Topographies of Flesh
Women, Nonhuman Animals, and the Embodiment of Connection and Difference
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8098019 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jennifer McWeeny (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 269-286 |
| Publication date | 2014-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Hypatia (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0887-5367 • E-ISSN: 1527-2001 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1111/hypa.12087 |
| OpenAlex | W2157858721 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 18 |
Because of risks of essentialism and homogenization, feminist theorists frequently avoid making precise ontological claims, especially in regard to specifying bodily connections and differences among women. However well‐intentioned, this trend may actually run counter to the spirit of intersectionality by shifting feminists' attention away from embodiment, fostering oppressor‐centric theories, and obscuring privilege within feminism. What feminism needs is not to turn from ontological specificity altogether, but to engage a new kind of ontological project that can account for the material complexity of social space in the twenty‐first century. Taking inspiration from the phenomenological concept of flesh as well as ecofeminism and María Lugones's theory of the colonial/modern gender system, this essay argues that our own flesh is related to that of others through lines of intercorporeal relations that collectively form topographies of flesh. When we attend to those material relationships present in a particular locality at a point in time, we are able to recognize topographical aggregates of beings that can serve as a basis for this new feminist ontology. An example from Toni Morrison's Beloved involving a human woman and a nonhuman one is used as a paradigm for thinking ontological connection and difference at the same time
Aesthetics · Epistemology · Essentialism · Feminism · Flesh · Ontology · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
Sexist Words, Speciesist Roots
Thinking Like a Chicken
The primacy of perception
Black Feminist Thought
What There Was Before Language’
Intersectionality, Metaphors, and the Multiplicity of Gender
Heterosexualism and the Colonial / Modern Gender System
Cows and Others
Rape, Racism and the Capitalist Setting
Mapping the Margins
Phenomenology of Perception
Toward a Decolonial Feminism
Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System
Intersectionality as buzzword
Women, Race and Class
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,91 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2025 (11) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |