What kind of ethics can we consider in the framework of feminist phenomenology that takes poststructuralist feminism into account? This seems to be a difficult task for at least two reasons. First, it is not yet clear what ethics in poststructuralist feminism is. Second, phenomenology and poststructuralism are still regarded as opposites. As a phenomenologist with strong affinities to poststructuralism, I want to take on this challenge. In this paper, I will argue that phenomenology and poststructuralism share the idea of the “indeterminable.” If this idea is applied to the topic of gender, we can speak of an “indeterminable gender.” Moreover, phenomenology and poststructuralism support an ethical attitude toward genders inasmuch as they both avoid making problematic determinations. My goal is to explore what the so-called “indeterminable gender” is and to illuminate the ethical implications of this concept.

Th is paper explores the unique phenomenology of habit and temporality put forth in Beauvoir’s La Vieillesse. I situate her understanding of temporality in relation to her early work Pyrrhus and Cinéas. I extract her notion of a boundary marked future that decreases anticipation for the future and thus rigidifies habits (through an increased reliance on the past). In the final section I appropriate the notion of a boundary mark for a cultural phenomenology where we understand boundary marks as constituted by our understandings of ourselves in time and not through aging alone. This cultural boundary mark can be used to understand how societal prejudice operates at the level of lived temporality.

Feminist phenomenology has contributed significantly to understanding the negative impact of the objectification of women’s bodies. The celebration of thin bodies as beautiful and the demonization of fat bodies as unattractive is a common component of that discussion. However, when one turns toward the correlation of fat and poor health, a feminist phenomenological approach is less obvious. In this paper, previous phenomenological work on the objectification of women is paralleled to the contemporary encouragement to discipline one’s body in order to pursue better health. Similar ideologies of free choice in the face of bodily habits run through discussions of health and beauty. The paper uses the work of Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir as well as the contemporary feminist phenomenologists Diaprose, Bartky, Bordo, Young, Grosz, and Carel to explore how women are constrained by health testing and health normalization. It argues that despite the apparent benefits of a focus on modifying health habits, feminists have good reason to be wary of the good health imperative.

Drawing on phenomenology’s account of “passive synthesis,” this paper seeks to provide a phenomenological vocabulary that could be useful in explaining institutional oppression to those who find it difficult to understand that we can be responsible for acts and meanings that we do not intend. Though the main goal of the paper is to justify the use of the terminology of passive synthesis in the discourse on oppression, the paper ends by suggesting how employing passive synthesis in this manner suggests ways of combating oppression.

In the Nordic countries, at a time when women have only recently won the right to their own bodies and to a sexuality of their own and for themselves, women nevertheless fake orgasms. Moreover, a common question posed to the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU) deals with lack of desire. Not only are women faking and complaining of lack of desire, but men as well. It seems that contemporary ideals surrounding sexuality converge with quests for not only pleasure and love, but also for fitting in and experiencing what is conceived of as normal and “successful” sexuality. This essay examines the contemporary and prevalent phenomenon of faked orgasms from the perspectives of feminist theory and phenomenology.

With the ascent of obstetrics, gynecology, and psychoanalysis, the childbearing woman’s subjectivity has been increasingly eclipsed by that of her child-to-be. This article describes the sociohistorical understanding of childbearing and shows how it has become intertwined with four women’s lived experiences of pregnancy and birth based on diaries and interviews they completed for this study. The participants’ childbearing experiences revealed an ambiguous, sensual symbiosis between themselves and others that threatens the Western notion of a free-floating, solipsistic subject exemplified in fetal photographs and ultrasound images.

In this case study we have used a relational-centred, existential-phenomenological approach to explore the lived world of a woman – Mia - who has experienced a traumatic abortion. We offer an account of her story, followed by an explication of emergent existential themes: ‘Feeling Torn’, ‘Cutting Shame’ and ‘Monstrous (M)othering’. Trauma associated with abortion is found to be complex, layered and enduring. We present examples of our own reflexive writings and supervision extracts to illustrate how our relational stance within the methodology helped deepen the exploration of Mia’s experience.

This article describes findings from a qualitative study that investigated the lived experiences of four mothers recovering from crack cocaine addictions who lost custody of their children. The project was guided by feminist interpretive inquiry, van Manen’s approach to hermeneutic phenomenology, and involved thematic analysis of in depth interview data. By telling the stories of these women and using their own words as well as interpretive poetry written by one of the authors to describe their suffering, our research offers important insights to professionals involved in the field of addictions.

Beginning with the idea that our bellybuttons specifically and our guts more generally are a good thing to think with, this paper proposes the idea of “gut sociality”—that is, a material-semiotic, posthumanist mode of responsivity between bodies that hovers in, around, and through the gut. In order to deepen our understanding of this notion, I provide a phenomenological sketch of morning sickness as one instance of gut sociality. To conclude, I propose that in order to accommodate new modes of being embodied in our twenty-first century world, a method of posthumanist feminist phenomenology should be further developed. This practice should draw upon science discourses, but consider both the risks and the promise of a biological turn.

This essay takes the risk of a formal adventure – both on and off the page – in order to do justice to the specificity of the event, the particular Saying, named ‘song.’ Written by ear to be (read aloud as) heard it has been explicitly composed for oral presentation to perform the ‘truth’ it tells. Taking Joni Mitchell’s rendering of ‘Answer Me’ as its inspiration and point of departure, reference, and return, and drawing on the work of and intellectual tradition associated with Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, Irigaray, Nancy, and Derrida, for example, the essay explores the power of popular song in the spirit of song itself. Neither music nor philosophy, neither poetry nor prose, but something in between: mousikē-philosophy/philosophy-mousikē.