The Gift of the Other: Levinas and the Politics of Reproduction

From the Back Cover The Gift of the Other brings together a philosophical analysis of time, embodiment, and ethical responsibility with a feminist critique of the way women’s reproductive capacity has been theorized and represented in Western culture. Author Lisa Guenther develops the ethical and temporal implications of understanding birth as the gift of the Other, a gift which makes existence possible, and already orients this existence toward a radical responsibility for Others. Through an engagement with the work of Levinas, Beauvoir, Arendt, Irigaray, and Kristeva, the author outlines an ethics of maternity based on the givenness of existence and a feminist politics of motherhood which critiques the exploitation of maternal generosity. "Guenther presents an original, compelling, and lucid analysis of birth as a gift that, if given rather than forced, grounds subjectivity, plurality, and ethical sociality. This is a groundbreaking work that revises Levinas’s ethics for feminist reproductive politics, and it will have a significant impact on key debates in existential phenomenology, feminist theory, bioethics, and biopolitics." — Rosalyn Diprose, author of Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas Product Description A philosophical exploration of birth, maternity, and reproduction. Winner of the 2007 Symposium Book Award presented by Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy Review "Guenther presents an original, compelling, and lucid analysis of birth as a gilt that, if given rather than forced, grounds subjectivity, plurality, and ethical sociality. This is a groundbreaking work that revises Levinas's ethics for feminist reproductive politics, and it will have a significant impact on key debates in existential phenomenology, feminist theory, bioethics, and biopolitics." -- Rosalyn Diprose, author of Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levina About the Author Lisa Guenther is Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at The University of Auckland, New Zealand.