Ann J. Cahill

This cross-disciplinary anthology explores many contemporary global issues; looks at the different methodologies used to analyze and interpret those topics; and shows how all of us can make progress, through the acquisition of information, knowledge and understanding, toward the goal of responsible world citizenship.

The second edition of Overcoming Objectification: A Carnal Ethics provides a critical analysis of the widely used (particularly in feminist philosophy) concept of objectification, and offers a new concept (derivatization) in its stead. Cahill suggests an abandonment of objectification due to the concept’s dependence on a Kantian ideal of personhood, an ideal that fails to recognize sufficiently the role the body plays in personhood and results in an implicit vilification of the body and sexuality. Phenomena associated with objectification are ethically problematic not because they render women objects, and therefore not-persons, but rather because they construct feminine subjectivity and sexuality as wholly derivative of masculine subjectivity and sexuality. Women are not objectified as much as they are derivatized: turned into a mere reflection or projection of the other. Cahill argues for a sexual ethics grounded in difference, carnality, and intersubjectivity. The preface to the second edition traces new scholarly contributions to conversations regarding sexual ethics, feminist engagements with Kant, intersectionality, and trans philosophy. With original and far-reaching insights regarding the structure of gender inequality, this work will be of interest to students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences alike and will be of particular use to those interested in sexual ethics, sexual assault, and dominant media representations of gendered bodies.

The second edition of Overcoming Objectification: A Carnal Ethics provides a critical analysis of the widely used (particularly in feminist philosophy) concept of objectification, and offers a new concept (derivatization) in its stead. Cahill suggests an abandonment of objectification due to the concept’s dependence on a Kantian ideal of personhood, an ideal that fails to recognize sufficiently the role the body plays in personhood and results in an implicit vilification of the body and sexuality. Phenomena associated with objectification are ethically problematic not because they render women objects, and therefore not-persons, but rather because they construct feminine subjectivity and sexuality as wholly derivative of masculine subjectivity and sexuality. Women are not objectified as much as they are derivatized: turned into a mere reflection or projection of the other. Cahill argues for a sexual ethics grounded in difference, carnality, and intersubjectivity. The preface to the second edition traces new scholarly contributions to conversations regarding sexual ethics, feminist engagements with Kant, intersectionality, and trans philosophy. With original and far-reaching insights regarding the structure of gender inequality, this work will be of interest to students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences alike and will be of particular use to those interested in sexual ethics, sexual assault, and dominant media representations of gendered bodies.

Rape, claims Ann J. Cahill, affects not only those women who are raped, but all women who experience their bodies as rapable and adjust their actions and self-images accordingly. Rethinking Rape counters legal and feminist definitions of rape as mere assault and decisively emphasizes the centrality of the body and sexuality in a crime which plays a crucial role in the continuing oppression of women. Rethinking Rape applies current feminist theory to an urgent political and ethical issue. Cahill takes an original approach by reading the subject of rape through the work of such recent continental feminist thinkers as Luce Irigaray, Elizabeth Grosz, Rosi Braidotti, and Judith Butler, who understand the body as fluid and indeterminate, a site for the negotiation of power and resistance. Cahill interprets rape as an embodied, sexually marked experience, a violation of feminine bodily integrity, and a pervasive threat to the integrity and identity of a woman's person. The wrongness of rape, which has always eluded legal interpretation, cannot be defined as theft, battery, or the logical extension of heterosexual sex. It is not limited to a specific event, but encompasses the myriad ways in which rape threatens the prospect of feminine agency. As an explication that fully countenances women's experiences of their own bodies, Rethinking Rape helps point the way toward reparation, resistance, and the evolution of feminine subjectivity.