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Theorizing Korean transracial adoptee experiences: Ambiguity, substitutability, and racial embodimentInternational Journal of Cultural Studies 24 (2): 309-324. 2021.This article articulates a critical phenomenological account of the being of the Korean transracial adoptee, through an analysis of three fundamental interrelated experiences. First, I argue that adoptee being is marked by epistemological ambiguity, or the impossibility of knowing and the ambiguous value of any knowledge gained. Second, the arbitrary sense of one’s place and identity contribute to a sense of substitutability among adoptees. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the body schema, …Read more
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1Philosophies of Difference: Nature, Racism, and Sexuate DifferenceRoutledge. 2018.Philosophies of Difference engages with the concept of difference in relation to a number of fundamental philosophical and political problems. Insisting on the inseparability of ontology, ethics and politics, the essays and interview in this volume offer original and timely approaches to thinking nature, sexuate difference, racism, and decoloniality. The collection draws on a range of sources, including Latin American Indigenous ontologies and philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Jacques Derrida,…Read more
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1Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature: Negativity, Ontology, and the Rehabilitation of the PossibleDissertation, University of Melbourne. 2017.This dissertation develops an account of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of nature, and demonstrates the importance of nature and the concept of negativity for his phenomenological ontology. For Merleau-Ponty, nature is the unreflected, “that which carries us” (N 4); it cannot be unequivocally conceived as an object or pure extension. The first part of the dissertation frames Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of nature in relation to his critical engagement with Kant, Schelling, and Husserl, all of …Read more
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28“A Provisional Alignment”: Toward the Formation of a “We”Journal of Animal Ethics 5 (1). 2015.This article is a review of Tom Tyler’s CIFERAE: A Bestiary in Five Fingers, a timely and crucial contribution to critical animal studies scholarship. CIFERAE is a remarkable and careful analysis of epistemological anthropocentrism – in particular, what Tyler calls a “first-and-foremost anthropocentrism” - and the ways in which animals ‘figure’ in the history of Western thought. Moreover, the text prompts a critique of ‘the human’ and the formation of the ‘we.’ As such, Tyler’s philosophical inv…Read more
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22“The Animal is like a Quiet Force”: Emergence and Negativity in Agamben and Merleau-PontyChiasmi International 15 251-267. 2013.The concept of natural, common life is distinguished from life as political existence in the opening lines of Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer – a schism within ‘life’ that has profound consequences for Agamben’s political theory and ontology. Agamben claims that bare life now “dwells in the biological body of every living being” . As such, it is necessary to ascertain what the ‘life’ of biopolitics is – the life capable of politicization. The notion of natural living being is central to Agamben’s a…Read more
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1Depth, Nature, ParticipationAustralian Feminist Law Journal 43 (1): 89-105. 2017.This paper argues that Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological ontology may serve as an important and exigent critique of the dominant understandings of nature and living being that circulate today. Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of nature involves a return to perceptual experience – a return that amounts to a restoration of the inexhaustible depth of the world, and offers a non-subjectivist account of embodied participation or relationality. This emphasis on participation can lead to an increased …Read more
Parkville, Victoria, Australia
Areas of Specialization
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Continental Philosophy |
Phenomenology |
Cultural Studies |
European Philosophy |
Gender Studies |
Continental Feminism |
Sociology |
Areas of Interest
2 more
Continental Philosophy |
European Philosophy |
Phenomenology |
Continental Feminism |
Cultural Studies |
Gender Studies |
Sociology |