Contemporary Italian Women Philosophers: Stretching the Art of Thinking (Suny Series in Contemporary Italian Philosophy)

__A unique portrayal of the theoretical positions of eleven Italian women thinkers who share the practice of philosophy and extend philosophical work and interests beyond the realm of the discipline strictly defined.__ Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction: Contemporary Italian Women Thinkers: Attending to Thinking, Extending the Art 10 Part One: Women, Mothers, Bodies 26 1. The Inner Passage 28 2. Who Is a Mother? 42 Abortion in the Politics of Sexual Difference 42 Bodies as Objects vs Embodied Subjects 44 The Biological Reductionism of Reproductive Technologies 46 Biological Parents and Parental Figures 47 Yet One Is Still Born from a Woman 49 The Irreplaceable Womb 49 Feminist Dissent on Surrogate Motherhood 50 Beyond Parenthood 52 3. Aporias of the Maternal in the Women’s Movement 56 Part Two: Subjectivity, Power, and the Political 64 4. Toward an Ethos of Freedom: Notes on Subjectivity and Power 66 “Toward a Non-Fascist Way of Life” 66 De-subjectivation or Becoming Subjects? 68 Socrates against Plato 69 Arendtian Socratism 70 Socrates as Ethos of Freedom 73 The Dissidence of Permanent Socratism 77 An-archic Subjectivity? 78 5. Biopolitics and Economy: Between Self-Government Practices and New Forms of Control 84 Biopolitics 84 Evaluated Lives 86 Precarious Transcendence in an Ontology of Immanence 89 Populism, Nonantagonistic Political Subjects, Commons: Biopolitical Forms of Doing Politics? 92 6. Immunitary Politics 98 The Janus Head of Globalization 98 The Crisis of Modern Topolitics 103 Immunitary Sovereignism and the Right to Citizenship 106 Part Three: Responsibility, Emotions, Time 114 7. Responsibility as Being Here in Our Own Time 116 Responsibility for What We Are Not Responsible for 116 History in the I 119 History as Responsibility and the Ethical-Political Transformation of Phenomenology 121 The Responsibility to Be Here 125 8. Emotional Subjects: For the Care of the Future 132 A Philosophy for the World 132 Which Subject? 135 A Subject in Relation: With Whom, Though? 140 The Emotional Relationship and the Metamorphosis of the Self 143 Part Four: Everyday Life, Action, Transcendence 150 9. Everyday Life: For a Vision without Transcendences 152 Introductory Remarks 152 Metropolitan Life: Simmel 156 The Fall of the “Modern” Subject: Freud and Heidegger 160 Toward a “New Ontology”: Merleau-Ponty 164 Conclusive Remarks 168 10. The Symbol in Action 172 Understanding the Symbol Starting from Symbolic Action 172 Foundations for Understanding the Symbol 174 Thinking the Symbol Starting from Its Action 176 Representational Action 177 An Exercise in Philosophizing: The Center and Its Extending Rays 180 A Brief Excursus on the Question of the “Who” in Philosophy 182 Philosophy and Symbol: Dialectic and Conversation 183 Coda 190 11. Mimetic Inclinations: A Dialogue with Adriana Cavarero 192 Introduction 192 Ancient Shadows 193 Modern Phantoms 196 Mimesis and Narration 198 Imitation and Gender Relations 201 Masses and Plurality 205 Contributors 210 Index 218 "Gathering the contributions of eleven contemporary Italian women thinkers who share a philosophical practice, Contemporary Italian Women Philosophers embraces a general interrelationality, fluidity, and overlapping of concepts for a border-crossing that affects what it means to be subjects that are embodied and participants in the life of their communities, thereby shaping a sense of belonging. Common threads are revealed through the exploration of radically diverse themes (the body, subjectivity, power, freedom, equality, liberation, the emotions, symbolism and metaphors, maternity, reproduction, responsibility, the political, the economic) and approaches (autobiographical styles, personal narratives, rootedness in the everyday, advancement of relationality, empathic responsibility, passions, and commitment to the flourishing of the polis). In their differences, these previously unpublished essays give the reader a glimpse of the fecund and articulated philosophical work of women in the Italian context-a context which has not been and still is not always benign toward women's distinctive originality and creativity"-- Back cover