the carnival, provides effective tools for reinforcing social patterns of domination as well as weapons for emancipation. In Irony in the Age of Empire, Cynthia Willett asks: What could embody liberation better than laughter? Why do the oppressed laugh? What vision does the comic world prescribe? For Willett, the comic trumps standard liberal accounts of freedom by drawing attention to bodies, affects, and intimate relationships, topics whic…Read more
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37Book review: Joan Williams. Unbending gender: Why family and work conflict and what to do about it. oxford: Oxford university press, 2000 (review)Hypatia 19 (3): 228-231. 2004.
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703Going to Bed White and Waking Up Arab: On Xenophobia, Affect Theories of Laughter, and the Social Contagion of the Comic StageCritical Philosophy of Race 2 (1): 84-105. 2014.Like lynching and other mass hysterias, xenophobia exemplifies a contagious, collective wave of energy and hedonic quality that can point toward a troubling unpredictability at the core of political and social systems. While earlier studies of mass hysteria and popular discourse assume that cooler heads (aka rational individuals with their logic) could and should regain control over those emotions that are deemed irrational, and that boundaries are assumed healthy only when intact, affect studie…Read more
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433Affect Attunement in the Caregiver-Infant Relationship and Across Species: Expanding the Ethical Scope of ErosphiloSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism 2 (2): 111-130. 2012.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Affect Attunement in the Caregiver-Infant Relationship and Across SpeciesExpanding the Ethical Scope of ErosCynthia WillettCompelling glimpses into the ethical capacities of our animal kin reveal new possibilities for ethical relationships encompassing humans with other animal species. Consider the remarkable report of a female bonobo in a British zoo who assists a bird found in her cage by retrieving the fallen bird, and spreading i…Read more
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367Water and Wing Give Wonder: Cross-Species CosmopolitanismPhaenEx 8 (2): 185-208. 2013.Any interspecies ethics could do well to flip the claim of human exceptionalism several times on its head. Before entertaining a claim to re-naturalize human beings (with the risk of a reductive model of biology), the remarkable communicative, cultural, and cognitive skills of other creatures deserve more investigation. The usual line-up of metaphysical suspects for shoring up human superiority—impartial reason, moral or spiritual freedom, and self-awareness—have been used to gravely overstate o…Read more
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225The pyramid that the slaves built: A response to John LachsJournal of Speculative Philosophy 15 (3): 184-189. 2001.
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39Maternal Ethics and Other Slave MoralitiesRoutledge. 1995.In ____Maternal Ethics and Other Slave Moralities__ which includes the first extended philosophical discussion of the works of Frederick Douglass, Cynthia Willett puts forward a novel theory of ethical subjectivity that is aimed to counter prevailing pathologies of sexist, racist Eurocentric culture. Weaving together accounts of the self drawn from African-American and European philosophies, psychoanalysis, slave narratives and sociology, Willett interrogates what Hegel locates as the core of th…Read more
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72False consciousness and moral objectivity in kansasJournal of Speculative Philosophy 22 (4). 2008.
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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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