Philosophical Essays on Free Stuff by Robyn Ferrell offers a depiction of figures of freedom in consumer culture, a world made image by the internet and globalization. Through word and image associations, Ferrell links the question of "free" to the effects of instrumentalism in the political sphere. The discussion proceeds through figures of freedom which allow the question to come into focus through diverse perspectives. Each essay is autonomous, and all are linked. Grounded in critical theory, continental philosophy, and cultural studies, Ferrell explores ideas of free gift, free thought, free time, free choice, free love, free market, free speech, and free world.

Between the Psyche and the Social is the first collection of its kind to offer original, interdisciplinary essays on questions of social subjectivity. Contributors engage the disciplines of feminism, psychoanalytic theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory, film theory, literary criticism, and philosophy to transform the psychoanalytic study of social oppression. The book considers such questions as, How can psychoanalysis and critical social theory engage and transform one another? How can the social dimensions of subjectivity be understood within the framework of a classic psychoanalytic theory that rejects the social domain that gives rise to subjectivity in the first place? Between the Psyche and the Social reclaims the contributions of psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, postcolonial, and political theories in order to change the parameters of the current debates on the social dimensions of subjectivity.

Philosophy is textual - it is written and it is read - yet today much of philosophy regards itself as a kind of science, sometimes reducing itself to a species of intellectual bureaucracy. It is important to see these qualities as having their own aesthetic. Even realism is a genre. The aesthetic of the empirical and the bureaucratic, the aesthetic of the rhapsodic and of the clinical ... in each of these the genres of philosophy are as creative as they ever were. They are productive of worlds, not only worlds of thought, but 'real worlds' enabled by the technological and other changes that thought has envisaged. This book explores genres through the history of philosophy, providing new ways of thinking about philosophical writing. Exploring a wide range of both European and analytic philosophers and their works - including Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Deleuze, Wittgenstein, Derrida and Rorty - Genres of Philosophy explores the reading and writing of philosophers who themselves read and write, revealing the textual relation to the history of philosophy. While the focus of the book is in aesthetics, Ferrell reveals that the interest in philosophy's writing turns out to be a metaphysical question. The question becomes one of evaluating the ontological basis for writing - its subject and its means of expression - within a world of thought which is presently captivated by a particular aesthetic, that of the empiricist. Presenting fresh readings of classic texts in aesthetics, and offering an original approach to the question of philosophical writing, this unique analysis will prove of particular interest to readers in European philosophy, the history of philosophy, aesthetics, and literary studies.

A collection of essays, written over the last ten years by Robyn Ferrell, who is now Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania. This collection is for the general reader as well as the academic and student. In The Real Desire, the lenses of art, philosophy, sensuality, and the dreamscape invite us to explore the many guises of desire. A childhood interwoven with Aboriginal history, the banalities of buying real estate, discussion of lingerie, writers and writing, and feminist analysis of some of the great philosophers of the past. Robyn Ferrell has brought together in one volume: essays of discovery -- Pinjarra 1970; rites of passage -- Kingdom of God and Feminine Arts; disillusionment -- Paris Does Not Exist; and critical analysis -- Hemingways Typewriter and Real Desire. Robyn combines the clarity of journalistic prose with the rigor of academic analysis. These essays are written for general interest as well as academic investigation.

As the international art market globalizes the indigenous image, it changes its identity, status, value, and purpose in local and larger contexts. Focusing on a school of Australian Aboriginal painting that has become popular in the contemporary art world, Robyn Ferrell traces the influence of cultural exchanges on art, the self, and attitudes toward the other.

Aboriginal acrylic painting, produced by indigenous women artists of the Australian Desert, bears a superficial resemblance to abstract expressionism and is often read as such by viewers. Yet to see this art only through a Western lens is to miss its unique ontology, logics of sensation, and rich politics and religion. Ferrell explores the culture that produces these paintings and connects its aesthetic to the brutal environmental and economic realities of its people. From here, she travels to urban locales, observing museums and department stores as they traffic interchangeably in art and commodities.

Ferrell ties the history of these desert works to global acts of genocide and dispossession. Rethinking the value of the artistic image in the global market and different interpretations of the sacred, she considers photojournalism, ecotourism, and other sacred sites of the western subject, investigating the intersection of modern art and postmodern culture. She ultimately challenges the primacy of the "European gaze" and its fascination with sacred cultures, constructing a more balanced intercultural dialogue that deemphasizes the aesthetic of the real championed by western philosophy.