•  144
    A phenomenology of gender
    Continental Philosophy Review 39 (3): 229-244. 2006.
    The article asks how phenomenology, understood as a philosophical method of investigation, can account for gender. Despite the fact that it has provided useful tools for feminist inquiry, the question remains how gender can be studied within the paradigm of a philosophy of a subject. The article explicates four different understandings of phenomenology and assesses their respective potential in terms of theorizing gender: a classical reading, a corporeal reading, an intersubjective reading and a…Read more
  •  108
    Foucault’s politicization of ontology
    Continental Philosophy Review 43 (4): 445-466. 2010.
    The paper explicates a politicized conception of reality with the help of Michel Foucault’s critical project. I contend that Foucault’s genealogies of power problematize the relationship between ontology and politics. His idea of productive power incorporates a radical, ontological claim about the nature of reality: Reality as we know it is the result of social practices and struggles over truth and objectivity. Rather than translating the true ontology into the right politics, he reverses the a…Read more
  •  104
    : The article shows that Michel Foucault's account of the sexual body is not a naïve return to a prediscursive body, nor does it amount to discourse reductionism and to the exclusion of experience, as some feminists have argued. Instead, Foucault's idea of bodies and pleasures as a possibility of the counterattack against normalizing power presupposes an experiential understanding of the body. The experiential body can become a locus of resistance because it is the possibility of an unpredictabl…Read more
  •  86
    Foucault, Politics, and Violence
    Northwestern University Press. 2011.
    In her book, Oksala shows that the arguments for the ineliminability of violence from the political are often based on excessively broad, ontological conceptions of violence distinct from its concrete and physical meaning and, on the other hand, on a restrictively narrow and empirical understanding of politics as the realm of conventional political institutions
  •  83
    This paper explicates Foucault's conception of experience and defends it as an important theoretical resource for feminist theory. It analyzes Linda Alcoff's devastating critique of Foucault's account of sexuality and her reasons for advocating phenomenology as a more viable alternative. I agree with her that a philosophically sophisticated understanding of experience must remain central for feminist theory, but I demonstrate that her critique of Foucault is based on a mistaken view of his philo…Read more
  •  80
    How to read Foucault
    W. W. Norton & Co.. 2008.
    Introduction -- The freedom of philosophy -- Reason and madness -- The death of man -- The anonymity of literature -- From archaeology to genealogy -- The prison -- Repressed sexuality -- A true sex -- Political power, rationality, and critique -- Practices of the self.
  •  71
    Foucault on Freedom
    Cambridge University Press. 2005.
    Freedom and the subject were guiding themes for Michel Foucault throughout his philosophical career. In this clear and comprehensive analysis of his thought, Johanna Oksala identifies the different interpretations of freedom in his philosophy and examines three major divisions of it: the archaeological, the genealogical, and the ethical. She shows convincingly that in order to appreciate Foucault's project fully we must understand his complex relationship to phenomenology, and she discusses Fouc…Read more
  •  63
    The Management of State Violence
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 28 (2): 53-66. 2007.
  •  55
    Feminism, Capitalism, and Ecology
    Hypatia 33 (2): 216-234. 2018.
    This article critically assesses the different ways of theoretically connecting feminism, capitalism, and ecology. I take the existing tradition of socialist ecofeminism as my starting point and outline two different ways that the connections among capitalism, the subordination of women, and the destruction of the environment have been made in this literature: materialist ecofeminism and Marxist ecofeminism. I will demonstrate the political and theoretical advantages of these positions in compar…Read more
  •  50
    Feminism and Neoliberal Governmentality
    Foucault Studies 16 32-53. 2013.
    The article investigates the consequences for feminist politics of the neoliberal turn. Feminist scholars have analysed the political changes in the situation of women that have been brought about by neoliberalism, but their assessments of neoliberalism’s consequences for feminist theory and politics vary. Feminist thinkers such as Hester Eisenstein and Sylvia Walby have argued that feminism must now return its focus to socialist politics and foreground economic questions of redistribution in or…Read more
  •  40
    Violence and the Biopolitics of Modernity
    Foucault Studies 10 23-43. 2010.
    The paper studies the relationship between political violence and biological life in the thought of Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault. I follow Foucault in arguing that understanding political violence in modernity means rethinking the ontological boundary between biological and political life that has fundamentally ordered the Western tradition of political thought. I show that while Arendt, Agamben and Foucault all see the merging of the categories of life and politics as the …Read more
  •  35
    In Defense of Experience
    Hypatia 29 (2): 388-403. 2014.
    This article studies our philosophical understanding of experience in order to question the current political and theoretical dismissal of experiential accounts in feminist theory. The focus is on Joan Scott's critique of experience, but the philosophical issues animating the discussion go beyond Scott's work and concern the future of feminist theory and politics more generally. I ask what it means for feminist theory to redefine experience as a linguistic event the way Scott suggests. I attempt…Read more
  •  35
    Foucault, Husserl and the philosophical roots of German neoliberalism
    Continental Philosophy Review 49 (1): 115-126. 2016.
