Rosalyn Diprose | |
|---|---|
| Born | Australia |
| Education | |
| Alma mater |
|
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Continental |
| Main interests | Feminist philosophy Critical Phenomenology Biopolitics |
| Notable ideas | ethics of generosity based on inter-relationality |
Rosalyn Diprose is Emeritus Professor of philosophy at University of New South Wales. [1] Engagement with,and citations of,her research in Philosophy (sub categories (Comparative) Literary and Gender Studies) has placed her on Stanford University's "World Top 2% of Scientists" list for the years 2025,2022,and 2021. [2] Diprose is best known for the interdisciplinary application of her unique concept of "corporeal generosity" developed through engagement with existential phenomenology (particularly Merleau-Ponty and Levinas),the Continental philosophies of Nietzsche,Foucault,and Arendt,and numerous feminist philosophies of embodiment. She has been recognised for her contributions to scholarship on these philosophers. [3] Her concept of "corporeal generosity" is now considered to be seminal in the emerging field of Critical Phenomenology. [4]
Biography and Career [5]
Rosalyn Diprose was raised on a family farm in mid-Western NSW (on "unceded" Wiradjuri country) and attended the local high school. After graduating with a degree in biomedical science from the University of Technology Sydney in 1976,she worked for 2 years in pharmacology research in Sydney and 4 years for Top Deck Travel in London and Sydney in administrative and managerial roles, [6] before undertaking a liberal Arts degree in Philosophy and History at The University of Sydney (1982-1986). She completed a PhD in Philosophy at UNSW Sydney under the supervision of Prof.Genevieve Lloyd (1987-1991). Diprose was the first woman appointed as a full-time lecturer in Philosophy at Flinders University of South Australia (1991-1994),before taking up a tenured position in Philosophy at UNSW Sydney in 1994. During her academic career she has also held fully funded visiting professorships at several institutions,including in the Department of Philosophy at Rhodes University,South Africa in 2002,in Human Geography,the Open University UK in 2006 [7] ;and the Humanities Institute at SUNY Buffalo USA in 2014. [8] She held the posts of Deputy Head of School and Research Coordinator for the School of History and Philosophy at UNSW (2009-2012). Diprose was awarded the "UNSW Vice Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching for Postgraduate Supervision" in 2009 and went on to achieve 20 successful PhD completions as primary supervisor in 15 years 1998-2014.
Development of "Corporeal Generosity" as an Ethical Principle
In her first book,The Bodies of Women (1994),Diprose,as Alexandra Howson explains,was one of the early feminist theorists to develop a feminist ethics from Foucault's approach to ethics based on one's embodied "manner of being" and an Irigarian and Derridean notion of relational difference within sociality. [9] In that book,Diprose also begins her entry into biopolitical critique by applying her feminist ethics to biomedical issues and she prefigures the later idea of generosity by positing gift-giving,as opposed to utilitarianism and social contract theory,as the basis of sociality. Through published scholarship on the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty,Levinas,and Arendt from the late 1990s,Diprose developed her mature concept of corporeal generosity. Diprose summarises her fully-developed concept of corporeal generosity in the "ontological sense as openness toward,or being-given to,others characteristic of human subjectivity [and] interrelationality",which is imbued with affectivity and is the basis of ethics. [10] Veera Kinnunen explains the ethical and political dimensions of Diprose's concept in a chapter of her book devoted to the topic:"being open to difference is the basis of community" with the human and non-human. [11] . Other commentators,such as Marsha Meskimmon,elaborate the reasons why this openness to difference matters:
to be completed
In order of most cited and discussed: [12]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
 | This article about a philosopher is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
  | This biography of an Australian academic is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
