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Bartky, Sandra Lee. Femininity and Domination
1990, Routledge.

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Added by: Emma Holmes, David MacDonald, Yichi Zhang, and Samuel Dando-Moore
Publisher’s Note:
Bartky draws on the experience of daily life to unmask the many disguises by which intimations of inferiority are visited upon women. She critiques both the male bias of current theory and the debilitating dominion held by notions of "proper femininity" over women and their bodies in patriarchal culture.

Comment (from this Blueprint): Chapter 4 is about what a feminist should do when they have a sexual desire which is in tension with their feminist beliefs in a way that makes them feel ashamed. There are two natural choices: to give up the shame and continue to have the desire, or to give up the desire. Bartky examines both of these choices and finds us in a tricky situation: it is sometimes apt and understandable to feel shame about a sexual desire (when it really is in tension with your principles), but she is sceptical about the view that we can change our desires at will or with therapy.

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Montague, Michelle. The Life of the Mind
2015, In Paul Coates and Sam Coleman (eds.), Phenomenal Qualities: Sense, Perception and Consciousness. Oxford University Press.

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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt

Abstract: What distinguishes a conscious occurrent thought from a non-conscious occurrent thought? I argue that the notion of 'access-consciousness' cannot provide a satisfactory answer and that we must appeal to phenomenological properties. If this is right, a further question arises about what kind of phenomenological features are required. Can we give a satisfactory account of what makes an occurrent thought a conscious thought solely by reference to sensory phenomenology - including both verbal and non-verbal imagery? I argue that we cannot, and that we must appeal to 'cognitive phenomenology' in order to be able to say what distinguishes conscious occurrent thought from non-conscious occurrent thought.

Comment:

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Mcweeny, Jennifer. Liberating Anger, Embodying Knowledge: A Comparative Study of Maria Lugones and Zen Master Hakuin
2010, Hypatia 25 (2):295 - 315.

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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Corbin Covington

Abstract: This paper strengthens the theoretical ground of feminist analyses of anger by explaining how the angers of the oppressed are ways of knowing. Relying on insights created through the juxtaposition of Latina feminism and Zen Buddhism, I argue that these angers are special kinds of embodied perceptions that surface when there is a profound lack of fit between a particular bodily orientation and its framing world of sense. As openings to alternative sensibilities, these angers are transformative, liberatory, and deeply epistemological.

Comment:

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Montague, Michelle. Recent work on intentionality
2010, Analysis 70 (4):765 - 782.

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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt

Abstract: Much recent work on intentionality has been dedicated to exploring the complex relationship between the intentional properties and the phenomenological properties of mental states. A lot of this work has focused on perception, but with the introduction of cognitive phenomenology, conscious thought and the role cognitive-phenomenological properties may play with respect to conscious thought, are likely to receive an increasing amount of attention.

Comment:

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Siegel, Susanna. Affordances and the Contents of Perception
2014, in Brogaard, Berit (ed.) Does Perception have Content, OUP

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Added by: Giada Fratantonio

Summary: The author questions the centrality of representation in perceptual experience that comes from a specific class of experience, namely, those experiences of the environment that compels you to act in a certain way.

Comment: This could work as secondary reading for a postgraduate course on philosophy of perception.

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Arendt, Hannah. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy
1982, University of Chicago Press.

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Added by: Sara Peppe

Publisher's Note: Hannah Arendt's last philosophical work was an intended three-part project entitled The Life of the Mind. Unfortunately, Arendt lived to complete only the first two parts, Thinking and Willing. Of the third, Judging, only the title page, with epigraphs from Cato and Goethe, was found after her death. As the titles suggest, Arendt conceived of her work as roughly parallel to the three Critiques of Immanuel Kant. In fact, while she began work on The Life of the Mind, Arendt lectured on "Kant's Political Philosophy," using the Critique of Judgment as her main text. The present volume brings Arendt's notes for these lectures together with other of her texts on the topic of judging and provides important clues to the likely direction of Arendt's thinking in this area.

Comment: This book provides a good overview of Arendt's perspective on Kant's political philosophy. Previous knowledge on Kant is needed.

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Vasterling, Veronica. Heidegger’s hermeneutic account of cognition
2015, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14(4): 1145-1163.

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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist

Abstract: Hermeneutic phenomenology is absent in 4 EAC literature (embedded, embodied, enactive, extended and affective cognition). The aim of this article is to show that hermeneutic phenomenology as elaborated in the work of Heidegger is relevant to 4 EAC research. In the first part of the article I describe the hermeneutic turn Heidegger performs in tandem with his ontological turn of transcendental phenomenology, and the hermeneutic account of cognition resulting from it. I explicate the main thesis of the hermeneutic account, namely that cognition is interaction with the world, followed by a discussion of the modes of cognition distinguished in the hermeneutic account. In the second part of the article I discuss the implications of this account with respect to the status and meaning of first, second and third person perspective of cognition. The article concludes with the draft and discussion of an exploratory model of hermeneutic cognition.

Comment: The text gives a very concise overview and interpretation of Heidegger's account of hermeneutics, relating it to 4E debates in the philosophy of mind and cognition. It could be interesting as advanced reading in courses in the philosophy of mind, or more introductory reading in hermeneutic phenomenology and the work of Heidegger.

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Bauer, Nancy. How to Do Things With Pornography
2015, Harvard Univeristy Press.

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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist, Contributed by: Rosa Vince

Publisher's Note: Feminist philosophers have made important strides in altering the overwhelmingly male-centric discipline of philosophy. Yet, in Nancy Bauer’s view, most are still content to work within theoretical frameworks that are fundamentally false to human beings’ everyday experiences. This is particularly intolerable for a species of philosophy whose central aspiration is to make the world a less sexist place. How to Do Things with Pornography models a new way to write philosophically about pornography, women’s self-objectification, hook-up culture, and other contemporary phenomena. Unafraid to ask what philosophy contributes to our lives, Bauer argues that the profession’s lack of interest in this question threatens to make its enterprise irrelevant. Bauer criticizes two paradigmatic models of Western philosophizing: the Great Man model, according to which philosophy is the product of rare genius; and the scientistic model, according to which a community of researchers works together to discover once-and-for-all truths. The philosopher’s job is neither to perpetuate the inevitably sexist trope of the philosopher-genius nor to “get things right.” Rather, it is to compete with the Zeitgeist and attract people to the endeavor of reflecting on their settled ways of perceiving and understanding the world. How to Do Things with Pornography boldly enlists J. L. Austin’s How to Do Things with Words, showing that it should be read not as a theory of speech acts but as a revolutionary conception of what philosophers can do in the world with their words.

Comment: This book has chapters that will be useful for feminism modules, including critiques of the pornography and silencing literature, and on objectification, and self-objectification. It also contains plenty of witty critiques of white male dominated western philosophy.

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Guenther, Lisa. Solitary Confinement: Social Death and its Afterlives
2013, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Added by: Rochelle DuFord

Abstract: Prolonged solitary confinement has become a widespread and standard practice in U.S. prisons - even though it consistently drives healthy prisoners insane, makes the mentally ill sicker, and, according to the testimony of prisoners, threatens to reduce life to a living death. In this profoundly important and original book, Lisa Guenther examines the death-in-life experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today's supermax prisons. Documenting how solitary confinement undermines prisoners' sense of identity and their ability to understand the world, Guenther demonstrates the real effects of forcibly isolating a person for weeks, months, or years. -/- Drawing on the testimony of prisoners and the work of philosophers and social activists from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis, the author defines solitary confinement as a kind of social death. It argues that isolation exposes the relational structure of being by showing what happens when that structure is abused - when prisoners are deprived of the concrete relations with others on which our existence as sense-making creatures depends. Solitary confinement is beyond a form of racial or political violence; it is an assault on being.

Comment: This text serves as both a clear introduction to the history of punishment and imprisonment in the United States, as well as a clear introduction to phenomenological method. Portions of the text on the experience of social death in solitary confinement would make excellent additions to introductory courses on prisons and punishment. Some chapters would also be fitting on classes concerning race and mass incarceration.

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