Unlike many of the major figures in Western philosophy, Kierkegaard
expores many issues of interest to feminist theorists today. Moreover,
he does so in a style — labyrinthine, many-voiced, multilayered,
adverse to authority — that adumbrates écriture
féminine.
A major question probed in the volume is whether Kierkegaard's
writings are misogynist, ambivalent, or essentialist in their views
of women and the feminine or whether, in some important and vital
ways, they are liberatory and empowering for feminists and women
tring to free themselves from the maze of patriarchal constructs.
The essays also show how the three existence-spheres — aesthetic,
ethical, and religious — articulated in Kierkegaard's authorship
inscribe different modalities of teh sexual relation: seduction
for the aesthetic, marriage for the ethical, and absence from commerce
with the other sex for the religious.
Contributors are Sylviane Agacinski, Wanda Warren Berry, Birgit
Bertung, Jane Duran, Leslie A. Howe, Céline Léon,
Tamsin Lorraine, Robert L. Perkins, Mark L. Taylor, Sylvia Walsh,
and Julia Watkin. |
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