A Critique of Normative Heterosexuality: Identity,Embodiment, and Sexual Difference in Beauvoir and Irigaray

The distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality does not allow for sufficient attention to be given to the question of non-normative heterosexualities. This paper develops a feminist critique of normative sexuality, focusing on alternative readings of sex and/or gender offered by Beauvoir and Irigaray. Despite their differences, both accounts contribute significantly to dismantling the lure of normative sexuality in heterosexual relations—a dismantling necessary to the construction of a feminist social and political order.     

Response to Alcoff,Ferguson, and Bergoffen

This paper responds to comments, queries, and criticisms offered by Alcoff, Bergoffen, and Ferguson at a scholar's session on my work held at the annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy in October 2001. Responding to Alcoff, I highlight my understanding of liberation in the context of a Nietzschean and a Latin American feminism and the politics of conceptualizing “resistance” in postcolonial theory. Responding to Ferguson, I address, among other issues, the often misunderstood distinction between postcolonialism and postmodernism, as well as related implications regarding some postcolonial feminists' qualified appeals to universals and women's rights. Responding to Bergoffen, I advocate on behalf of cultural formations supportive of the feminist affirmation of life and of radical subjectivities that challenge gender orthodoxies.     

UNIVERSITY STUDENT READING PREFERENCES IN RELATION TO THE BIG FIVE PERSONALITY DIMENSIONS

In this study 251 Australian university students, with a mean age of 26.46, indicated their preference for different types of reading material. A subset of 136 participants additionally reported how many hours per week they typically engage in recreational reading and non-recreational reading, indicated their motivation for recreational reading, completed a Big Five personality inventory, and kept a week-long reading log in which they recorded daily their recreational reading of different types of materials. A principal components analysis showed that reading preferences grouped into eight content areas. A set correlation analysis showed that overall the Big Five personality dimensions predicted reading preferences. Openness and conscientiousness in particular were good predictors of four specific types of content preferences. Preference for a certain type of material tended to predict time spent reading that material as reported in the week-long reading log. Further, the Big Five personality dimensions together predicted total amount of recreational reading, amount of reading of favorite material, and amount of non-recreational reading.     

Philosophical Feminism in Latin America and Spain: An Introduction

Introduction to the special cluster of feminist philosophy papers from Spain and Latin America.