Feminist Philosophies of Life

Exploring life’s character, sex, and meaning, while calling attention to the most precarious among us. Exploring life’s character, sex, and meaning, while calling attention to the most precarious among us. Much of the history of Western ethical thought has revolved around debates about what constitutes a good life, and claims that a good life is achievable only by certain human beings. In Feminist Philosophies of Life, feminist, new materialist, posthumanist, and ecofeminist philosophers challenge this tendency, approaching the question of life from alternative perspectives. Signalling the importance of distinctively feminist reflections on matters of shared concern, Feminist Philosophies of Life not only exposes the propensity of discourses to normalize and exclude differently abled, racialized, feminized, and gender nonconforming people, it also asks questions about how life is constituted and understood without limiting itself to the human. A collection of articles that focuses on life as an organizing principle for ontology, ethics, and politics, chapters of this study respond to feminist thinkers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Judith Butler, Adriana Cavarero, Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, and Søren Kierkegaard. Divided into three parts, the book debates the question of life in and against the emerging school of new feminist materialism, provides feminist phenomenological and existentialist accounts of life, and focuses on lives marked by a particular precarity such as disability or incarceration, as well as life in the face of a changing climate. Calling for a broader account of lived experience, Feminist Philosophies of Life contains persuasive, original, and diverse analyses that address some of the most crucial feminist issues. Contributors include Christine Daigle (Brock University), Shannon Dea (University of Waterloo), Lindsay Eales (University of Alberta), Elizabeth Grosz (Duke University), Lisa Guenther (Vanderbilt University), Lynne Huffer (Emory University), Ada Jaarsma (Mount Royal University), Stephanie Jenkins (Oregon State University), Ladelle McWhorter (University of Richmond), Jane Barter Moulaison (University of Winnipeg), Astrida Neimanis (University of Sydney), Danielle Peers (University of Alberta), Stephen Seely (Rutgers University), Hasana Sharp (McGill University), Chloë Taylor (University of Alberta), Florentien Verhage (Washington and Lee University), Rachel Loewen Walker (Out Saskatoon), and Cynthia Willett (Emory University). "Much of the history of western ethical thought has been composed of debates about the bases of "the good life." It has typically been taken for granted that "the good life" is achievable only by (certain) human beings. Feminists and Continental philosophers have long challenged both the descriptive accuracy and the prescriptive hold of the idea of the human life whose goodness is under discussion. Beyond the normative demands implicit in the idea of the good life, or the properly human life, more and more philosophers are now interrogating the question of life from within a broader frame. Feminist Philosophies of Life signals the importance of distinctively feminist reflections upon matters of shared concern among living beings. For many of the contributors to this volume, it is not enough to expose the tendency of discourses to normalize and exclude differently-abled, racialized, feminized, and gender nonconforming people, although this task remains central. It is also necessary to ask what life is or how life is constituted. What are the conditions under which life on earth is possible? To what extent do we share the struggles and needs of other living beings? And what is it about living bodies that enables them to develop in so-called "social" or "spiritual" ways? How, as feminist philosophers, do we respond to the precarious existences of people experiencing disability, prisoners, fetuses and pregnant women, murdered and missing indigenous women, and of life itself on a planet that is rapidly being impacted by climate change?"-- Provided by publisher "Much of the history of western ethical thought has been composed of debates about the bases of "the good life." It has typically been taken for granted that "the good life" is achievable only by (certain) human beings. Feminists and Continental philosophers have long challenged both the descriptive accuracy and the prescriptive hold of the idea of the human life whose goodness is under discussion. Beyond the normative demands implicit in the idea of the good life, or the properly human life, more and more philosophers are now interrogating the question of life from within a broader frame. Feminist Philosophies of Life signals the importance of distinctively feminist reflections upon matters of shared concern among living beings. For many of the contributors to this volume, it is not enough to expose the tendency of discourses to normalize and exclude differently-abled, racialized, feminized, and gender nonconforming people, although this task remains central. It is also necessary to ask what life is or how life is constituted. What are the conditions under which life on earth is possible? To what extent do we share the struggles and needs of other living beings? And what is it about living bodies that enables them to develop in so-called "social" or "spiritual" ways? How, as feminist philosophers, do we respond to the precarious existences of people experiencing disability, prisoners, fetuses and pregnant women, murdered and missing indigenous women, and of life itself on a planet that is rapidly being impacted by climate change?"-- Résumé de l'éditeur Cover Contents Acknowledgments Foreword Introduction PART ONE: New Feminist Perspectives on Life 1 Matter, Life, and Their Entwinement: Thought as Action 2 Thinking with Matter, Rethinking Irigaray: A “Liquid Ground” for a Planetary Feminism 3 Ethical Life after Humanism: Toward an Alliance between an Ethics of Eros and the Politics of Renaturalization 4 Foucault’s Fossils: Life Itself and the Return to Nature in Feminist Philosophy 5 Does Life Have a Sex? Thinking Ontology and Sexual Difference with Irigaray and Simondon PART TWO: Lived Experience 6 New Constellations: Lived Diffractions of Dis/ability and Dance 7 Philosophy Comes to Life: Elaborating an Idea of Feminist Philosophy 8 Surviving Time: Kierkegaard, Beauvoir, and Existential Life 9 Beauvoir and the Meaning of Life: Literature and Philosophy as Human Engagement in the World PART THREE: Precarious Lives 10 Defining Morally Considerable Life: Toward a Feminist Disability Ethics 11 Life behind Bars: The Eugenic Structure of Mass Incarceration 12 Fetal Life, Abortion, and Harm Reduction 13 Beyond Bare Life: Narrations of Singularity of Manitoba’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women 14 Endangered Life: Feminist Posthumanism in the Anthropocene? Bibliography Contributors Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Z