Penelope Deutscher

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Penelope Deutscher
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Penelope Deutscher is a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University whose work focuses on French philosophy from the 20th and 21st centuries and gender theory. [1] [2] She has written four books dealing with subjects ranging from gender and feminism to the works of Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, and Simone de Beauvoir. [1] In 2002–2003, Deutscher also served as the Lane Professor for the Humanities at the Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities at Northwestern University. [2]

Contents

Education and career

Deutscher received her bachelor's from the University of Sydney in 1986 and went on to receive a Diplôme des études approfondies at the University of Paris in 1991 and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of New South Wales in 1993. [2] Deutscher served as an associate lecturer in philosophy at the University of New South Wales in 1992 before becoming a lecturer and then senior lecturer in philosophy at the Australian National University from 1992 to 2001. [2] Deutscher moved to Northwestern University in 2002, accepting an appointment as the Lane Professor for the Humanities in 2002–2003, and then serving as an associate professor from 2002 to 2008 before being promoted to full professor in 2008. [2] Besides for her permanent appointments, Deutscher also served as the Marie-Jahoda guest professor at Ruhr University Bochum in 2013. [2]

Research areas and publications

Deutscher has authored five books, including Yielding Gender: Feminism, Deconstruction and the History of Philosophy (1997), A Politics of Impossible Difference: The Later Work of Luce Irigaray (2002), How to Read Derrida (2006), The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Ambiguity, Conversion, Resistance (2008), and Foucault's Futures: A Critique of Reproductive Reason (2017). [1] Deutscher has also edited or co-edited four books, Repenser le politique: l'apport du féminisme (2004), Enigmas: Essays on Sarah Kofman (1999), (with Olivia Custer and Samir Haddad) Foucault/Derrida Fifty Years Later (2016), and (with Cristina Lafont) Critical Theory in Critical Times (2017). [2] Deutscher has also written a large number of refereed articles, contributed more than 26 book chapters, several encyclopedia articles, and a number of book reviews. [2]

Deutscher's first book, Yielding Gender: Feminism, Deconstruction and the History of Philosophy, engaged the works of Judith Butler and Eve Sedgwick with that of Jacques Derrida to create a novel analysis of the instability of the meaning of woman throughout the history of philosophy. [3] Deutscher's second book, A Politics of Impossible Difference: The Later Work of Luce Irigaray, provides a close reading of the work of Luce Irigaray, arguing that Irigaray's work stresses the importance of the value of difference, especially those differences that the hegemon is most interested in actively excluding. [4] Deutscher's third book, How to Read Derrida, provides an introduction to the works of Jacques Derrida, focusing on his approach to deconstructionism. [5] The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Ambiguity, Conversion, Resistance examines Beauvoir's style of building theory upon theory, arguing that building theories upon each other that simultaneously undermine each other does not diminish the significance or results of the study, and focuses in large part on two of Beauvoir's most significant concepts, sexual and generational alterity. [6]

Related Research Articles

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to critical theory:

Deconstruction is a loosely-defined set of approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. The concept of deconstruction was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who described it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essences which are valued above appearances.

Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of power. Although post-structuralists all present different critiques of structuralism, common themes among them include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of structuralism, as well as an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute its structures. Accordingly, post-structuralism discards the idea of interpreting media within pre-established, socially constructed structures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacques Derrida</span> Algerian-French philosopher (1930–2004)

Jacques Derrida was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, and which was developed through close readings of the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy although he distanced himself from post-structuralism and disowned the word "postmodernity".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judith Butler</span> American philosopher and gender studies philosopher (born 1956)

Judith Pamela Butler is an American philosopher and gender studies scholar whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory.

Luce Irigaray is a Belgian-born French feminist, philosopher, linguist, psycholinguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist who examines the uses and misuses of language in relation to women. Irigaray's first and most well known book, published in 1974, was Speculum of the Other Woman (1974), which analyzes the texts of Freud, Hegel, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant through the lens of phallocentrism. Irigaray is the author of works analyzing many thinkers, including This Sex Which Is Not One (1977), which discusses Lacan's work as well as political economy; Elemental Passions (1982) can be read as a response to Merleau‐Ponty's article “The Intertwining—The Chiasm” in The Visible and the Invisible, and in The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger (1999), Irigaray critiques Heidegger's emphasis on the element of earth as the ground of life and speech and his "oblivion" or forgetting of air.

