Feminisms and the Self

Feminisms and the Self
Author: Morwenna Griffiths
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2003-05-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134961847

What does the politics of the self mean for a politics of liberation? Morwenna Griffiths argues that mainstream philosophy, particularly the anglo-analytic tradition, needs to tackle the issues of the self, identity, autonomy and self creation. Although identity has been a central concern of feminist thought it has in the main been excluded from philosophical analysis. Feminisms and the Self is both a critique and a construction of feminist philosophy. After the powerful challenges that postmodernism and poststructuralism posed to liberation movements like feminism, Griffiths book is an original and timely contribution to current debate surrounding the notion of identity and subjectivity.

Power For: Feminism and Christ's Self-Giving

Power For: Feminism and Christ's Self-Giving
Author: Anna Mercedes
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2011-09-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567091651

Contesting the feminist critique of the dangers of Christianity's self-giving ethics, this book advances a contemporary feminist christology engaging the strength of self-giving power.

Feminists Rethink The Self

Feminists Rethink The Self
Author: Diana T Meyers
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 473
Release: 2018-10-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429980094

This book demonstrates the discussions of leading feminist thinkers on the concept of self and personal identity. It addresses issues in moral social psychology. The book is useful for students of feminist theory, ethics, and social and political philosophy.

In-Between

In-Between
Author: Mariana Ortega
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2016-03-14
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438459785

This original study intertwining Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory offers a new philosophical approach to understanding selfhood and identity. Focusing on writings by Gloría Anzaldúa, María Lugones, and Linda Martín Alcoff, Mariana Ortega articulates a phenomenology that introduces a conception of selfhood as both multiple and singular. Her Latina feminist phenomenological approach can account for identities belonging simultaneously to different worlds, including immigrants, exiles, and inhabitants of borderlands. Ortega's project forges new directions not only in Latina feminist thinking on such issues as borders, mestizaje, marginality, resistance, and identity politics, but also connects this analysis to the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and to such concepts as being-in-the-world, authenticity, and intersubjectivity. The pairing of the personal and the political in Ortega's work is illustrative of the primacy of lived experience in the development of theoretical understandings of who we are. In addition to bringing to light central metaphysical issues regarding the temporality and continuity of the self, Ortega models a practice of philosophy that draws from work in other disciplines and that recognizes the important contributions of Latina feminists and other theorists of color to philosophical pursuits.

Being Yourself

Being Yourself
Author: Diana Tietjens Meyers
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2004-02-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0742571335

Being yourself: living a life that is truly your own, that expresses your unique personality and your distinctive values. Many people want to live such a life. Being Yourself asks what it takes to do so. It examines questions about the self — the individual who acts — together with questions about self-expression — the relations between the self and action. It explains self-knowledge and self-direction in terms of a repertory of skills that gives people insight into who they are, who they want to be, and how they want to engage with the world. Unlike other accounts of self and action, Being Yourself takes into account the multidimensionality of the self — embodiment, interpersonal ties, nonconscious desires, and enculturation as well as rationality. It accents the ways in which atypical emotional responses, empathy, and oppositional imagery can contribute to moral understanding. It argues that repressive regimes cannot completely crush people's determination to live lives of their own, but it shows why it is vital to seek social changes that dismantle obstacles to this kind of life.

Think Like a Feminist: The Philosophy Behind the Revolution

Think Like a Feminist: The Philosophy Behind the Revolution
Author: Carol Hay
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1324003103

An audacious and accessible guide to feminist philosophy—its origins, its key ideas, and its latest directions. Think Like a Feminist is an irreverent yet rigorous primer that unpacks over two hundred years of feminist thought. In a time when the word feminism triggers all sorts of responses, many of them conflicting and misinformed, Professor Carol Hay provides this balanced, clarifying, and inspiring examination of what it truly means to be a feminist today. She takes the reader from conceptual questions of sex, gender, intersectionality, and oppression to the practicalities of talking to children, navigating consent, and fighting for adequate space on public transit, without deviating from her clear, accessible, conversational tone. Think Like a Feminist is equally a feminist starter kit and an advanced refresher course, connecting longstanding controversies to today’s headlines. Think Like a Feminist takes on many of the essential questions that feminism has risen up to answer: Is it nature or nurture that’s responsible for our gender roles and identities? How is sexism connected to racism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of oppression? Who counts as a woman, and who gets to decide? Why have men gotten away with rape and other forms of sexual violence for so long? What responsibility do women themselves bear for maintaining sexism? What, if anything, can we do to make society respond to women’s needs and desires? Ferocious, insightful, practical, and unapologetically opinionated, Think Like a Feminist is the perfect book for anyone who wants to understand the continuing effects of misogyny in society. By exploring the philosophy underlying the feminist movement, Carol Hay brings today’s feminism into focus, so we can deliberately shape the feminist future.

