•  8
    Women-Animals-Machines
    In Karen Warren (ed.), Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature, Indiana Univ Pr. pp. 412. 1997.
  •  1
    The problem that this essay will address is that of devising a viable use for psychological and intentional terms, in short, discourse concerning what-it-is-to-be-a-subject or "subjecthood" in light of, first, Derrida's deconstruction of the transcendental subject and, second, the materialist claim that recent advances in science effectively antiquate any viable role in empirical psychology for the use of terms traditionally associated with mind. I will argue that Wittgenstein's remarks concerni…Read more
  •  1
    History as Genealogy
    Philosophy and Theology 5 (4): 313-331. 1991.
    The aim of the following paper is, firstly, to provide the reader with a brief exposition of the critical response offered by some current french feminists of the largely American, compensatory approach to feminist historiography. Secondly, I wish to show why the french feminist alternative itself provides an inadequate methodology for the resolution of the problems that it raises in its critique. Lastly, I shall suggest that the Wittgensteinian concept of ‘family resemblance’ contains the seeds…Read more
  •  17
    While Sarah Hoagland's conception of a lesbian ethic offers a promising route toward articulating an ethics of resistance, her notion of self in community does not provide a conception of "subject" capable of both embracing political action as fundamental to personal life and explicitly recognizing cultural, ethnic, and sexual multiplicity as central to ethical decision-making. Such a notion can be found, however, in the remarks of later Wittgenstein concerning the "language games" of describing…Read more
  •  2
    Never Merely ‘There’
    In Fritz Allhoff & Robert Arp (eds.), Tattoos – Philosophy for Everyone, Wiley‐blackwell. 2012.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Story One: Sewn into My Skin is Written into My Story Story Two: Tattooing at Auschwitz – Ink, Terror, Death Story Three: Tattooing as a Practice of Writing, Unwriting, Inscription, and Counterinscription Story Four: ‘Real’ Tattoos and the Excesses of Meaning A Final Story: My Geckos.
  •  17
    I argue for a Wittgensteinian reading of Judith Butler's performative conception of identity in light of Marilyn Frye's analysis of lesbian as nonexistent and Butler's analysis of abject. I suggest that the attempt to articulate a performative lesbian identity must take seriously the contexts within which abjection is vital to maintaining gender, exposing the intimate link between context and the formulation of intention, and shedding light on possible lesbian identities irreducible to abjection…Read more
  •  11
    Much recent feminist theory tacitly subscribes to some version of what cognitive and evolutionary scientists are successfully undermining as untenably Cartesian, namely, the view that moral agency is achieved through the transcendence of physical causality guaranteed by self-consciousness. Appealing to Wittgenstein's insights concerning self-reference, I argue that abandoning Cartesian dualism implies abandoning neither subject nor moral agency but rather opens up nonandrocentric possibilities u…Read more
  •  36
    History as Genealogy
    Philosophy and Theology 5 (4): 313-331. 1991.
    The aim of the following paper is, firstly, to provide the reader with a brief exposition of the critical response offered by some current french feminists of the largely American, compensatory approach to feminist historiography. Secondly, I wish to show why the french feminist alternative itself provides an inadequate methodology for the resolution of the problems that it raises in its critique. Lastly, I shall suggest that the Wittgensteinian concept of ‘family resemblance’ contains the seeds…Read more
  •  10
    I argue for a Wittgensteinian reading of Judith Butler's performative conception of identity in light of Marilyn Frye's analysis of lesbian as nonexistent and Butler's analysis of abject. I suggest that the attempt to articulate a performative lesbian identity must take seriously the contexts within which abjection is vital to maintaining gender, exposing the intimate link between context and the formulation of intention, and shedding light on possible lesbian identities irreducible to abjection…Read more
  •  9
    I argue for a Wittgensteinian reading of Judith Butler's performative conception of identity in light of Marilyn Frye's analysis of lesbian as nonexistent and Butler's analysis of abject. I suggest that the attempt to articulate a performative lesbian identity must take seriously the contexts within which abjection is vital to maintaining gender, exposing the intimate link between context and the formulation of intention, and shedding light on possible lesbian identities irreducible to abjection…Read more
  •  81
    : I argue for a Wittgensteinian reading of Judith Butler's performative conception of identity in light of Marilyn Frye's analysis of lesbian as nonexistent and Butler's analysis of abject. I suggest that the attempt to articulate a performative lesbian identity must take seriously the contexts within which abjection is vital to maintaining gender, exposing the intimate link between context and the formulation of intention, and shedding light on possible lesbian identities irreducible to abjecti…Read more
  •  5
    Appealing to theorists such as Judith Butler, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway, and Bibi Bakare-Yusef, the aim of the following is to show that, despite ongoing critique, Cartesian dualism continues to haunt our analyses of the relationship of the subject to embodiment, particularly with respect to the experience of pain. Taking Bakare-Yusef's critique of Elaine Scarry's account of institutionalized violence (slavery) as an example, I will argue, first, that the dualistic impulse …Read more
  •  60
    Much recent feminist theory tacitly subscribes to some version of what cognitive and evolutionary scientists are successfully undermining as untenably Cartesian, namely, the view that moral agency is achieved through the transcendence of physical causality guaranteed by self -consciousness. Appealing to Wittgenstein's insights concerning self - reference, I argue that abandoning Cartesian dualism implies abandoning neither subject nor moral agency but rather opens up nonandrocentric possibilitie…Read more
  • On Discerning the Value in Domesticated Nature
    Dissertation, Lancaster University. 1992.
