Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
SpringerLink
Log in

A Genealogy of Women’s (Un)Ethical Bodies

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
New Feminist Perspectives on Embodiment

Part of the book series: Breaking Feminist Waves ((BFW))

Abstract

This chapter offers a brief historical overview of the gendered mind/body dualism associated with the rationalist tradition, according to which women’s bodies have been viewed as a threat to reason and to ethics. Taking up critiques of this model offered by Beauvoir and Fanon, I maintain that the body of the Other makes an ethical claim upon us in the form of “bodily imperatives.” I conclude with a critical analysis of contemporary feminist ethics that seeks to move beyond the false dichotomies of mind/body, reason/emotions, transcendence/immanence, and male/female dualisms. Assuming as their starting point the universality of human dependency and the debilitating reality of embodied oppression, contemporary feminist ethicists seek to overturn the sexist, racist, and ableist effects of a philosophical tradition that has always privileged some minds and bodies over others.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Elizabeth Grosz. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994): 19.

  2. 2.

    Grosz , Volatile Bodies, 19.

  3. 3.

    Plato “Republic,” in eds. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Collected Dialogues, trans. Paul Shorey. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980): 684 441e.

  4. 4.

    Plato, “Republic”, 684 441e.

  5. 5.

    Plato, “Republic”, 684 442a-b.

  6. 6.

    Donna-Dale Marcano , “Race/Gender and the Philosopher’s Body” Living Alterities: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Race. Ed. Emily S. Lee. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014): 76.

  7. 7.

    Marcano , “Race/Gender and the Philosopher’s Body”, 77.

  8. 8.

    René Descartes. Discourse on Method and Meditations. Trans. Laurence J. Lafleur. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing, 1960): 75.

  9. 9.

    Descartes , Discourse on Method and Meditations, 76.

  10. 10.

    Aristotle. “Politics” and “Nichomachean Ethics” in ed. Richard McKeon The Basic Works of Aristotle. New York: Random House, 1941: 1132 1254 5–15, my emphasis.

  11. 11.

    For example: Paul Schollmeier. “Aristotle and Women: Household and Political Roles” Polis 20, no. 1–2 (2003): 22–42.

  12. 12.

    Sigmund Freud. “Femininity” in James Strachey (ed.) The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (The Standard Edition), vol. 22, pp. 136–157. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1976).

  13. 13.

    Luce Irigaray. Speculum of the Other Woman. Trans. Gillian C. Gill. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985): 28.

  14. 14.

    Quoted in: Irigaray , Speculum of the Other Woman, 88.

  15. 15.

    Irigaray , Speculum of the Other Woman, 89.

  16. 16.

    Simone de Beauvoir . The Second Sex. Trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 443.

  17. 17.

    Simone de Beauvoir . The Ethics of Ambiguity. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1997).

  18. 18.

    See: Jean-Paul Sartre . Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. (New York: Washington Square Press, 1984).

  19. 19.

    Frantz Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Richard Philcox. (New York: Grove Press, 2008): 95.

  20. 20.

    Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 119, 95.

  21. 21.

    Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 96.

  22. 22.

    Maurice Merleau -Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Donald A. Landes. (London: Routledge, 2012): 191–192.

  23. 23.

    Merleau -Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 139.

  24. 24.

    Gail Weiss. Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality. (New York: Routledge, 1999).

  25. 25.

    Weiss, Body Images.

  26. 26.

    Emmanuel Levinas . Totality and Infinity. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969): 194.

  27. 27.

    Levinas , Totality and Infinity, 194.

  28. 28.

    Levinas , Totality and Infinity, 194.

  29. 29.

    Levinas , Totality and Infinity, 197.

  30. 30.

    Judith Butler . Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. (London: Verso, 2004): 135.

  31. 31.

    Eva Feder Kittay. Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. (New York: Routledge, 1999): 28.

  32. 32.

    Butler , Precarious Life, 42.

  33. 33.

    Debra Bergoffen . Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape: Affirming the Dignity of the Vulnerable Body. (New York: Routledge, 2012): 78–79.

  34. 34.

    Ellen Feder. Making Sense of Intersex: Changing Ethical Perspectives in Biomedicine. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014): 183.

