Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas

by Rosalyn Diprose

Overview

Rosalyn Diprose contends that generosity is not just a human virtue, but it is an openness to others that is critical to our existence, sociality, and social formation. Her theory challenges the accepted model of generosity as a common character trait that guides a person to give something they possess away to others within an exchange economy. This book places giving in the realm of ontology, as well as the area of politics and social production, as it promotes ways to foster social relations that generate sexual, cultural, and stylistic differences. The analyses in the book theorize generosity in terms of intercorporeal relations where the self is given to others. Drawing primarily on the philosophy of Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, and offering critical interpretations of feminist philosophers such as Beauvoir and Butler, the author builds a politically sensitive notion of generosity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791488843
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	02/01/2012
Series:	SUNY series in Gender Theory
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	236
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Rosalyn Diprose is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. She is the author of The Bodies of Women: Ethics, Embodiment and Sexual Difference.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Introducing Generosity

Part I. Giving Identity and Difference

1. Nietzsche and the Pathos of Distance

2. Giving Sexed Corporeality before the Law

3. Performing Body-Identity through the Other

Part II. Generosity and the Politics of Affectivity

4. Erotic Generosity and Its Limits

5. Affectivity and Social Power: From Melancholia to Generosity

6. Sexuality and the Clinical Encounter

Part III. Generosity and Community (Trans)Formation

7. Thinking through Radical Generosity with Levinas

8. Truth, Cultural Difference, and Decolonization

9. Generosity, Community, and Politics

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

"This book is outstandingly original and will have a very significant impact on contemporary ethical and social theory. It possesses an enviable maturity, displayed through the ease with which the author utilizes insights from a variety of philosophical sources in order to present her own original account of 'corporeal generosity'" — Moira Gatens, author of Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality

"The topic of generosity, and relating the notion beyond personal virtue to its foundational place in politics, is both significant and marks an important contribution to ethics and politics." — Agnes B. Curry, Saint Joseph College

From the Publisher