•  2
    This essay addresses Paul Thompson’s claim (made in two pieces separated by 20 years) that “you are not what you eat”; that is, that dietetics is not an ethical matter. I issue a series of challenges to Thompson’s position, all of which have a common underpinning, namely that his critiques of dietetics sound more like the sort I’d expect from an analytic philosopher than from a pragmatist. They are rooted not only in a tightly drawn (if widely philosophically accepted) definition of ethics, but …Read more
  •  16
    back in about 1984 or 1985, when I'd been in graduate school for a couple of years at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, I started hanging around with three chemists who shared a house. They were colleagues of my roommate, a chemistry grad student. One of them, no kidding, was named Lloyd A. Bumm, who would always introduce himself by saying, "My name is the best joke I know." Lloyd was a quirky, curious guy who often explored unusual places around the City, unlike the typical chemis…Read more
  •  335
    Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy (review) (review)
    Hypatia 17 (3): 283-286. 2002.
    This is a book about taste--the thing your tongue (and nose) do. It’s also a book about Taste--the thing the art critic has. It’s a book about food, art, and the relations between food and art. Do those two categories overlap? Where and how? How we might best understand and appreciate food in light of the way we understand and appreciate art? It’s a book about how the divergent histories of taste and Taste have left us with an impoverished understanding of the former--and thus a deep skept…Read more
  •  67
    This paper explores the question: what happens to the ontology of the human individual if we take seriously the degree to which all life on this planet, including human life, is threaded through with relationships in which one creature sinks its ‘teeth’ into another and hangs on for dear life, deriving vital sustenance from that second creature, but sometimes imperiling the life of it as well? Or, to put the matter less colorfully, how ought we reconceptualize the human individual in light of re…Read more
  • Coresponsible Inquiry: Objectivity From Dewey to Feminist Epistemology
    Dissertation, Northwestern University. 1987.
    What becomes of objectivity if we reject the realist claim that inquiry uncovers the "true" nature of an independent, antecedent world, or the foundationalist claim that inquiry must adhere to a set of independent rational standards? Clearly we must relinquish the notion that objective truths or objectively valid methods are attainable only by inquirers occupying the epistemologically privileged "Archimedean standpoint." ;If we begin by contending that inquiry and its products are in principle v…Read more
  •  195
    A Du Boisian Proposal for Persistently White Colleges
    Journal of Speculative Philosophy 18 (3). 2004.
    What would it look like for a college, white in its history and predominantly white in its present reality, to create a program that responds to, and works in support of, the agenda Du Bois proposes for the “Negro university” of the 1930’s? How can a white college cease to be an obstacle to the liberation of African Americans? That is, how can a persistently white college become actively antiracist and pursue a goal of educating antiracist white students—students who could work in solidarity wit…Read more
  •  488
    Farming Made Her Stupid
    Hypatia 21 (3). 2006.
    This essay is an examination of stupid knowing, an attempt to catalog a particular species of knowing, and to understand when, how, and why the label "stupid" gets applied to marginalized groups of knowers. Heldke examines the ways the defining processes work and the conditions that make them possible, by considering one group of people who get defined as stupid: rural people. In part, the author intends her identification and categorization of stupid knowing to support the work of theorists of …Read more
  •  62
    Two Concepts of Authenticity
    with Jens Thomsen
    Social Philosophy Today 30 79-94. 2014.
    This paper explores two apparently-unrelated forms of authenticity. One, “restaurant authenticity,” is a subcategory of the larger category of authentic objects, focused specifically on food and especially on ethnic cuisines. “Personal authenticity” refers to a set of traits or qualities in oneself. Contrary to appearances, I argue that the two forms of authenticity intertwine in ways that merit thoughtful attentiveness. I suggest that approaching the question of the authenticity of a cuisine wi…Read more
  •  33
    On being a responsible traitor: A primer
    In Bat-Ami Bar On & Ann Ferguson (eds.), Daring to Be Good: Essays in Feminist Ethico-Politics, Routledge. pp. 41--54. 1998.
  •  278
    Carnal Appetites does not fully work out a single coherent thesis. Rather, it is a preliminary exploration of a set of issues about food, culture and identity. Here is how Probyn describes her project: “The aim of this book is simple but immodest. Through the optic of food and eating, I want to investigate how as individuals we inhabit the present: how we eat into cultures, eat into identities, indeed eat into ourselves. At the same time I am interested in the question of what’s bothering us…Read more
  •  55
    In Praise of Unreliability
    Hypatia 12 (3). 1997.
    Bisexuality challenges familiar assumptions about love, family, and sexual desire that are shared by both heterosexual and homosexual communities. In particular, it challenges the assumption that a person's desire can and should run in only one direction. Furthermore, bisexuality questions the legitimacy, rigidity, and presumed ontological priority of the categories "heterosexual" and "homosexual." Bisexuals are often assumed to be dishonest and unreliable. I suggest that dishonesty and unreliab…Read more
  •  43
    Understanding Eating Disorders endeavors to answer the question “How should we behave when dealing with a person with eating disorders?” (254). In the pursuit of this question, Giordano undertakes two primary tasks. First, she constructs an analysis of eating disorders that attempts to show why they should be understood “from a moral perspective. Eating disorders signify a person’s belonging and adherence to a determined moral context” (8). Second, she conducts an exploration of autonomy, and as…Read more
  •  334
    Do You Really Know How to Cook?