  35. 35.

    Bergoffen , Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape, 2.

  36. 36.

    Bergoffen , Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape, 101.

  37. 37.

    Bergoffen , Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape, 101–102.

  38. 38.

    Friedrich Nietzsche . On the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Michael A. Scarpitti. (New York: Penguin Books, 2014).

  39. 39.

    Cynthia Willett . Interspecies Ethics. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).

Bibliography

  • Aristotle. 1941. “Politics” and “Nichomachean Ethics”. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bergoffen, Debra. 2012. Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape: Affirming the Dignity of the Vulnerable Body. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beauvoir, Simone de. 1997. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. Secaucus: Citadel Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010. The Second Sex. Trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Descartes, René. 1960. Discourse on Method and Meditations. Trans. Laurence J. Lafleur. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fanon, Frantz. 2008. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Feder, Ellen. 2014. Making Sense of Intersex: Changing Ethical Perspectives in Biomedicine. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freud, Sigmund. 1976. Femininity. In James Strachey (ed.) The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (The Standard Edition), vol. 22, pp. 136–157. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grosz, Elizabeth. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Irigaray, Luce. 1985. Speculum of the Other Woman. Trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kant, Immanuel. 1956. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Trans. H.J. Paton. New York: Harper and Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kittay, Eva Feder. 1999. Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Infinity. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marcano, Donna-Dale. 2014. Race/Gender and the Philosopher’s Body. In Living Alterities: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Race, ed. Emily S. Lee, 65–78. Albany: SUNY Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2012. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Donald A. Landes. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2014. On the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Michael A. Scarpitti. New York: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plato “Republic,” in Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (eds.) Collected Dialogues. Trans. Paul Shorey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rawls, John. 1999. A Theory of Justice. Revised Edition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1984. Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schollmeier, Paul. 2003. Aristotle and Women: Household and Political Roles. Polis 20 (1–2): 22–42.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weiss, Gail. 1999. Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality. New York: Routledge Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Willett, Cynthia. 2014. Interspecies Ethics. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Further Readings

  • Alcoff, Linda Martín. 2006. Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Brison, Susan. 2002. Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Judith. 2005. Giving An Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2009. Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campell, Sue, Letitia Meynell, and Susan Sherman, eds. 2009. Embodiment and Agency. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diprose, Rosalyn. 2002. Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas. Albany: SUNY Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dreger, Alice Domurat. 1999. Intersex in the Age of Ethics. Hagerstown: University Publishing Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Doyle, Laura, ed. 2001. Bodies of Resistance: New Phenomenologies of Politics, Agency, and Culture. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Garland Thomson, Rosemarie. 1997. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordon, Lewis R. 1995. Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heyes, Cressida. 2007. Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Huffer, Lynne. 2013. Are the Lips a Grave: A Queer Feminist on the Ethics of Sex. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kittay, Eva Feder, and Ellen Feder, eds. 2002. The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Dependency. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, Emily S., ed. 2014. Living Alterities: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Race. Albany: SUNY Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mann, Bonnie. 2014. Sovereign Masculinity: Gender Lessons from the War on Terror. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, Sarah Clark. 2012. The Ethics of Need: Agency, Dignity, and Obligation. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Murphy, Ann V. 2012. Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary. Albany: SUNY Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nussbaum, Martha. 2011. Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Salamon, Gayle. 2010. Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Bonnie G., and Beth Hutchison. 2004. Gendering Disability. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sullivan, Nikki. 2001. Tattooed Bodies: Subjectivity, Textuality, Ethics, and Pleasure. Westport: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yancy, George, ed. 2004. What White Looks Like: African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, Iris Marion. 2005. On Female Body Experience: Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Zeiler, Kristin, and Lisa Folkmarson Käll, eds. 2014. Feminist Phenomenology and Medicine. Albany: SUNY Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

    Gail Weiss

Authors
  1. Gail Weiss
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Clara Fischer

  2. University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom

    Luna Dolezal

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Weiss, G. (2018). A Genealogy of Women’s (Un)Ethical Bodies. In: Fischer, C., Dolezal, L. (eds) New Feminist Perspectives on Embodiment. Breaking Feminist Waves. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72353-2_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation