1st Edition

Overcoming Objectification A Carnal Ethics

By Ann J. Cahill Copyright 2011
    198 Pages
    by Routledge

    200 Pages
    by Routledge

    Objectification is a foundational concept in feminist theory, used to analyze such disparate social phenomena as sex work, representation of women's bodies, and sexual harassment. However, there has been an increasing trend among scholars of rejecting and re-evaluating the philosophical assumptions which underpin it. In this work, Cahill suggests an abandonment of the notion of objectification, on the basis of its dependence on a Kantian ideal of personhood. Such an ideal fails to recognize sufficiently the role the body plays in personhood, and thus results in an implicit vilification of the body and sexuality. The problem with the phenomena associated with objectification is not that they render women objects, and therefore not-persons, but rather that they construct feminine subjectivity and sexuality as wholly derivative of masculine subjectivity and sexuality. Women, in other words, are not objectified as much as they are derivatized, turned into a mere reflection or projection of the other. Cahill argues for an ethics of materiality based upon a recognition of difference, thus working toward an ethics of sexuality that is decidedly ­and simultaneously ­incarnate and intersubjective.

    1. Troubling Objectification  2. Derivatization  3. Masculine Sex Objects  4. Unsexed Women  5. Objectification and/in Sex Work  6. Sexual Violence and Objectification.  Conclusion: Feeling Bodies. 

    Biography

    Ann J. Cahill is an Associate Professor at Elon University.

    "Cahill (Elon Univ.) argues against the standard feminist account that unethical treatment of women in sexual encounters is due to the objectification of the femable by the male. It should be replaced, she argues, by a new concept--derivitization....This argumetn is persuasive and should become a new benchmark in feminist theory for all those interested in feminist philosophy and sexual ethics. Summing up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty." — CHOICE, October 2011, S.C. Schwarze, Carbini College, USA

    "Overcoming Objectification is not just a solid text for scholars looking to complicate notions of objectification but would also be adaptable to a classroom setting."— Amanda Jo Hobson, Journal of Popular Romance Studies