Abstract
This paper is a survey of a number of women scholars who, during the last 20 years, have made extremely valuable contributions to the meanings and interpretations of the terms ‘violence,’ ‘vulnerability,’ and ‘precariousness.’ Each scholar (Sally Engle Merry, Grace Marion Jantzen, Ann V. Murphy, and Pamela Sue Anderson) has proposed in-depth insights that demonstrate that the terms they have examined can be reconfigured in more constructive and less definitive ways. In their respective pertinent observations, they have challenged the existing negative theories that associate violence with weakness and vulnerability with anger. Even though there are critics who have found fault with these authors’ proposals, the impact of their studies has had revolutionary repercussions.
Notes
Sally Engle Merry, Gender Violence: A Cultural Perspective, 1.
Jeremy Carrette and I edited two posthumous publications of Jantzen’s writings: Violence to Eternity (2009) and A Place of Springs (2010). Both books were collections of essays along the lines that Jantzen had intended.
Merry, Gender Violence, 1.
Merry, Gender Violence, 3.
Merry, Gender Violence, 15.
Merry, Gender Violence, 2.
Merry, Gender Violence, 1.
Merry, Gender Violence, 2.
Merry, Gender Violence, 19.
Merry, Gender Violence, 20.
Grace Jantzen, The Foundations of Violence, 56.
Jantzen, The Foundations of Violence, 81.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 10–11.
Jantzen, Becoming Divine, 146.
Jantzen, A Place of Springs, 185–86.
Jantzen, The Foundations of Violence, 4.
Jantzen, The Foundations of Violence, 4.
Jantzen, The Foundations of Violence, viii.
Jantzen, The Foundations of Violence, viii.
Jantzen, The Foundations of Violence, viii.
Ann V. Murphy, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, 7.
Murphy, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, 8.
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 25.
Jacques Derrida, Violence and Metaphysics Derrida (1990), 97–192.
Murphy, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, 1.
Butler quoted in Murphy, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, 80.
Murphy, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, 80.
Butler quoted in Murphy, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, 82.
Butler quoted in Murphy, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, 72.
Judith Butler, Undoing Gender, xiii; Murphy, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, 71.
Ann V. Murphy, ‘Corporeal Vulnerability and the New Humanism,’ 580.
Murphy, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, 80.
Butler quoted in Murphy, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, 80.
Murphy, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, 81.
Murphy, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, 120.
This article of Pamela Sue Anderson’s will be published as ‘Silencing and Speaker Vulnerability: Undoing an Oppressive Form of (Wilful) Ignorance,’ ed. Nick Bunnin, in Love and Vulnerability: Thinking with Pamela Sue Anderson, ed. Pelagia Goulimari, in this special issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 25, no. 1–2 (2020), forthcoming.
References
Anderson, P. S. (1998). A feminist philosophy of religion: the rationality and myths of religious belief. Oxford: Blackwell.
Anderson, P. S. (2003). Autonomy, vulnerability and gender. Feminist Theory, 4(2), 149–164.
Anderson, P. S. (2016). Silencing and Speaker Vulnerability: Undoing an Oppressive Form of (Wilful) Ignorance. Keynote address, Durham University.
Arendt, H. (1959). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble. New York: Routledge.
Butler, J. (2004). Undoing gender. New York: Routledge.
Derrida, J. (1990). Violence and metaphysics, tr. Alan Bass. New York: Routledge [1967].
Jantzen, G. (1998). Becoming divine: towards a feminist philosophy of religion. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Jantzen, G. (2001). Flourishing: towards an ethic of natality. Feminist Theory, 2(2), 219–232.
Jantzen, G. (2004). Series: Death and the displacement of beauty. Vol. 1. The foundations of violence. New York: Routledge.
Jantzen, G. (2009). Series: Death and the displacement of beauty. In J. Carrette & M. Joy (Eds.), Violence to eternity (Vol. 2). New York: Routledge.
Jantzen, G. (2010). Series: Death and the displacement of beauty. In J. Carrette & M. Joy (Eds.), A place of springs (Vol. 3). New York: Routledge.
Levinas, E. (1991). Totality and infinity. An essay on exteriority, tr. Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Merry, S. E. (2006). Human rights and gender violence: translating international law into local justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Merry, S. E. (2009). Gender violence: a cultural perspective. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Murphy, A. V. (2011). Corporeal vulnerability and the new humanism. Hypatia, 26(3), 575–590.
Murphy, A. V. (2012). Violence and the philosophical imaginary. New York: SUNY Press.
Scott, J. W. (1989). Gender and the politics of history. New York: Columbia University Press [Revised ed., 1999].
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Joy, M. Violence, Vulnerability, Precariousness, and Their Contemporary Modifications. SOPHIA 59, 19–30 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-020-00767-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-020-00767-8