This paper responds to the sense of “crisis” or “trouble” that dominates contemporary feminist debate about the categories of sex and gender. It argues that this perception of crisis has emerged from a fundamental confusion of theoretical and political issues concerning the implications of the sex/gender debate for political representation and agency. It explores the sense in which this confusion is manifest in a debate between Seyla Benhabib and Judith Butler.

This paper demonstrates how John Dewey's notion of habit can help us understand gender as a constitutive structure of bodily existence. Bringing Dewey's pragmatism in conjunction with Judith Butler's concept of performativity, 1 provide an account of how rigid binary configurations of gender might be transformed at the level of both individual habit and cultural construct.

In 1977, Michel Foucault suggested that legal approaches to rape define it as merely an act of violence, not of sexuality, and therefore not distinct from other types of assaults. I argue that rape can not be considered merely an act of violence because it is instrumental in the construction of the distinctly feminine body. Insofar as the threat of rape is ineluctably, although not determinately, associated with the development of feminine bodily comportment, rape itself holds a host of bodily and sexually specific meanings.

I argue that Irigaray's linguistic research is not merely supplementary to her theoretical writing, but, in its depiction of sexed linguistic “styles,” illuminates Irigaray's call for a new syntax. I show the effect of this research on her analysis of the unconscious meaning of interrogative expressions. 1 address the question of Irigaray's standing as a social scientist and argue that attention to her method reveals her positive program in this domain.

My essay incorporates Irigaray's notion of the sensible transcendental, a dynamic attempt to reconstitute the body/mind dualism which founds Western thought, into a reading of the practice of European concert dance. I contend that Irigaray's efforts toward articulating a language of the body as active agent have much to offer (feminist) analyses of dance practice, and develop this claim through a reading which reflects philosophically on the changing nature of my own dance activity.

The feminist significance of the Goddess Kali lies in an indigenous worshipful attitude of “Kali-bhakti” rather than in the mere image of the Goddess. The peculiar mother-child motif at the core of the poet Ramprasad Sen's Kali-bhakti represents, I argue, not only a dramatic reconstruction of femininity but of selfhood in general. The spiritual goal of a devotee here involves a deconstruction of “master identity” necessary also for ethico-political struggles for justice.

Liberal philosopher James Mill has been understood as being unambiguously antifeminist. However, Terence Ball, supposedly informed by a feminist perspective, has argued for a new interpretation. Ball has reconceptualized Mill as a feminist and the sole source of the feminism of his son (J. S. Mill), suggesting a revision of the received wisdom about their relationship to the development of nineteenth century feminist thought. This paper takes issue with Ball's “new interpretation” and its presumed feminist basis.

Shannon Sullivan's critique of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception is based on the argument that, due to his concept of the “anonymous body,” his theory of intersubjectivity omits the particularities of bodies, such as gender. I argue that Merleau-Ponty's “anonymous body” (le corps phénoménal) is not in fact “neutral” as Sullivan suggests, and moreover that he does not ignore differences but rather provides us with the idea of difference as a process of differentiation. Additionally, I argue that Sullivan's concept of “hypothetical construction,” which is introduced as an alternative to Merleau-Ponty, turns out to be a conscious construction, not reflecting upon its very conditions. Thus, Sullivan's account fails by presupposing what in fact needs to be explained: the particularities.

Responding to Silvia Stoller's comments on “Domination and Dialogue in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception” (Sullivan 1997), I argue that while phenomenology has much to offer feminism, feminists should be wary of Merleau-Ponty's notion of projective intentionality because of the ethical solipsism that it tends to involve. I also take the opportunity to clarify the concept of hypothetical construction introduced in the earlier paper, in particular the transformative relationship that it has to pre-reflective experience.