Overcoming objectification vs The Taming of the Shrew

Overcoming objectification

Ann J. Cahill

2011

The second edition of Overcoming Objectification: A Carnal Ethics provides a critical analysis of the widely used (particularly in feminist philosophy) concept of objectification, and offers a new concept (derivatization) in its stead. Cahill suggests an abandonment of objectification due to the concept’s dependence on a Kantian ideal of personhood, an ideal that fails to recognize sufficiently the role the body plays in personhood and results in an implicit vilification of the body and sexuality. Phenomena associated with objectification are ethically problematic not because they render women objects, and therefore not-persons, but rather because they construct feminine subjectivity and sexuality as wholly derivative of masculine subjectivity and sexuality. Women are not objectified as much as they are derivatized: turned into a mere reflection or projection of the other. Cahill argues for a sexual ethics grounded in difference, carnality, and intersubjectivity. The preface to the second edition traces new scholarly contributions to conversations regarding sexual ethics, feminist engagements with Kant, intersectionality, and trans philosophy. With original and far-reaching insights regarding the structure of gender inequality, this work will be of interest to students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences alike and will be of particular use to those interested in sexual ethics, sexual assault, and dominant media representations of gendered bodies.

The Taming of the Shrew

William Shakespeare

1631

The Wonder of Shakespeare One who reads a few of Shakespeare's great plays and then the meager story of his life is generally filled with a vague wonder. Here is an unknown country boy, poor and poorly educated according to the standards of his age, who arrives at the great city of London and goes to work at odd jobs in a theater. In a year or two he is associated with scholars and dramatists, the masters of their age, writing plays of kings and clowns, of gentlemen and heroes and noble women, all of whose lives he seems to know by intimate association. In a few years more he leads all that brilliant group of poets and dramatists who have given undying glory to the Age of Elizabeth. Play after play runs from his pen, mighty dramas of human life and character following one another so rapidly that good work seems impossible; yet they stand the test of time, and their poetry is still unrivaled in any language. For all this great work the author apparently cares little, since he makes no attempt to collect or preserve his writings. A thousand scholars have ever since been busy collecting, identifying, classifying the works which this magnificent workman tossed aside so carelessly when he abandoned the drama and retired to his native village. He has a marvelously imaginative and creative mind; but he invents few, if any, new plots or stories. He simply takes an old play or an old poem, makes it over quickly, and lo! this old familiar material glows with the deepest thoughts and the tenderest feelings that ennoble our humanity; and each new generation of men finds it more wonderful than the last. How did he do it? That is still an unanswered question and the source of our wonder.