Generative grafting: Reproductive technology and the dilemmas of surrogacy

COMMENT Generative grafting Reproductive technology and the dilemmas of surrogacy Elina staikou In 2013, at the advanced age of 101, Howard W. Jones, a medical pioneer in reproductive technology, published Personhood Revisited: Reproductive Technology, Bioethics, Religion and the Law. Looking back at the development of what came to be called the ARTs (assisted reproductive technologies), Jones […]

Margaret Whitford, 1947–2011

‘It is difficult to convey the desert which faced women philosophers in Britain in the early 1980s’, Margaret Whitford once remarked. It was a desert that Margaret’s own work was pivotal in modifying. At a time when feminism was flourishing outside the academy, philosophy seemed especially immune from its influence; both in terms of content […]

Nietzche reception today

Nietz5che reception today Pauline Johnson I want no ‘believers’. I think I am too malicious to believe in myself; I never speak to masses. – I have a terrible fear that one day I shall be pronounced biological’ revolution was enticingly projected in contrast to the ‘superficial’, ‘external’ social revolution. 2 holy. Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce […]

Historicism and Lacanian theory

In 1977 Luce Irigaray published a passionately written article in the journal Critique, entitled ‘The Poverty of Psychoanalysis’. The text is a richly woven tapestry of diverse references and poetic resonances, and merits a close reading. However, rather than using Irigaray’s essay as an exercise in textual analysis, I will use it here as a […]

Virtual sexes and feminist futures: The philosophy of 'cyberfeminism'

Virtual sexes and feminist futures The philosophy of ‘cyberfeminism’ Jill Marsden It’s not just that ‘god’ is dead; so is the ‘goddess’. Donna Haraway Whilst the majority of her work has received little critical attention, Donna Haraway’s 1985 essay ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’l has rapidly attained cult status in many branches of contemporary theory. With this […]

71 Reviews

REVIEWS Getting it right 10n Elster and Rune Slagstad, eds.,Constitutionalism and Democracy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993. vii + 359 pp., £ 12.95 pb., 0521 34530 8 hb., 0 521 45721 1 pb. Anthony Barnett, Caroline Ellis and Paul Hirst, eds., Debating the Constitution: New Perspectives on Constitutional Reform, Cambridge, Polity, 1993. xix + 183 […]

Feminism, Humanism and Postmodernism

Feminism, Humanism and Postmodernism Kate Soper I shall not begin, as I probably should, by offering to define my terms. Instead, I shall acknowledge that I have brought together three concepts admitted on all sides to be well-nigh indefinable. Or, if they are definable, they are so only by reference to a particular thinker’s usage […]

Feminism against ‘the feminine’

Whilst the distinction between French and AngloAmerican feminism was always rather dubious (failing to be accurate, consistent or inclusive at the level of either national origin, language of choice or theoretical commitment; seeming to parcel feminist theory – or at least the feminist theory that mattered – out into two Western blocks from which the […]