Susan J. Hekman

Susan Hekman

Stacy Alaimo

Acknowledgments p. xi Introduction: Emerging Models of Materiality in Feminist Theory Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman p. 1 Part 1 Material Theory 1 Darwin and Feminism: Preliminary Investigations for a Possible Alliance Elizabeth Grosz p. 23 2 On Not Becoming Man: The Materialist Politics of Unactualized Potential Claire Colebrook p. 52 3 Constructing the Ballast: An Ontology for Feminism Susan Hekman p. 85 4 Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter Karen Barad p. 120 Part 2 Material World 5 Otherworldly Conversations, Terran Topics, Local Terms Donna J. Haraway p. 157 6 Viscous Porosity: Witnessing Katrina Nancy Tuana p. 188 7 Natural Convers(at)ions: Or, What if Culture was Really Nature all Along? Vicki Kirby p. 214 8 Trans-Corporeal Feminisms and the Ethical Space of Nature Stacy Alaimo p. 237 9 Landscape, Memory, and Forgetting: Thinking Through (my Mother's) Body and Place Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands p. 265 Part 3 Material Bodies 10 Disability Experience on Trial Tobin Siebers p. 291 11 How Real Is Race? Michael Hames-Garcia p. 308 12 From Race/Sex/Etc. To Glucose, Feeding Tube, and Mourning: The Shifting Matter of Chicana Feminism Suzanne Bost p. 340 13 Organic Empathy: Feminism, Psychopharmaceuticals, and the Embodiment of Depression Elizabeth A. Wilson p. 373 14 Cassie's Hair Susan Bordo p. 400 List of Contributors p. 425 Index p. 429.

Material Feminisms

Truth and Method in Feminist Theory

The Future of Differences

Reconsidering Identity Politics

Private Selves, Public Identities

In 1949 Simone de Beauvoir asked, “What does it mean to be a woman?” Her answer to that question inaugurated a radical transformation of the meaning of “woman” that defined the direction of subsequent feminist theory. What Beauvoir discovered is that it is impossible to define “woman” as an equal human being in our philosophical and political tradition. Her effort to redefine “woman” outside these parameters set feminist theory on a path of radical transformation. The feminist theorists who wrote in the wake of Beauvoir’s work followed that path. Susan Hekman’s original and highly engaging new book traces the evolution of “woman” from Beauvoir to the present. In a comprehensive synthesis of a number of feminist theorists she covers French feminist thinkers Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous as well as theorists such as Carol Gilligan, Carole Pateman and Judith Butler. The book examines the relational self, feminist liberalism and Marxism, as well as feminist theories of race and ethnicity, radical feminism, postmodern feminism and material feminism. Hekman argues that the effort to redefine “woman” in the course of feminist theory is a cumulative process in which each approach builds on that which has gone before. Although they have approached “woman” from different perspectives, feminist theorists has moved beyond the negative definition of our tradition to a new concept that continues to evolve. The Feminine Subject is a remarkably succinct yet wide-ranging analysis which will appeal to all feminist scholars and students as well as anyone interested in the changing nature of feminism since the 1950s.

The Feminine Subject

The exciting possibilities of a Foucauldian approach to issues of the subject and identity, especially as they relate to sex and the body, are detailed in several of the essays collected here. Despite the possibilities, however, Foucault's approach has raised serious questions about an equally crucial area of feminist thought - politics. Some feminist critics of Foucault have argued that his deconstruction of the concept "woman" also deconstructs the possibility of a feminist politics. Several essays explore the implications of this deconstruction for feminist politics and suggest that a Foucauldian feminist politics is not viable. Overall, this collection illustrates the range of interest Foucault's thought has generated among feminist thinkers and both the advantages and liabilities of his approach for the development of feminist theory and politics.

Susan J. Hekman

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