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Janice Richardson, "Beyond Equality and Difference:
Sexual Difference in the Work of Adriana Cavarero", Feminist Legal
Studies VI/1 (1998), 105-120: This paper discusses the work of the contemporary
feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero who has illustrated how, from
Parmenides and Plato onwards, Western metaphysics has devalued birth and
focused upon death. I consider the way in which she refigures conceptions
of self by considering the influence of Hannah Arendt upon her work
and then her criticisms of Judith Butler. Cavarero is clearly committed
to political activism and it is this influence which motivates her to reclaim
the images of women from classical (male) texts.
In her most recent work she proposes a conception of
self which draws upon the work of Arendt to emphasize her/his unique,
embodied, already sexed nature, whose life story is told by others. She
wishes to avoid what she views as two pitfalls: that of positing the classical
subject, which is "monstrous" in being both male and universal;
and the "postmodern subject" which she characterises as
fragmented. I consider the extent to which she avoids the public/private
divide which infects Arendt's work. Whilst sympathetic to her political
commitment, I also point to a tension in her work between the openness of
the question of "who" we are, compared to her assumption that
sexual difference is always an important difference.
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