Feminists Rethink the Self

Feminists Rethink the Self
Author: Diana Meyers
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2019-08-28
Genre: Feminist theory
ISBN: 9780367315757

How is women's conception of self affected by the caregiving responsibilities traditionally assigned to them and by the personal vulnerabilities imposed on them? If institutions of male dominance profoundly influence women's lives and minds, how can women form judgments about their own best interests and overcome oppression? Can feminist politics s

Self-made Man

Self-made Man
Author: Norah Vincent
Publisher: Viking Adult
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2006-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780670034666

A Los Angeles Times columnist recounts her eighteen-month undercover stint as a man, a time during which she underwent considerable personal risks as she worked a sales job, joined a bowling league, frequented sex clubs, dated, and encountered firsthand the rigid codes and rituals of masculinity. 80,000 first printing.

Identities and Freedom

Identities and Freedom
Author: Allison Weir
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2013-03-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199936889

How can we think about identities in the wake of feminist critiques of identity and identity politics? In Identities and Freedom, Allison Weir rethinks conceptions of individual and collective identities in relation to freedom. Drawing on Taylor and Foucault, Butler, Zerilli, Mahmood, Mohanty, Young, and others, Weir develops a complex and nuanced account of identities that takes seriously the ways in which identity categories are bound up with power relations, with processes of subjection and exclusion, yet argues that identities are also sources of important values, and of freedom, for they are shaped and sustained by relations of interdependence and solidarity. Moving out of the paradox of identity and freedom requires understanding identities as effects of multiple contesting relations of power and relations of interdependence. "This is a terrific book, one that stakes out an original and distinctive position in some well-worn debates, and that brings together diverse bodies of theory in an insightful and productive way. It is a real gem. It offers substantial new insights into how feminist theorists can go on in the wake of the relentless critique of the notion of identity. The book will make a significant contribution to ongoing debates in feminist theory over the vexed question of identity - a question that is absolutely central to feminist theory, and has been so for at least the last twenty years." - Amy Allen, Department of Philosophy, Dartmouth College "This book makes great contributions to the feminist literature by reconceptualizing IDENTITY in terms of connectedness and FREEDOM in terms of practices of belonging. Through a fascinating and innovative synthesis of Michel Foucault and Charles Taylor, Weir's communitarian approach develops new arguments for the need to cultivate resistant identities and resistant communities. This impressive book is full of original ideas masterfully articulated in critical engagements with leading feminist scholars such as Saba Mahmood, Cynthia Willett, Iris Young, and Linda Zerilli. This provocative book is a must read for anyone interested in contemporary discussions of freedom, resistance, identity, and community." - José Medina, Department of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University

Self-Transformations

Self-Transformations
Author: Cressida J. Heyes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2007-08-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 019804240X

Heyes' monograph in feminist philosophy is on the connection between the idea of "normalization"--which per Foucault is a mode or force of control that homogenizes a population--and the gendered body. Drawing on Foucault and Wittgenstein, she argues that the predominant picture of the self--a picture that presupposes an "inner" core of the self that is expressed, accurately or not, by the outer body--obscures the connection between contemporary discourses and practices of self-transformation and the forces of normalization. In other words, pictures of the self can hold us captive when they are being read from the outer self--the body--rather than the inner self, and we can express our inner self by working on our outer body to conform. Articulating this idea with a mix of the theoretical and the practical, she looks at case studies involving transgender people, weight-loss dieting, and cosmetic surgery. Her concluding chapters look at the difficult issue of how to distinguish non-normalizing practices of the self from normalizing ones, and makes suggestions about how feminists might conceive of subjects as embodied and enmeshed in power relations yet also capable of self-transformation. The subject of normalization and its relationship to sex/gender is a major one in feminist theory; Heyes' book is unique in her masterful use of Foucault; its clarity, and its sophisticated mix of the theoretical and the anecdotal. It will appeal to feminist philosophers and theorists.