Although feminist phenomenology is traditionally rooted in philosophy, the issues with which it engages sit at the margins of philosophy and a number of other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. This interdisciplinarity is emphasised in the present collection. Rethinking Feminist Phenomenology focuses on emerging trends in feminist phenomenology from a range of both established and new scholars. It covers foundational feminist issues in phenomenology, feminist phenomenological methods, and applied phenomenological work in politics, ethics, and on the body. The book is divided into three parts, starting with new methodological approaches to feminist phenomenology and moving on to address popular discourses in feminist phenomenology that explore ethical and political, embodied, and performative perspectives.

This volume is composed chiefly of papers first presented and discussed at the Research Symposium on Feminist Phenomenology held November 18-19, 1994 in Delray Beach, Florida. Those papers have been revised and expanded for publication in the present volume and several essays have been added. We would like to thank very much all the participants in the symposium, including the session chairs and others in attendance, whose interest and enthusiasm contributed greatly. The symposium and this volume, including the name for it, were conceived of by Lester Embree, who also arranged sponsorship, local arrangements, and publication through the William F. Dietrich Eminent Scholar Chair at Florida Atlantic University and the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Inc. The invitees were decided upon jointly. Linda Fisher has been chiefly responsible for the editing and the preparation of the camera-ready copy. Linda Fisher Lester Embree Acknowledgments The editing and preparation of this volume has spanned several cities and two continents and I am indebted to many people from each place.

This volume presents work at the interface of feminist theory and mental health. The editors a stellar array of contributors to continue the vital process of feminist theory building and critique.

While the body has been largely neglected in much of traditional Western philosophy, there is a rich tradition of Japanese philosophy in which this is not the case. Ethics Embodied explains how Japanese philosophy includes the body as an integral part of selfhood and ethics and shows how it provides an alternative and challenge to the traditional Western philosophical view of self and ethics. Through a comparative feminist approach, the book articulates the striking similarities that exist between certain strands of Japanese philosophy and feminist philosophy concerning selfhood, ethics and the body. Despite the similarities, McCarthy argues that there are significant differences between these philosophies and that each reveals important limitations of the other. Thus, the book urges a view of ethical embodied selfhood that goes beyond where each of these views leaves us when considered in isolation. With keen analysis and constructive comparison, this book will be accessible for students and scholars familiar with the Western philosophical tradition, while still adding a more global perspective.

Differences That Matter challenges existing ways of theorising the relationship between feminism and postmodernism which ask 'is or should feminism be modern or postmodern?' Sara Ahmed suggests that postmodernism has been allowed to dictate feminist debates and calls instead for feminist theorists to speak (back) to postmodernism, rather than simply speak on (their relationship to) it. Such a 'speaking back' involves a refusal to position postmodernism as a generalisable condition of the world and requires closer readings of what postmodernism is actually 'doing' in a variety of disciplinary contexts. Sara Ahmed hence examines constructions of postmodernism in relation to rights, ethics, subjectivity, authorship, meta-fiction and film.

Using narrative descriptions of the author's own lived-experience of her ethnic heritage, Martinez offers a systematic interrogation of the social and cultural norms by which certain aspects of her Mexican-American cultural heritage are both retained and lost over generations of assimilation. Combining semiotic and existential phenomenology with Chicana feminism, the author charts new terrain where anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-homophobic work may be pursued.

Distinguished feminist philosophers consider the future of their field and chart its political and ethical course in this forward-looking volume. Engaging with themes such as the historical trajectory of feminist phenomenology, ways of perceiving and making sense of the contemporary world, and the feminist body in health and ethics, these essays affirm the base of the discipline as well as open new theoretical spaces for work that bridges bioethics, social identity, physical ability, and the very nature and boundaries of the female body. Entanglements with thinkers such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, and Arendt are evident and reveal new directions for productive philosophical work. Grounded in the richness of the feminist philosophical tradition, this work represents a significant opening to the possible futures of feminist phenomenological research.