In critical theory and deconstruction, phallogocentrism is a neologism coined by Jacques Derrida to refer to the privileging of the masculine (phallus) in the construction of meaning. The term is a blend word of the older terms phallocentrism and logocentrism.

Postmodern feminism is a mix of post-structuralism, postmodernism, and French feminism that rejects a universal female subject. The goal of postmodern feminism is to destabilize the patriarchal norms entrenched in society that have led to gender inequality. Postmodern feminists seek to accomplish this goal through opposing essentialism, philosophy, and universal truths in favor of embracing the differences that exist amongst women to demonstrate that not all women are the same. These ideologies are rejected by postmodern feminists because they believe if a universal truth is applied to all women of society, it minimizes individual experience, hence they warn women to be aware of ideas displayed as the norm in society since it may stem from masculine notions of how women should be portrayed.

Feminist philosophy is an approach to philosophy from a feminist perspective and also the employment of philosophical methods to feminist topics and questions. Feminist philosophy involves both reinterpreting philosophical texts and methods in order to supplement the feminist movement and attempts to criticise or re-evaluate the ideas of traditional philosophy from within a feminist framework.

Barbara Ellen Johnson was an American literary critic and translator, born in Boston. She was a Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society at Harvard University. Her scholarship incorporated a variety of structuralist and poststructuralist perspectives—including deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and feminist theory—into a critical, interdisciplinary study of literature. As a scholar, teacher, and translator, Johnson helped make the theories of French philosopher Jacques Derrida accessible to English-speaking audiences in the United States at a time when they had just begun to gain recognition in France. Accordingly, she is often associated with the "Yale School" of academic literary criticism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Kofman</span> French philosopher (1934–1994)

Sarah Kofman was a French philosopher.

Elizabeth A. Grosz is an Australian philosopher, feminist theorist, and professor working in the U.S. As of February 2024 she is Jean Fox O'Barr Women's Studies Distinguished Professor Emerita at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, U.S.

20th-century French philosophy is a strand of contemporary philosophy generally associated with post-World War II French thinkers, although it is directly influenced by previous philosophical movements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naomi Schor</span> American literary critic and theorist

Naomi Schor was an American literary critic and theorist. A pioneer of feminist theory for her generation, she is regarded as one of the foremost scholars of French literature and critical theory of her time. Naomi's younger sister is the artist and writer Mira Schor.

Poststructural feminism is a branch of feminism that engages with insights from post-structuralist thought. Poststructural feminism emphasizes "the contingent and discursive nature of all identities", and in particular the social construction of gendered subjectivities.

Neofeminism describes an emerging view of women as becoming empowered through the celebration of attributes perceived to be conventionally feminine, that is, it glorifies a womanly essence over claims to equality with men. It is a term that has come into use in the early 21st century to refer to a popular culture trend, what critics see as a type of "lipstick feminism" that confines women to stereotypical roles, while it erodes cultural freedoms women gained through the second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s in particular.

Ewa Ziarek is the Julian Park Professor of Comparative Literature at The State University of New York at Buffalo. She has a major interest in engaging with other scholars on their own terms, and believes that a model of dissensus in philosophy, rather than the traditional consensus model, may produce highly valuable results.

Andrea Nye is a feminist philosopher and writer. Nye is a Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater for the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department and an active member of the Women's Studies Department. In 1992, Nye received the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater Award for Outstanding Research.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Penelope Deutscher -- Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University". Northwestern University. Retrieved 1 April 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Deutscher, Penelope. "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Northwestern University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 April 2014. Retrieved 1 April 2014.
  3. ↑ Schott, Robin May (1 June 1999). "Yielding Gender: Feminism, Deconstruction and the History of Philoso· phy. By PENELOPE DEUTSCHER. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. (Review)". Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. 14 (3).
  4. ↑ Ferrell, Robyn (September 2004). "A Politics of Impossible Difference: The Later Work of Luce Irigaray". Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 82 (3): 547–549. doi:10.1080/713659872. S2CID   154515182.
  5. ↑ Deutscher, Penelope (2005). How to read Derrida. London: Granta. ISBN   1862077681.
  6. ↑ Parker, Emily Anne (November 2012). "Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of Influence. Edited by ChristineDaigle and JacobGolomb. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Ambiguity, Conversion, Resistance. By Penelope Deutscher. New York: Cambridge Univers". Hypatia. 27 (4): 936–942. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.2012.01309.x.
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