Stella Sandford

Contradiction of Terms: Feminist Theory, Philosophy and Transdisciplinarity

This article addresses the question of the relation between disciplines and transdisciplinary practices and concepts through a discussion of the relationship between philosophy and the emblematically transdisciplinary practice of feminist theory, via a discussion of interdisciplinarity and related terms in gender studies. It argues that the tendency of philosophy to reject feminist theory, as alien to it as a discipline, is in a sense correct, to the extent that the two defining features of feminist theory – its constitutive tie to a political agenda for social change and the transdisciplinary character of many of its central concepts – are indeed at odds with, and pose a threat to, the traditional insularity of the discipline of philosophy. If feminist philosophy incorporates feminist theory, its transdisciplinary aspects thus open it up to an unavoidable contradiction. Nonetheless, I will argue, this is a contradiction that can and must be endured and made productive.

Sexually Ambiguous: Eros and sexuality in plato and freud

In 1921, in his essay ‘‘Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,’’ Freud effectively claims that the apparently original concept of sexuality developed in psychoanalytic theory and practice ‘‘coincides exactly’’ with ‘‘the ‘Eros’ of the philosopher Plato.’’ In a sense, this anachronistic claim is patently absurd, and it would be pointless to undertake a comparison of the two concepts in an effort to decide whether or not Freud was ‘‘right.’’ Nonetheless, this essay undertakes a parallel analysis of Freud’s concept of sexuality and the concept of eros in Socrates’ speech in the Symposium (which is, for Freud, ‘‘Plato’s concept of eros’’). This involves no claims about their identity, or even their relation, but the extent to which presumptions about one (sexuality) have influenced the way the other (eros) now figures in contemporary thought. Specifically, it also concerns the way in which the failure to realize, theoretically, the specificity of Freud’s concept of sexuality – a failure Freud himself did not avoid – has influenced one particular debate in the literature on the Symposium. The first problem in this parallel analysis concerns translation between classical Greek and English, and reveals the intra-lingual conceptual complexity of both erôs and sexuality. That is, although the noun erôs is readily (if superficially) intelligible and easily transliterated, the meanings of the words we might use to translate it and its cognates into English – specifically, ‘‘love’’ and ‘‘eros’’ or ‘‘the erotic’’ – overlap but do not coincide, to the extent that popular opinion presumes a non-erotic love to be no contradiction in terms. To distinguish between these different kinds of love in English, we may introduce the qualifier ‘‘sexual’’: erôs is sexual love, or has to do with sexual desire (ta aphrodisia – sexual pleasures or those things pertaining to sexual pleasure), and this is indeed how the concept of erôs is frequently distinguished for us from the concept of philia (affectionate or friendly love). But this restriction (presuming for now that we understand the English ‘‘sexual’’ in the generally accepted restricted sense) flies in the face of the expansion of the field of erôs in the Symposium and Phaedrus dialogues, where ultimately erôs is considerably distanced – if not completely dissociated – from ta aphrodisia. This translational problem is at the heart of one of the central interpretative debates on the account of eros in Socrates’ speech in the Symposium: does Socrates speak throughout of the nature and function of a specifically sexual stella sandford

Kant, race, and natural history

This article presents a new argument concerning the relation between Kant’s theory of race and aspects of the critical philosophy. It argues that Kant’s treatment of the problem of the systematic unity of nature and knowledge in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of the Power of Judgment can be traced back a methodological problem in the natural history of the period – that of the possibility of a natural system of nature. Kant’s transformation of the methodological problem from natural history into a set of philosophical (and specifically epistemological) problems proceeds by way of the working out of his own problem in natural history – the problem of the natural history of the human races – and specifically the problem of the unity in diversity of the human species, in response to which he develops a theory of race. This theory of race is, further, the first developed model of the use of teleological judgment in Kant’s work. The article thus argues that Kant’s philosophical position on the systematic unity of nature and of knowledge in the first and third Critiques, and his account and defense of teleological judgment, are developed out of problems first articulated in his solution to the problem of the unity in diversity of the human species – that is, in his theory of race. The article does not seek to establish that these aspects of the critical philosophy are therefore racialised. But it does demonstrate, against those who deny its salience to his philosophy, how the problem of the unity in diversity of the human species and Kant’s theory of race is significant for the development of aspects of the critical philosophy and thus contributes to their philosophical problematics.

Freud, Bion and Kant: Epistemology and anthropology in The Interpretation of Dreams.

Translations of summary This interdisciplinary article takes a philosophical approach to The Interpretation of Dreams, connecting Freud to one of the few philosophers with whom he sometimes identified – Immanuel Kant. It aims to show that Freuds theory of dreams has more in common with Bions later thoughts on dreaming than is usually recognized. Distinguishing, via a discussion of Kant, between the conflicting ‘epistemological’ and ‘anthropological’ aspects of The Interpretation of Dreams, it shows that one specific contradiction in the book – concerning the relation between dream‐work and waking thought – can be understood in terms of the tension between these conflicting aspects. Freud reaches the explicit conclusion that the dream‐work and waking thought differ from each other absolutely; but the implicit conclusion of The Interpretation of Dreams is quite the opposite. This article argues that the explicit conclusion is the result of the epistemological aspects of the book; the implicit conclusion, which brings Freud much closer to Bion, the result of the anthropological approach. Bringing philosophy and psychoanalysis together this paper thus argues for an interpretation of The Interpretation of Dreams that is in some ways at odds with the standard view of the book, while also suggesting that aspects of Kants ‘anthropological’ works might legitimately be seen as a precursor of psychoanalysis.

The Dialectic of The Dialectic of Sex

Late in 2006 I chanced across a copy of The Dialectic of Sex in the £1.00 bargain bin of my local second-hand bookshop in North London. I was pregnant; third trimester. Perhaps this influenced my decision to buy it. Like many other students of the history of feminism (my formal feminist education began in the late 1980s) all I knew of Firestone was that she argued for the abolition of biological reproduction, as the necessary condition for freeing women from the natural basis of their oppression. This was why, I presumed, she was consigned to the bargain bin. I had never read The Dialectic of Sex, of course.