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Definition and the Question of “Woman”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Victoria Barker
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Abstract

Within recent feminist philosophy, controversy has developed over the desirability, and indeed, the possibility of defining the central terms of its analysis—“woman,” “femininity,” etc. The controversy results largely from the undertheorization of the notion of definition; feminists have uncritically adopted an Aristotelian treatment of definition as entailing metaphysical, rather than merely linguistic, commitments. A “discursive” approach to definition, by contrast, allows us to define our terms, while avoiding the dangers of essentialism and universalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , Spring 1997 , pp. 185 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by Hypatia, Inc.

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