The Phenomenal Woman: Feminist Metaphysics and the Patterns of Identity - Softcover

Battersby, Christine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415920361 ISBN 13: 9780415920360

Publisher: Routledge, 1998

Synopsis

"First Published in 1998, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company."

About this title

Review

..."clever and imaginative...."
-Karen Struening, "Signs, Spring 2001
..."Battersby's construction in the book is a model of detail and clarity."
-"Philosophy in Review/Comptes Rendus Philosophiques
""The Phenomenal Woman is a startlingly original work of philosophy. In her construction of a new metaphysics, which takes the woman as norm in definitions of self, personhood and identity, Christine Battersby contests the conceptualization of the Kantian subject. Taking the risk of (re)constructive philosophy, she offers a challenge to postmodernist feminisms and their reliance on what she describes as the 'despairing epistemology' of deconstructive postmodernism."
-Margaret Whitford, University of London

From the Back Cover

This important book enters the controversial territory of metaphysics. The author reworks the account of the self in modernity and postmodernity as she asks, "what would happen if we rethought identity in ways that take the female as norm?"

Using analyses of Kant, Adorno, Irigary, Butler, Kierkegaard and Deleuze, the author argues against those who see feminist metaphysics as unacceptably "essentialist" or as a contradiction in terms. The influence of Lacan and Derrida on current feminist theory is registered. However, instead of deconstructing metaphysics or psychoanalysing the philosophers, the author moves on to reconstruct such notions as "essence" and "self". This opens up new possibilities for feminism as an "identity politics" that can also acknowledge racial, cultural and power differences amongst women.

The Phenomenal Woman explores a metaphysics in which identity is birthed from patterns of relationship, movement and power. New ways of thinking about embodiment, sameness and difference, self and "other", patriarchy and power emerge in ways that will interest a broad range of readers who engage with feminist theory, cultural studies and social theory.

Stylistically accessible, this book definitively marks out a place for a metaphysics of fluidity in the current debates concerning philosophy, postmodernism and feminism.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0415920361
• ISBN 13: 9780415920360
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 254