Subjectivity without Subjects: From Abject Fathers to Desiring Mothers - Softcover

Oliver, Kelly

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0847692531 ISBN 13: 9780847692538

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998

Synopsis

What do the Promise Keeper's Movement and the Million Man March reveal about our notions of masculinity and paternal responsibility? What can such films as Varda's Vagabond and Bergman's Persona tell us about contemporary notions of masculinity and femininity? In this provocative new book, well-known feminist and philosopher Kelly Oliver examines the dynamics of identity to develop a new theory which challenges traditional notions of paternity and maternity.

About this title

Review:

In her brilliant new book, Kelly Oliver shows us why feminists were so right to insist that the personal is political. Oliver provides us with a convincing argument that our basic ideas of mothers and fathers have left us in a world of subjectivity without subjects. Only by confronting the heart of the matter of personal life can we develop an approach to a feminist politics of liberation that might lead all of us to be significantly less discontented.--Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University

Subjectivity without Subjects takes on the much-needed project of theorizing identity and subjectivity as loving openness to difference. Oliver argues that theories of witnessing can overcome the limitations of a Hegelian notion of recognition by acknowledging when recognition is impossible. Her account of a subject as an open system provides a response to contemporary debates about responsibility and agency that avoids the trap of conceiving subjects as either completely active or passive. Oliver's reading of such events as the Million Man March and various films provide practical applications of the theoretical points she makes, rendering this book wonderfully accessible to the student and layperson as well as refreshingly concrete.--Tamsin Lorraine, Swarthmore College

Oliver reaches beyond the limits of professional philosophy without impairing her ability to be theoretically sophisticated.--Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy

Synopsis:

In Subjectivity without Subjects, well-known philosopher and feminist theorist Kelly Oliver looks at aspects of popular culture, film, science, and law to examine contemporary notions of paternity and maternity. Oliver studies the roles of paternal responsibility, virility, and race in such events as the Million Man March and the Promise Keeper's movement and suggests alternative ways to conceive of self-other relations and the subjective identity at stake in them. In addition she offers a detailed analysis of particular works by such well-known filmmakers as Polanski, Bergman, and Varda in developing a theory of identity that opens the subject to otherness and difference.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0847692531
• ISBN 13: 9780847692538
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224