Recent writers in feminist ethics have been concerned to find ways to reclaim and augment women's moral agency. This essay considers Sarah Hoagland's intriguing suggestion that we renounce moral praise and blame and pursue what she calls an “ethic of intelligibility.” I argue that the eschewal of moral blame would not help but rather hinder our efforts to increase our sense of moral agency. It would, I claim, further intensify our demoralization.

A mother's commitment to use violence if necessary to protect her children is not incompatible with pacifism, if pacifism is understood as the commitment to end war and war is understood as the use of violence as a political tool.

This essay focuses on how we embody the language we speak: how an audience “reads” the body of a speaker as it both constructs the positionality of that speaking subject and construes that subject's discursive authority. Buildingon the work of Linda Brodkey and Michelle Fine, 1 explore what is at stake when university students harass a faculty member by accusing that teacher of not embodying authority in the proper form (body).

Bordo argues that the “theoretics of heterogeneity” taken too far prevents us from being able make generalizations or broadly conceptual statements about women. 1 argue that the political efficacy of feminism does not depend on the capacity to speak from the perspective of “women” and that the insistence on the heterogeneity of the category of women does not imply an opposition to abstraction but rather moves abstract thinking in a self-critical and democratizing direction.

Bordo is concerned with what she calls apostmodem “theoretics of heterogeneity” that questions the validity of historical and cultural analyses “along gender-tines.” It also challenges the validity of feminist analyses concerning the “maleness” of philosophy. Not surprisingly, this has precipitated debate between postmodernists and those alarmed by its implications for feminist work. At issue is the epistemological and political capacity of feminism to analyze social power and dominance through an analysis of gender.1

I reply to Laura Duhan Kaplan that I do not suggest women's political choices concerning pacifism are determined by biology. Although I contend the practice of mothering does not imply a pacifist commitment, this does not imply that the practice of mothering is inconsistent with such a commitment. Further, because the practice of mothering is not limited to women, even if it is inconsistent with pacifist commitment, this does not limit choices based on biology.

A new collection of critical essays from bell hooks takes as its theme the deep longing for a critical voice. I explore some motifs that operate across the divergent topics of her essays. She writes of the dangers of commodification, of “reassuring” images, of individualism. I also explore the paths of hooks's uniquely black postmodernism: her critique of various essentialisms, her philosophically important conception of subjectivity, and her beautiful and powerful transformations of multiple discourses.

This essay examines two tendencies in lesbian ethics as differing visions of community, as well as contrasting views of the relationship between the erotic and the ethical. In addition to considering those authors who make explicit claims about lesbian ethics, this paper reflects on the works of some lesbians whose works are less frequently attended to in discussions about lesbian ethics, including lesbians writing from the perspectives of theology and of literature.

In my discussion of Bordo's paper I leave aside the particulars of her detailed critique of Grimshaw and the issue of the “maleness” of philosophy and focus instead on some questions raised by her analysis of heterogeneity and generality. I find this analysis very persuasive, particularly her counterarguments to the “theoretics of heterogeneity.” However, 1 am less persuaded by her concluding points and suggestions for future directions.

This essay participates in a feminist postcohnial critical historiographyfepistemol’ ogy by providing a critique of The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. The essay considers Spivak's success in interrogating her own position as a leading postcohnial critic as she engages in dialogues with various people. Spivak's commitment to cross-cultural exchanges is undeniable. However, at times the resurgence of her authoritative subject position deflects productive tensions generated by careful scrutiny of the category postcohnial.

The legal category “mother” operates restrictively and punitively to “domesticate” lesbian existence. Our domestication is the reason that we have difficulty thinking beyond the category “mother.” I explore how “mother” is used by both lesbians and nonlesbians within the legal system. In order to ensure lesbian survival on lesbian terms, we must strategize theories that do not preserve the dominant legal paradigm thatcodifies “mother,” even if that category is expanded to include “lesbian mother.”

In commenting on Susan Bordo's discussion of gender bias, 1 both support and build on her contention that women's exclusion from philosophical discourse has been epistemologically and politically significant. But I also explore difficulties associated with applying the concept of gender and I voice concern about how to characterize the perspectives we share as women. Finally, I consider some theoretical and political limitations of utilizing gender as an analytical category.

Fox-Genovese, Kaminer, and Riley all write the history of feminism as a history of conflict between feminists who desire to deny difference in favor of equality and those who desire to celebrate difference. And they all ask what this contradiction lying at the heart of feminist theory implies for the practice of feminist politics. These works reveal the need for feminists who engage this debate to be self’-Conscious in their formulations.

Recent writing by Jewish lesbians is characterized BY challenging and evocative reflection on themes of home and identity, family and choice, tradition and transfor’ mation. This essay is a personal journey through some of this writing. An exploration of the obvious and troubling tensions between lesbian or feminist and Jewish identities leads to the paradoxical but ultimately unsurprising suggestion that lesbian identity and eroticism can provide a route of return to and affirmation of Jewish identity.

This essay is part of a recent version of a talk 1 have given by way of introducing Lesbian Ethics. J mention ways in which lesbian existence creates certain conceptual possibilities that can effect conceptual shifts and transform consciousness.

In this paper I lay out what 1 take to be the crucial insights in Susan Bordo's “Feminist Skepticism and the ‘Maleness’ of Philosophy” and point out some additional difficulties with the skeptical position. I call attention to an ambiguity in the nature or content of the “maleness” of philosophy that Bordo identifies. Finally, I point out that, unlike some feminist skeptics, Bordo never loses sight in her work of women's lived experiences.

This essay discusses the place of popular culture, especially visual representation, in theories of female subjectivity and examines two recent works on women and popular culture as representative of two primary critical and methodological approaches to the female subject. The essay considers the limitations and implications of both qualitative communication research and text-based feminist criticism and the need to construct a dialogue between them.