Touching Thought: Ontology and Sexual Difference

(Paperback)

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The blindness to ontological questioning in feminist theory has left a lacuna in scholarly study that "Touching Thought" - a study at the intersection between ontological meditation and feminist theorizing on sexual difference -seeks to fill. Ellen Mortensen's new work critiques the language and theoretical pathways of contemporary feminist theories such as Judith Butler, Rosi Braidotti, Elizabeth Grosz, Luce Irigaray, Theresa de Lauretis and Donna Haraway to reveal a problematic predilection for technological language at the expense of ontological inquiry. The volume ranges across feminist epistemology and ethics, the politics and performativity, the aesthetics of body/power, and the question of sexual difference and concludes with an examination of the different philosophical and theoretical attempts at undertaking an ontological questioning of sexual difference. This foundational work should serve as preparation for scholars and feminist and queer theory and continental philosophy seeking alternative pathways of feminist thought that encourage fundamental thinking on the subject of freedom.

Reviews

Ellen Mortensen's Touching Thought explores ontological questions surrounding sexual difference left unthought in much of contemporary feminism. With her tenacious and meticulous meditations on lesbian/feminist epistemology, ethics, and politics, Mortensen forces us to come to terms with Heidegger's challenge to Western thought. -- Kelly Oliver, SUNY, Stony Brook

Author Bio

Ellen Mortensen is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Bergen, Norway. She is the author of The Feminine and Nihilism: Luce Irigaray with Nietzsche and Heidegger (1994).