Belief, Bodies, and Being

Kathleen Earle is a doctoral student at the University of Maryland, College Park. Eileen Kahl works in the Philosophy and Women's Studies departments at the University of South Florida. Deborah Orr teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University in Toronto. Linda Lopez-McAlister is Professor Emerita at the University of South Florida.

These essays range from a discussion of the classical figure of Diotima to the contemporary work of Judith Butler, from reflections on Niels Bohr's philosophy-physics to reflections on monstrous bodies. The authors reflect on the multiplicity of bodies, which has been a core issue for feminist theory during the last fifty years. Belief, Bodies and Being provides English-speaking readers with access to work by contemporary European feminist philosophers - from France, Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands - in addition to work by North American authors, illustrating how combining classical training in philosophy with current feminist debates brings new light to bear on both philosophy and feminist theory.

• Chapter 1 PrefaceChapter 2 AcknowledgementsChapter 3 Thinking Through the Body: An Introduction to Beliefs, Bodies and BeingChapter 4 Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to MatterChapter 5 Monstrous Reflections on the Mirror of the Self-SameChapter 6 Ontology and FeminismChapter 7 Diotima, Wittgenstein and a Language for LiberationChapter 8 Re-situating the Feminine in Contemporary French PhilosophyChapter 9 Being and Time, Non-Being and Space... Introductory Notes Toward an Ontological Stude of 'Women'Chapter 10 To Take a Chance with Meaning under the Veil of Words: Transpositions, Mothers and Learning in Julia Kristeva's Theory of LanguageChapter 11 In Search of the Body in the Cave: Luce Irigaray's Ethics of EmbodimentChapter 12 Reconsidering the Notion of the Body in Anti-essentialism, With the Help of Luce Irigaray and Judith ButlerChapter 13 Butler's Sophisticated Constructivism: A Critical AssessmentChapter 14 A Critique of Feminist Radical ConstructionismChapter 15 Applying Time to Feminist Philosophy of the BodyChapter 16 ContributorsChapter 17 Index