    The article investigates and vindicates the surprising claim Foucault makes in his lecture series The Birth of Biopolitics that the philosophical roots of post-war German neoliberalism lie in Husserl’s phenomenology. I study the similarities between Husserl’s phenomenology and Walter Eucken’s economic theory and examine the way that Husserl’s idea of the historical a priori assumes a determinate role in Eucken’s economic thinking. I also return to Foucault’s lectures in order to show how a versi…Read more
  •  35
    The method of critical phenomenology: Simone de Beauvoir as a phenomenologist
    European Journal of Philosophy 31 (1): 137-150. 2022.
    The paper aims to contribute to the ongoing conversation on critical phenomenology with reflections on its method. The key argument is that critical phenomenology should be understood as a form of historico-transcendental inquiry and therefore it cannot forgo the phenomenological reduction. Rather, this methodological step should be centered in critical phenomenology, and appropriated in problematized and rethought forms. The methodological assessment of critical phenomenology has implications a…Read more
  •  34
    In her book, Oksala shows that the arguments for the ineliminability of violence from the political are often based on excessively broad, ontological conceptions of violence distinct from its concrete and physical meaning and, on the other hand, on a restrictively narrow and empirical understanding of politics as the realm of conventional political institutions
  •  33
    The Existential Threat of Climate Change
    Environmental Philosophy 20 (2): 191-214. 2023.
    The article analyzes the experience of climate anxiety. The investigation is phenomenological in the sense that I will attempt to show that contemporary climate anxiety has a distinctive structure and philosophical meaning, which make it different from both psychological anxiety and existential anxiety, as commonly understood. I will also draw out the consequences of my phenomenological analysis for climate politics. My contention is that forms of prefigurative climate politics can respond to th…Read more
  •  30
    The article shows that Michel Foucault's account of the sexual body is not a naive return to a prediscursive body, nor does it amount to discourse reductionism and to the exclusion of experience, as some feminists have argued. Instead, Foucault's idea of bodies and pleasures as a possibility of the counterattack against normalizing power presupposes an experiential understanding of the body. The experiential body can become a locus of resistance because it is the possibility of an unpredictable …Read more
  •  29
    Sex, Breath, and Force: Sexual Difference in a Post-Feminist Era
    with Jodi Dean, Cathrine Egeland, Elizabeth Grosz, Sara Heinämaa, Lisa Käll, Kelly Oliver, Tiina Rosenberg, Kristin Sampson, and Vigdis Songe-Møller
    Lexington Books. 2006.
    This collection of essays provides a reassessment of the question of sexual difference, taking into account important shifts in feminist thought, post-humanist theories, and queer studies. The contributors offer new and refreshing insights into the complex question of sexual difference from a post-feminist perspective, and how it is reformulated in various related areas of study, such as ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, biology, technology, and mass-media
  •  25
    Violence and Neoliberal Governmentality
    Constellations 18 (3): 474-486. 2011.
  •  25
    Neoliberal Subjectivation: Between Foucault and Marx
    Critical Inquiry 49 (4): 581-604. 2023.
    This article defends the theoretical centrality of Michel Foucault’s account of subjectivation for critical responses to neoliberalism against those Marxist critics who claim that his focus on the subject pushed the Left into the fraught terrain of identity politics. A key contention is that a theoretically sophisticated account of subjectivation is a requisite for any philosophically coherent and politically effective theorization of resistance against neoliberalism. Critical accounts of neolib…Read more
  •  24
    Political Philosophy in the Era of Climate Change
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 37 (1): 51-70. 2016.
  •  21
    The method of critical phenomenology: Simone de Beauvoir as a phenomenologist
    European Journal of Philosophy 31 (1): 137-150. 2022.
    The paper aims to contribute to the ongoing conversation on critical phenomenology with reflections on its method. The key argument is that critical phenomenology should be understood as a form of historico-transcendental inquiry and therefore it cannot forgo the phenomenological reduction. Rather, this methodological step should be centered in critical phenomenology, and appropriated in problematized and rethought forms. The methodological assessment of critical phenomenology has implications a…Read more
  •  20
    Review of Marc djaballah, Kant, Foucault, and Forms of Experience (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (1). 2009.
  •  19
    How is feminist metaphysics possible? -- In defense of experience -- Foucault and experience -- The problem of language -- A phenomenology of birth -- A phenomenology of gender -- The neoliberal subject of feminism -- Feminism and neoliberal governmentality -- Feminist politics of inheritance.
  •  17
    The Management of State Violence
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 28 (2): 53-66. 2007.
  •  14
    Feminist experiences: a response to Smaranda Aldea and Amy Allen
    Continental Philosophy Review 52 (1): 135-142. 2019.
  •  12
    The Neoliberal Subject of Feminism
    Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 42 (1): 104-120. 2011.
  •  9
    Philosophy in a Time of Pandemic
    Philosophy Today 64 (4): 895-899. 2020.
    Philosophy in a time of a pandemic should insist that it is critically important to get to the root causes of the pandemic, and not merely react to its symptoms. The ultimate reason for this pandemic is our relentless destruction of nature and the merciless exploitation of animals.
  •  8
    Neoliberal Bodies and Normative Femininity
    Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 65 55-60. 2018.
    The paper discusses the disciplinary production of the normative feminine body and analyses the shift that has taken place in the rationality underpinning our current techniques of gender. I argue that Foucault’s radical intervention in feminist philosophy, and more generally in the philosophy of the body, has been the crucial claim that any analysis of embodiment must recognize how power relations are constitutive of the embodied subjects involved in them. His studies of disciplinary technologi…Read more