  •  1
    When The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory by Carol J. Adams was published more than twenty years ago, it caused a immediate stir among writers and thinkers, feminists and animal rights activists alike. Never before had the relationship between patriarchy and meat eating been drawn so clearly, the idea that there lies a strong connection between the consumption of women and animals so plainly asserted. But, as the 21 personal stories in this anthology show, the impac…Read more
  •  5
    Dewey & Climate Denial2
    Philosophy Now 135 16-20. 2019.
  •  23
    Review of "The United States and Terrorism: An Ironic Perspective" (review)
    Essays in Philosophy 17 (2): 202-217. 2016.
  •  3
    A bedrock assumption made by cognitivist philosophers such as Noam Chomsky, and, more recently, Jerry Fodor and Steven Pinker is that the contexts within which children acquire a language inevitably exhibit a irremediable poverty of whatever stimuli are necessary to condition such acquisition and development. They argue that given this poverty, the basic rudiments of language must be innate; the task of the cognitivist is to theorize universal grammars, languages of thought, or language instinct…Read more
  •  7
    On Marx
    Wadsworth. 2001.
    This brief text assists students in understanding Marx's philosophy and thinking so that they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the "Wadsworth Philosophers Series," (which will eventually consist of approximately 100 titles, each focusing on a single "thinker" from ancient times to the present), ON MARX is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the serie…Read more
  •  32
    In the following essay, I argue for an alternative anthropocentrism that, eschewing failed appeals to traditional moral principle, takes (a) as its point of departure the cognitive, perceptual, emotive, somatic, and epistemic conditions of our existence as members of Homo sapiens, and (b) one feature of our experience of/under these conditions particularly seriously as an avenue toward articulating this alternative, the capacity for aesthetic appreciation. To this end, I will explore, but ultima…Read more
  •  12
    Queering Ecological Feminism Erotophobia, Commodification, Art, and Lesbian Identity
    with Laura M. Dow
    Ethics and the Environment 6 (2): 1-21. 2001.
    Utilizing examples from recent art, we critique Greta Gaard's argument that an inclusive ecofeminism must account for the role played by erotophobia in oppression. We suggest that while Gaard offers valuable insight into how fear of the erotic contributes to maintaining heteropatriarchal institutions, it fails to account for forms of oppression specific to lesbians. Moreover, Gaard's analysis unwittingly reinforces the conceptual, hence political, economic, and social invisibility of lesbians th…Read more
  •  42
    On ecology and aesthetic experience: A feminist theory of value and praxis
    Ethics and the Environment 11 (1): 21-41. 2006.
    : My aim is to develop a feminist theory of value—an axiology—which unites two notions that seem to have little in common for a theorizing whose ultimate goal is justice-driven emancipatory action, namely, the ecological and the aesthetic. In this union lies the potential for a critical feminist political praxis capable of appreciating not only the value of human life, but those relationships upon which human and nonhuman life depend. A vital component of this praxis is, I argue, the potential f…Read more
  •  55
    I argue here that the centeredness of human experience as human is misrepresented by ecocentrists as identical with (or the cause of) human chauvinism, and that although centeredness describes an ineradicable feature of human consciousness, nothing necessarily follows from it other than what follows from any unique configuration of capacities and limitations. Appealing to the ways in which we use anthropomorphizing language, I argue that at the root of this misrepresentation is a failure to take…Read more
  •  23
    On Ecology and Aesthetic Experience A Feminist Theory of Value and Praxis
    Ethics and the Environment 11 (1): 21-41. 2006.
    My aim is to develop a feminist theory of value—an axiology—which unites two notions that seem to have little in common for a theorizing whose ultimate goal is justice-driven emancipatory action, namely, the ecological and the aesthetic. In this union lies the potential for a critical feminist political praxis capable of appreciating not only the value of human life, but those relationships upon which human and nonhuman life depend. A vital component of this praxis is, I argue, the potential for…Read more