Feminist Interpretations of Hans-Georg Gadamer

by Code, Lorraine

• ISBN13: 9780271022444
• ISBN10: 0271022442
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-12-01
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr

Summary

Images of and references to women are so rare in the vast corpus of his published work that there seems to be no "woman question" for Hans-Georg Gadamer. Yet the authors of the fifteen essays included in this volume show that it is possible to read past Gadamer's silences about women and other Others to find rich resources for feminist theory and practice in his views of science, language, history, knowledge, medicine, and literature.

While the essayists find much of value in Gadamer's work, he emerges from their discussion as a controversial figure. Some contributors see him as promoting genuine respect for and engagement with Otherness: others claim that in a Gadamerian conversation the Other has no voice. For some, Gadamer's immersion in tradition is an impediment to feminist inquiry; for others, cognizant of the need to understand tradition well in order to contest its intransigence or benefit from its insights, his way of engaging tradition is especially productive. Some contributors take issue with the separation he maintains between philosophy and poli

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Nancy Tuana
Acknowledgments	x
Introduction: Why Feminists Do Not Read Gadamer	1	(38)
Lorraine Code
Part I: Hermeneutic Projects, Feminist Interventions: Engendering Gadamerian Conversations
(En)gendering Dialogue Between Gadamer's Hermeneutics and Feminist Thought	39	(18)
Kathleen Roberts Wright
Hermeneutics and Constructed Identities	57	(24)
Georgia Warnke
Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics and Feminist Projects	81	(28)
Susan-Judith Hoffmann
Gadamer's Conversation: Does the Other Have a Say?	109	(24)
Marie Fleming
The Development of Hermeneutic Prospects	133	(16)
Gemma Corradi Fiumara
Postmodern Hermeneutics? Toward a Critical Hermeneutics	149	(32)
Veronica Vasterling
The Ontology of Change: Gadamer and Feminism	181	(22)
Susan Hekman
Toward a Critical Hermeneutics	203	(28)
Robin Pappas
William Cowling
Part II: Feminist Issues: Enlisting Gadamerian Resources
Gadamer's Feminist Epistemology	231	(28)
Linda Martin Alcoff
The Hermeneutic Conversation as Epistemological Model	259	(26)
Silja Freudenberger
Melanie Richter-Bernberg
The Horizon of Natality: Gadamer, Heidegger, and the Limits of Existence	285	(22)
Grace M. Jantzen
Questioning Authority	307	(18)
Patricia Altenbernd Johnson
Gender, Nazism, and Hermeneutics	325	(10)
Robin May Schott
Three Problematics of Linguistic Vulnerability: Gadamer, Benhabib, and Butler	335	(32)
Meili Steele
Three Applications of Gadamer's Hermeneutics: Philosophy-Faith-Feminism	367	(10)
Laura Duhn Kaplan
Selected Bibliography	377	(12)
Contributors	389	(4)
Index	393