    Philosophy Now 31 12-15. 2001.
    In the Gorgias, Plato contrasts pastry cooking unfavorably with medicine, in order to illustrate the difference he believes exists between a mere knack and a genuine art. I attempt to show that Plato’s treatment of cooking distorts or misconceives that activity, and does so in order to shore up his arguments about the distinction between arts and knacks, and about the separation and hierarchy between minds and bodies. Plato’s treatment of cookery seems to be informed not by the activity of coo…Read more
  •  273
    Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food (edited book)
    with Deane W. Curtin
    Indiana University Press. 1992.
    Philosophy has often been criticized for privileging the abstract; this volume attempts to remedy that situation. Focusing on one of the most concrete of human concerns, food, the editors argue for the existence of a philosophy of food.
  •  384
    The Radical Potential of Listening: A Preliminary Exploration
    Radical Philosophy Today 5 25-46. 2007.
    In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill argues that free speech possesses value because listening is valuable: it can advance one’s own thinking and action. However, listening becomes difficult when one finds the views of a speaker to be wrong, repellant, or even simply naïve. Everyday wisdom would have it that such cases present the greatest opportunities for growth. Is there substance to this claim? In particular, is there radical political value to be found in listening to others at the very times on…Read more
  •  62
    Pragmatist Philosophical Reflections on GMOs
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 28 (5): 817-836. 2015.
    This essay examines the public debate about the agricultural biotechnologies known as genetically modified organisms, as that debate is being carried out in its most dichotomizing forms in the United States. It attempts to reveal the power of sharply dichotomous thinking, as well as its limits. The essay draws on the work of Michel Serres, who uses the concept of the parasite to reconstruct or reframe fundamental dichotomies in western philosophy; it attempts a similar reframing of the public de…Read more
  •  303
    Deep Democracy draws upon the insights of American thinkers whose work has received less attention than the "holy trinity" of Peierce, James and Dewey, in order to investigate current philosophical problems and questions. The work does carry out a sustained interaction with the work of Dewey, in the course of exploring the nature of, obstacles to, and prospects for strengthening the fabric of democracy in the contemporary world. But Green also puts Dewey in conversation with Jane Addams, Alain…Read more
  •  73
    Objectivity as responsibility
    with Stephen H. Kellert
    Metaphilosophy 26 (4): 360-378. 1995.
    We present a case for defining objectivity as responsibility. We do not attempt to offer new arguments on epistemological issues such as relativism or the fact-value distinction. Instead, we construct a conception of objectivity utilizing analyses from Deweyan pragmatism, feminist theory, and science studies, organizing them around the concept of responsibility. This conception of objectivity can serve as a tool to guide the process of inquiry; by suggesting that participants reflect on the q…Read more
  •  8
    The Atkins Diet and Philosophy (edited book)
    with Kerri Mommer and Cynthia Pineo
    Open Court. 2005.
    This volume collects sixteen essays by contributors who chew on the diet from a number of philosophical angles and a variety of personal perspectives. Here, you can sample essays written by practitioners of the Atkins diet or one of its low-carb cousins; by people who are not on the diet; and by people who choose to keep mum about their own current relationships to carbohydrates. (We made an editorial decision to respect their right to remain silent on the matter of whether or not sliced bread i…Read more
  •  178
    An Alternative Ontology of Food
    Radical Philosophy Review 15 (1): 67-88. 2012.
    This essay explores some well-traveled territory—the area in which eating and suffering come together. I undertake two projects. First, I scrutinize some foods that are often portrayed as unambiguously either good (homegrown organic vegetables) or bad (foie gras), in an effort to complicate the stories we tell about them. What violence has been heretofore invisible in them? What compassion has been occluded? This project informs a second: an answer to the question “how should we eat?” My answer …Read more
  •  31
    Unnatural Selection
    Ethics and the Environment 3 (1). 1998.
    The notion that "nature" comes equipped with its own set of categories, enabling us to divide up everything that exists without overlap or leftovers, has considerable explanatory and prescriptive power. I examine two apparently unrelated arenas in which this notion is at work; namely, in the alleged discovery and subsequent physical "improvement" of the headwaters of the Mississippi River, and in the surgical alteration of intersex infants. In both cases, reconstruction is undertaken as a means …Read more
  •  98
    Restaurant authenticity
    The Philosophers' Magazine 61 94-99. 2013.
    I think that restaurant authenticity and personal authenticity are deeply intertwined. More specifically, I think that the ways in which we define – and seek – authenticity in things, be they table setting styles, or cooking vessels or ingredients, directly shape, and are shaped by, the ways in which we understand – and cultivate – authenticity in ourselves. To the extent to which we define culinary authenticity as slavish adherence to the methods, ingredients and utensils of the source culture,…Read more
  •  99
    Dear Kate Bornstein
    Radical Philosophy Today 3 101-109. 2006.
    In this brief paper, I want to begin to explore the possibility that bi-trans dialogue can challenge those forms of oppression that are grounded in sex, gender, and sexuality. I am particularly interested in pursuing the possibility that bi-trans dialogue might result in additional critiques of the sex-gender-sexuality triad. Despite multiple challenges, and myriad historical transmogri-fications (including, it must be noted, the very late addition of gender), that triad maintains its foundati…Read more