Debra B. Bergoffen

Exploiting the Dignity of the Vulnerable Body: Rape as a Weapon of War

Abstract When the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia convicted the Bosnian Serb soldiers who used rape as a weapon of war of violating the human right to sexual self determination and of crimes against humanity, it transformed vulnerability from a mark of feminine weakness to a shared human condition. The courts judgment directs us to note the ways in which the exploitation of our bodied vulnerability is an assault on our dignity. It alerts us to the ways in which the body of human rights law is a law of bodies; to the ways in which our desire for intimacy creates communal ties that ground our personal and social identities; to the ways in which the symbolic meanings of our bodies are integral to our sense of integrity and worth; and to the ways in which gender structures which position men as protectors of women make it possible for rape to be used as an effective and criminal weapon of war.

From Husserl to Beauvoir: Gendering the Perceiving Subject

Simone de Beauvoir called herself an existentialist before she would call herself a feminist. When asked about her philosophical status, however, Beauvoir insisted that Sartre, not she, was the philosopher. Philosophers took Beauvoir at her word. Bracketing their training in skepticism and suspicion, they either treated Beauvoir’s work as an echo of Sartre’s or ignored it altogether. Feminists too took Beauvoir at her word. For them, her allegiance to existentialism, especially to Sartre, rendered her both suspect and obsolete.

the body politic: democratic metaphors, totalitarian practices, erotic rebellions

Without denying the fact that totalitarian regimes use brute power and power brutally, and without ignoring the fact that totalitarian regimes take advantage of the unique opportunities provided by modern technology for the control, subjugation and terrorization of their citizens, this paper suggests that a crucial source of totalitarian power lies in the ways totalitarian structures frustrate the individual’s sense of embodiment. I suggest this by focusing on the metaphor of the body-politic. Instead of dismissing it as an innocent way of referring to the state, I examine its political and psychoanalytic potency and discover, by way of Jacques Lacan and Margaret Atwood, that the ways in which this metaphor is invoked and manipulated is crucial for political life.

Between the Ethical and the Political: The Difference of Ambiguity

Taking up Beauvoir’s theories of intentionality and ambiguity, largue that patriarcy misreads the relationship between the ethical and the political, that we need to reconsider this relationship and that a just politics of liberation must remember its debt to the ethical moment of the gift.

The Science Thing

For the most part Lacan’s re-reading of Freud is a-historical. For the most part, Lacan, like Freud, presents us with essential, not contingent, marks of the human psyche. There are places, however, where Lacan links his psychoanalytic analyses to the specific history of the West; places where he links the dynamics of psychic development to the contingencies of Western culture. One of these places is “Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis.” Another is his 1959–1960 seminar The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. In “Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis” Lacan tells us that in elevating the ego to the place of the subject, the West is dominated by a unique meconnaissance. In The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, he tells us that the scientific project which dominates the West is a sign of the blindest of passions — the Oedipal desire to know.1

The Subject of Love

diffi cult to support the individual lesbian’s request to use cloning; on the other hand, denying her access to this technology only protracts her reliance on male gametes for reproduction. Here it is not clear which standpoint is expressing the most nondominant position, or which is deserving of privileged status. Mahowald’s account fi nds its greatest strength in her chapter “Disability, Women, and Caregiving,” where she addresses the role of principal caregiver that most women share. Throughout her book, Mahowald returns to caregiving as a reference point for considering the burdens of genetic technologies, since women almost exclusively take responsibility for the care needs of our society’s ill, disabled, young, and elderly. She treats decisions regarding genetic interventions and/or abortion for disabled fetuses, then, in relation to the caregiving requirement that women (as individuals and a group) are likely to face in our gendered society. In determining whose perspective should be privileged, Mahowald asserts that we need to balance respect for people with disabilities against the caregiving burdens that women are likely to face with regard to a disabled child. Mahowald’s book appears at a time when genetic policies and reproductive practices are in fl ux and under moral scrutiny. Yet most commentators on the benefi ts and harms of genetic technology have been silent with respect to its impact on women. Genes, Women, and Equality thus offers an important perspective on current and future genetic practices and policies. This book is an essential read for feminists and nonfeminists alike who are scholars and practitioners of genetic technologies.

The Moral Value of Philosophy

Abstract Students arrive at their Introduction to Philosophy classes unsure of the nature of Philosophy and sceptical of its value. They usually assume that philosophy is some abstract thing which, whatever it is, is irrelevant to everyday life. This essay explores the ways in which the figures, philosophies and lives of Socrates and Bertrand Russell serve as models of the philosophic perspective. It develops the thesis that we can, by appealing to Socrates and Russell as role models, counter the assumption that Philosophy is an ivory tower enterprise and show students that an intimate and essential relationship exists between the process of rational reflection and the living of a moral life.