The Gift of the Other: Levinas And the Politics of Reproduction

by Guenther, Lisa

• ISBN13: 9780791468470
• ISBN10: 079146847X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-08-10
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

"The Gift of the Other brings together a philosophical analysis of time, embodiment, and ethical responsibility with a feminist critique of the way women's reproductive capacity has been theorized and represented in Western culture. Author Lisa Guenther develops the ethical and temporal implications of understanding birth as the gift of the Other, a gift which makes existence possible, and already orients this existence toward a radical responsibility for Others. Through an engagement with the work of Levinas, Beauvoir, Arendt, Irigaray, and Kristeva, the author outlines an ethics of maternity based on the givenness of existence and a feminist politics of motherhood which critiques the exploitation of maternal generosity."--BOOK JACKET.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction The Gift of the Other	1	(4)
A Feminist Approach to Levinas	5	(3)
A Levinasian Approach to Feminism	8	(2)
Birth, Time, Ethics	10	(5)
The ``Facts'' of Life: Beauvoir's Account of Reproduction	15	(14)
Take 1: Birth as a Project	19	(5)
Take 2: Birth as an Ambiguous Situation	24	(5)
The Body Politic: Arendt on Time, Natality, and Reproduction	29	(20)
Vita Activa: Labor, Work, Action	32	(4)
The Temporality of Action: Promise and Forgiveness	36	(5)
Thinking Through Natality	41	(3)
Reproducing Natality: Cavarero's Reading of Arendt	44	(5)
Welcome the Stranger: Birth as the Gift of the Feminine Other	49	(26)
Derrida and the Gift of the Impossible	50	(3)
Cixous and the Gift of the Feminine	53	(4)
Levinas and the Gift of Hospitality	57	(18)
I am welcomed: From ethos to oikos	58	(6)
You are welcome: From oikos to ethos	64	(11)
Fathers and Daughters: Levinas, Irigaray, and the Transformation of Paternity	75	(20)
Paternity as Infinite Discontinuity	77	(7)
Otherwise than Paternity: Irigaray Reading Levinas	84	(5)
From Paternity to the Maternal Body: Isaiah 49	89	(6)
Ethics and the Maternal Body: Levinas and Kristeva Between the Generations	95	(46)
Time and the Maternal Body	97	(11)
Ethics and Herethics	108	(21)
Moses and His Mothers: Numbers 11:12	129	(12)
Maternal Ethics, Ethics, Feminist Politics: The Question of Reproductive Choice	141	(24)
Defending the Imaginary Domain: Drucilla Cornell	143	(4)
Levinas Between Ethics and Politics	147	(8)
Ethics, Politics, and the Prospect of ``Unborn Mothers''	155	(6)
Altered Maternities	161	(4)
Notes	165	(14)
Bibliography	179	(8)
Index	187