Melissa Burchard

Philosophical Reflections on Mothering in Trauma examines the lived experience of mothering children who have been seriously harmed by others. Using an interdisciplinary approach, that employs a feminist phenomenology and an emphasis on narrative theory, this ground-breaking work gives voice to experiences of trauma, and of mothering, not ordinarily heard in philosophical discourses. With a philosophical lens, Melissa Burchard examines the challenges faced by families during the adoption and parenting of abused children. In doing so, Burchard argues that the investigation of traumatic experience poses questions that philosophers must address if we are to improve collective understanding of the human condition. These questions centre around the epistemological implications of traumatic experience, the role of power and privilege in abusive relationships, and the interconnected issues of morality and moral agency in trauma, problematic desires engendered in traumatic circumstances, and therapeutic responses to trauma. The book expresses ways in which mothering wounded children can, if we are deeply engaged and reflective, shift our understandings of what it means to be parents, to be children, to love, to know, to construct a self, to feel desire, to nurture, to coerce, and to live in the ambiguity of not knowing which decisions are right and which are wrong.

I argue that rule-based decision-making models are desired because thought to create certainty. I then raise a number of problems with this assumption. Desiring certainty, and relying on rules to obtain it, leads to inconsistency in decision-making, and atrophy of moral imagination. I draw a parallel between Dworkin’s principles-based models in legal theory and Beauchamp and Childress’ in medical ethics. These models are more successful because they can account for more moral intuitions, and do not encourage us to hide our intuitions. Still, feminist ethics challenge the possibility of certainty even more radically, moving in the direction of moral imagination and care.

This dissertation argues that traditional philosophical analyses of violence, which take war as a paradigm case, are done from a perspective which distances the body. This leads to conceptualizations in which the body, being de-personalized, figures only as an object or piece of evidence rather than a locus for analysis, and which focus on aspects "outside" the body, such as the amount of force involved and the intentions of the perpetrator. Shifting the paradigm case to violence against women, particularly in heterosexual personal relationships, emphasizes aspects of violence not clearly visible under traditional analyses. This shift returns analytical focus to the body, re-centering persons in bodies and re-placing the experience of violence in embodied persons. Because violence is essentially a body phenomenon, emphasizing embodiment improves understanding of it, demonstrating how particular bodies are likely to experience violence in particular ways according to differences marked out by gender, race, class and other significant social norms . Emphasis on violence in relationships illuminates certain implications of the fact that violence is rational activity chosen for its unique capacity to control others. ;The introduction situates the author and discusses methodological issues. Chapter one expounds conceptualizations in the literature, especially Plato and St. Augustine. The second chapter looks at four contemporary theorists whose work includes elements the author draws on: Robert Holmes, Hannah Arendt, Frantz Fanon, and Elaine Scarry. Chapter three discusses the relational nature and the rationality of violence, and notes links between individual and institutional violence. In chapter four Judith Butler's theory of performativity is taken as a basis for arguing that violence can be understood as a regulatory norm in the same way that gender can. The final chapter discusses issues of reasonable criteria for defining violence, ways in which violence is named, issues regarding justification, the mind/body problem in relation to conceptualizations of violence, and how returning to the body might affect understanding the perpetrator of violence. The denoument suggests concrete applications of the present analysis and directions for further investigation

Although gay and lesbian theory may posit homosexuality as an oppositional challenge to heteronormativity, the author argues that homosexuality and heterosexuality share a common structure of desire that is based upon choosing the gender of one’s partner from only one gender in a binary gender framework. For this reason, the author introduces the term ‘monosexual’ to designate any sexual orientation, whether homosexual or heterosexual, which makes a single gender category into an exclusive criterion for selecting partners. As an alternative to these “oppositional” logics, the author argues that bisexuality may be distinguished through its focus on desire regardless of the gender category of one’s partner. This alternative raises questions about logical theories that posit conceptual oppositions as necessary to intelligibility.