New Feminist Perspectives on Embodiment

Description

Despite several decades of feminist activism and scholarship, women’s bodies continue to be sites of control and contention both materially and symbolically. Issues such as reproductive technologies, sexual violence, objectification, motherhood, and sex trafficking, among others, constitute ongoing, pressing concerns for women’s bodies in our contemporary milieu, arguably exacerbated in a neoliberal world where bodies are instrumentalized as sites of human capital. This bookengages with these themes by building on the strong tradition of feminist thought focused on women’s bodies, and by making novel contributions that reflect feminists’ concerns—both theoretically and empirically—about gender and embodiment in the present context and beyond. The collection brings together essays from a variety of feminist scholars who deploy diverse theoretical approaches, including phenomenology, pragmatism, and new materialisms, in order to examine philosophically the question of the current status of gendered bodies through cutting-edge feminist theory. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiv Contested Terrains: New Feminist Perspectives on Embodiment (Clara Fischer, Luna Dolezal)....Pages 1-13 Front Matter ....Pages 15-15 A Genealogy of Women’s (Un)Ethical Bodies (Gail Weiss)....Pages 17-35 The Normal Body: Female Bodies in Changing Contexts of Normalization and Optimization (Julia Jansen, Maren Wehrle)....Pages 37-55 How Do We Respond? Embodied Vulnerability and Forms of Responsiveness (Danielle Petherbridge)....Pages 57-79 Front Matter ....Pages 81-81 Revisiting Feminist Matters in the Post-Linguistic Turn: John Dewey, New Materialisms, and Contemporary Feminist Thought (Clara Fischer)....Pages 83-102 Feminist and Transgender Tensions: An Inquiry into History, Methodological Paradigms, and Embodiment (Lanei M. Rodemeyer)....Pages 103-123 Expressing the World: Merleau-Ponty and Feminist Debates on Nature/Culture (Kathleen Lennon)....Pages 125-144 Front Matter ....Pages 145-145 Are Women’s Lives (Fully) Grievable? Gendered Framing and Sexual Violence (Dianna Taylor)....Pages 147-165 Sex Trafficking, Reproductive Rights, and Sovereign Borders: A Transnational Struggle over Women’s Bodies (Diana Tietjens Meyers)....Pages 167-182 Routine Unrecognized Sexual Violence in India (Namrata Mitra)....Pages 183-200 Front Matter ....Pages 201-201 Performing Pregnant: An Aesthetic Investigation of Pregnancy (EL Putnam)....Pages 203-220 The Metaphors of Commercial Surrogacy: Rethinking the Materiality of Hospitality Through Pregnant Embodiment (Luna Dolezal)....Pages 221-244 Back Matter ....Pages 245-252