Few diseases have made more difference to our understanding of illness, the relation of the patient to the physician and other health care professionals, and the social context of disease than breast cancer. Breast cancer activism has provided a model of public policy advocacy for women, as well as for sufferers from other diseases, and even in causes unrelated to health. In many ways it has become emblematic of issues in womena (TM)s health.

This volume offers a discursive analysis of breast cancer. From multiple perspectivesa "historical, philosophical, psychological, socio-politicala "these essays explore the competing narratives that have made breast cancer a contested site. It addresses debates about the autonomy of the patient in relation to the authority of the physician, as well as the importance of patient narratives in understanding disease. It analyzes the relation between the community and medical practice, particularly with regard to the effect of breast cancer activists and feminists on the medical understanding and treatment of breast cancer. And, it questions the intersection of medical science with political institutions and agencies of public policy in determining priorities of research and strategies of treatment.

Luce Irigaray has written that “sexual difference is one of the major philosophical issues, if not the issue, of our age.” Spanning metaphysics, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis, her work examines how sexual difference structures being and subjectivity, organizes our experience of the world, and affects the images and discourses involved in knowledge production and practical action. No other philosopher has paid such careful attention to the consequences of the elision of sexual difference in philosophical thought. However, at a time when notions of sexual and gender difference are hotly contested, Irigaray’s thought has often been dismissed as essentialist or reductively binary. This book brings together leading scholars to consider the philosophical implications of Irigaray’s writing on sexual difference, particularly for issues of gender and race. Their essays directly confront the charge of essentialism, exploring how Irigaray’s thought opens new possibilities for understanding the complexity of gender identities, including nonbinary and trans experiences as well as alternative configurations of masculinity and femininity. Though Irigaray is sometimes accused of a failure to appreciate racial difference, contributors show the productive role of her work in thinking race. This book also illuminates how Irigaray’s work provides creative practices that help realign human experience and our relations with nature and each other.

Luce Irigaray has written that “sexual difference is one of the major philosophical issues, if not the issue, of our age.” Spanning metaphysics, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis, her work examines how sexual difference structures being and subjectivity, organizes our experience of the world, and affects the images and discourses involved in knowledge production and practical action. No other philosopher has paid such careful attention to the consequences of the elision of sexual difference in philosophical thought. However, at a time when notions of sexual and gender difference are hotly contested, Irigaray’s thought has often been dismissed as essentialist or reductively binary. This book brings together leading scholars to consider the philosophical implications of Irigaray’s writing on sexual difference, particularly for issues of gender and race. Their essays directly confront the charge of essentialism, exploring how Irigaray’s thought opens new possibilities for understanding the complexity of gender identities, including nonbinary and trans experiences as well as alternative configurations of masculinity and femininity. Though Irigaray is sometimes accused of a failure to appreciate racial difference, contributors show the productive role of her work in thinking race. This book also illuminates how Irigaray’s work provides creative practices that help realign human experience and our relations with nature and each other.

Unlike any other volume focusing on women 's health issues, this collection brings together a wealth of cross-disciplinary perspectives to bear on the intersection of breasts and medicine.

Among other works on similar subject matters, the academic versatility of this volume is unparalleled. This collection can serve as a textbook in a wide range of courses including those in philosophy, women 's studies, biology, psychology, literature, history, and medicine.

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit exerts a unique influence on contemporary philosophy. Major figures from Jacques Derrida and Luce Irigaray to Jean-Paul Sartre and Judith Butler were shaped in large part through their engagement with Hegel’s challenging masterwork. It unfolds a grand narrative of the ways of thinking and acting that comprise human experience. Along the way, Hegel seeks to incorporate all the fundamental structures of human life—from political community to consciousness to selfhood—into a whole that encompasses the total movement of human knowledge and culture. Mary C. Rawlinson offers a critical reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit that exposes three crucial elisions: Hegel’s effacements of sexual difference, human mortality, and literary style. In attempting to arrive at an “absolute knowing” that would transcend all differences, Hegel discounts specificity in each of these areas in favor of a generic subject. Rawlinson turns Hegel’s critique of abstraction against him, showing how his own phenomenological analysis undermines his attempt to master difference. Rawlinson’s critique reveals Hegel’s attempt to erase the difference of his own style, highlighting his images, tropes, and rhetorical strategies. Demonstrating how the power of Hegel’s phenomenological method goes beyond even Hegel’s own project of a pure logic, The Betrayal of Substance is a magisterial rereading of the Phenomenology of Spirit that encompasses crucially overlooked sites of complexity and difference.

