Family Values: Subjects Between Nature and Culture

by Oliver,Kelly

• ISBN13: 9780415913652
• ISBN10: 0415913659
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-04-25
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Family Valuesshows how the various contradictions at the heart of Western conceptions of maternity and paternity problematize our relationships with ourselves and with others. Using examples from philosophical texts, psychoanalytic theory, studies in biology and popular culture, Kelly Oliver challenges our traditional concepts of maternity which are associated with nature, and our conceptions of paternity which are embedded in culture. Oliver's intervention calls into question the traditional image of the oppositional relationship between nature and culture, maternal and paternal.Family Valuesalso undercuts recent returns to the rhetoric of a "battle between the sexes" by analyzing the conceptual basis of these descriptions in biological research and the presuppositions of such suggestions in philosophy and psychoanalysis. By developing a reconception of maternity and paternity,Family Valuesoffers hope for peace in the battle ofthe sexes. Articulating alternative ways to conceive of ourselves as subjects, and our conceptions of our relations to others, Oliver suggests an innovative approach to ethics or questions of values--family values. Engaging such thinkers as Locke, Rousseau. Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Levinas, Derrida, Kristeva, Koffman, Irigaray and others, Oliver examines an enormous range of both classic and contemporary texts. Family Valuesoffers a groundbreaking analysis of ages-old conceptions of woman and man, maternity and paternity, nature and culture, and subjectivity and ethics, thus composing an enormous contribution to feminist theory, literary criticism, and cultural studies.

Author Biography

Kelly Oliver is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface: Family Values
Introduction: The Paradox of Love	p. 1
Social Body	p. 9
Animal Body Mother	p. 11
Maternal Law	p. 62
Body Politic	p. 117
No Body Father	p. 119
Paternal Eros	p. 195
Postscript: Family Values and Social Subjectivity	p. 231
Endnotes	p. 234
References	p. 244
Index	p. 252
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