Cheshire Calhoun argues chat thinking of lesbians as a subcategory of women provides an insufficient basis for considering key differences between lesbians and straight women, and that these politically significant differences are therefore erased by theories and politics that take the subject of feminism to be women. Here 1 look closely and critically at CaJhoun's own account of lesbian differences, and argue that sexual desire, while complicated, ought to remain central in any such account.

Increasingly, feminist theorists, such as Alison Martin and Ellen T. Armour, are attending to the numerous religious allusions within texts by Luce Irigaray. Engaging with this scholarship, this paper focuses on the problematic of evil that is elaborated within Irigarayan texts. Mobilizing the work of Catherine Malabou, the paper argues that Malabou's methodology of reading, which she identifies as “plastic,” illuminates the logic at work within Irigaray's deployment of sacred stories.

Beauvoir's distinction between romantic and authentic love offers us an opportunity for thinking through the complex relations among philosophy, reading, and love. If we accept her account of romantic love as a flawed, dependent mode of being, and her suggestion that an authentic love—one that engages maturely with the other—is possible, then we might take the risk of thinking of reading in these terms.

This article provides a Latin American feminist critique of early decolonial theories focusing on the work of Aníbal Quijano and Enrique Dussel. Although decolonial theorists refer to Chicana feminist scholarship in their work, the work of Latin American feminists is ignored. However, the author argues that Chicana feminist theory cannot stand in for Latin American feminist theory because “lo latinoamericano” gets lost in translation. Latin American feminists must do their own theoretical work. Central to the critique of the use of gender in decolonial theory is an analysis of the social pacts among white capitalists and white working-class men that not only exclude white women but make citizenship and democracy impossible for men and women of color in the metropolis as well as in the colony. By revealing the nexus between gender, race, and democracy, not only is the coloniality of gender apparent, but also the coloniality of democracy.

The consequences of colonization have been linked to dehumanizing effects on a given people, but they can also be linked to a discourse that favors “depletion” of natural resources as their “utilization.” This article examines colonization as a subtle process of cultural devastation and ecological hegemony in the light of the memoir Unbowed by the late Nobel laureate from Africa, Wangari Maathai. 1Apart from framing the entire discussion with regard to the impact of colonization on environmental degradation, it also provides a glimpse into Maathai's life and works. We have attempted to analyze her thoughts and the efforts shared in her autobiography regarding the conservation of nature and natural resources, from her experiences stretching from the colonial to the postcolonial era.

Professional philosophy in the US remains relatively homogenous. I use four anecdotes to amplify some of the practices that may contribute to the dearth of underrepresented philosophers. Each anecdote highlights a different problem—lack of proper mentoring, stereotype threat, difficulties navigating sexism, and a sense of exclusion. Although I discuss each of these issues separately, it is certainly the case that these (and other issues) can and often do occur concurrently. I offer preliminary thoughts on how these problems could be addressed while keeping in mind that philosophy in the US is a microcosm of the larger US society.

This essay distinguishes three types of appeals to experience in ethics, identifies problems with appealing to experience, and argues that appeals to experience must be open to critical assessment, if experientially-based arguments are to be useful. Unless competing and potentially irreconcilable experiences can be assessed and adjudicated, experientially-based arguments will be problematic. The paper recommends thinking of the appeal to experience as a kind of story telling to be evaluated as other stories are.

Drawing on Michel Foucault's writings as well as the writings of feminist scholars bell hooks and Jane Gallop, this paper examines faculty–student sexual relations and the discourses and policies that surround them. It argues that the dominant discourses on professor–student sex and the policies that follow from them misunderstand the form of power that is at work within pedagogical institutions, and it examines some of the consequences that result from this misunderstanding. In Foucault's terms, we tend to theorize faculty–student relations using a model of sovereign power in which people have or lack power and in which power operates in a static, stable, and exclusively top-down manner. We should, however, recognize the ways in which individuals in pedagogical institutions are situated within disciplinary and thus dynamic, reciprocal, and complex networks of power, as well as the ways in which the pedagogical relation may be a technique of the self and not only of domination. If we reconsider these relations in terms of Foucault's accounts of discipline and technologies of the self, we can recognize that prohibitions on faculty—student sexual relations within institutions such as the university are productive rather than repressive of desire, and that such relations can be opportunities for development and not only for abuse. Moreover, this paper suggests that the dominant discourses on professor—student relations today contribute to a construction of professors as dangerous and students as vulnerable, which denies the agency of (mostly female) students and obscures the multiplicity of forms of sexual abuse that occur within the university context.

Over the course of her career, Jean Harvey contributed many invaluable insights that help to make sense of both injustice and resistance. Specifically, she developed an account of what she called “civilized oppression,” which is pernicious in part because it can be difficult to perceive. One way that we ought to pursue what she calls a “life of moral endeavor” is by increasing our perceptual awareness of civilized oppression and ourselves as its agents. In this article I argue that one noxious form of civilized oppression is what Miranda Fricker calls “testimonial injustice.” I then follow Harvey in arguing that one of the methods by which we should work to avoid perpetrating testimonial injustice is by empathizing with others. This is true for two reasons. The first is that in order to manifest what Fricker calls the virtue of testimonial justice, we must have a method by which we “correct” our prejudices or implicit biases, and empathy serves as such a corrective. The second is that there are cases where the virtue of testimonial justice wouldn't in fact correct for testimonial injustice in the way that Fricker suggests, but that actively working to empathize would.

This review of Janice Raymond's A Passion for Friends focuses on her strong sense of the individual and of individuality. However, and this is the central contention of my paper, her perspective is quite distinct from liberal individualism. It is also a complex variation on the feminist concern with selves in relationships.

Is love essential to ethical life, or merely a supplement? In Kant's view, respect and love, as duties, are in tension with each other because love involves drawing closer and respect involves drawing away. By contrast, Irigaray says that love and respect do not conflict because love as passion must also involve distancing and we have a responsibility to love. I argue that love, understood as passion and based on respect, is essential to ethics.