Just Life reorients ethics and politics around the generativity of mothers and daughters rather than the right to property and the sexual proprieties of the oedipal drama. Invoking two concrete universals-everyone is born of a woman and everyone needs to eat-Rawlinson rethinks labor and food as relationships that make ethical claims and sustain agency. Just Life counters the capitalization of bodies under biopower with the solidarity of sovereign bodies.

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit exerts a unique influence on contemporary philosophy. Major figures from Jacques Derrida and Luce Irigaray to Jean-Paul Sartre and Judith Butler were shaped in large part through their engagement with Hegel’s challenging masterwork. It unfolds a grand narrative of the ways of thinking and acting that comprise human experience. Along the way, Hegel seeks to incorporate all the fundamental structures of human life—from political community to consciousness to selfhood—into a whole that encompasses the total movement of human knowledge and culture. Mary C. Rawlinson offers a critical reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit that exposes three crucial elisions: Hegel’s effacements of sexual difference, human mortality, and literary style. In attempting to arrive at an “absolute knowing” that would transcend all differences, Hegel discounts specificity in each of these areas in favor of a generic subject. Rawlinson turns Hegel’s critique of abstraction against him, showing how his own phenomenological analysis undermines his attempt to master difference. Rawlinson’s critique reveals Hegel’s attempt to erase the difference of his own style, highlighting his images, tropes, and rhetorical strategies. Demonstrating how the power of Hegel’s phenomenological method goes beyond even Hegel’s own project of a pure logic, The Betrayal of Substance is a magisterial rereading of the Phenomenology of Spirit that encompasses crucially overlooked sites of complexity and difference.

Just Life reorients ethics and politics around the generativity of mothers and daughters rather than the right to property and the sexual proprieties of the oedipal drama. Invoking two concrete universals-everyone is born of a woman and everyone needs to eat-Rawlinson rethinks labor and food as relationships that make ethical claims and sustain agency. Just Life counters the capitalization of bodies under biopower with the solidarity of sovereign bodies.

Labor and Global Justice: Essays on the Ethics of Labor Practices under Globalization combines conceptual and theoretical perspectives across a multiplicity of relevant differences, both geographical and disciplinary, to develop a transnational perspective on labor and justice. Through its multidisciplinary, transnational approach and its engagement with public policy, the contributors advance urgent contemporary debates around work and clearly demonstrate the necessity of articulating the rights of labor to any global ethics or to any concept of global justice. Together, the chapters make evident why justice requires, both theoretically and practically, a rethinking and rearticulation of the relation between labor and capital. Framing the theoretical and practical question of justice in a new way, the editors have gathered addresses scholars across multiple disciplines, including philosophy, international relations, and the social sciences. As the volume emphasizes the connection between the concept of justice and real public policy, it also appeals to human rights workers and labor organizers, as well as those who make the public policies that establish the relation between labor and capital, just or unjust, and that determine the well-being of workers, for good or ill.

Labor and Global Justice: Essays on the Ethics of Labor Practices under Globalization combines conceptual and theoretical perspectives across a multiplicity of relevant differences, both geographical and disciplinary, to develop a transnational perspective on labor and justice. Through its multidisciplinary, transnational approach and its engagement with public policy, the contributors advance urgent contemporary debates around work and clearly demonstrate the necessity of articulating the rights of labor to any global ethics or to any concept of global justice. Together, the chapters make evident why justice requires, both theoretically and practically, a rethinking and rearticulation of the relation between labor and capital. Framing the theoretical and practical question of justice in a new way, the editors have gathered addresses scholars across multiple disciplines, including philosophy, international relations, and the social sciences. As the volume emphasizes the connection between the concept of justice and real public policy, it also appeals to human rights workers and labor organizers, as well as those who make the public policies that establish the relation between labor and capital, just or unjust, and that determine the well-being of workers, for good or ill.