Home Cultural Studies 15 Confined Spatiality as Deontological Feeling: Iris Marion Young, the Embodied Sense of Entitlement and Its Varieties
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15 Confined Spatiality as Deontological Feeling: Iris Marion Young, the Embodied Sense of Entitlement and Its Varieties

  • Henning Nörenberg

    Henning Nörenberg is external lecturer at the Department of Philosophy in Rostock, Germany. He has published on various topics in phenomenology, social ontology, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. His current work focuses on shared normative background orientations and their affective dimension (“deontological feelings”). He is author of Der Absolutismus des Anderen (Alber 2014).
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Women and Their Body
This chapter is in the book Women and Their Body

Abstract

While Young’s account of the modalities of feminine motility and spatiality in patriarch societies focuses on disempowerment, this chapter investigates a further potential in her analyses: Bodily background orientations such as the one Young describes do not merely organize a sense of instrumental (im-)possibilities (“I can/cannot φ”). They also organize a pre-reflective sense of (not) being entitled to interfere with and participate in the space populated with other persons, a sense that underpins the agent’s recognition of something as their right (“I may/may not φ”). The first part of the chapter sketches an account of bodily background orientations as variable sensitivities to particular kinds of obligations and rights. The second part explicates Young’s account of confined spatiality in terms of a bodily desensitization to particular forms of entitlements. The effect of such desensitization is that the agent’s practical recognition of something as their right is inhibited to a considerable extent.

Abstract

While Young’s account of the modalities of feminine motility and spatiality in patriarch societies focuses on disempowerment, this chapter investigates a further potential in her analyses: Bodily background orientations such as the one Young describes do not merely organize a sense of instrumental (im-)possibilities (“I can/cannot φ”). They also organize a pre-reflective sense of (not) being entitled to interfere with and participate in the space populated with other persons, a sense that underpins the agent’s recognition of something as their right (“I may/may not φ”). The first part of the chapter sketches an account of bodily background orientations as variable sensitivities to particular kinds of obligations and rights. The second part explicates Young’s account of confined spatiality in terms of a bodily desensitization to particular forms of entitlements. The effect of such desensitization is that the agent’s practical recognition of something as their right is inhibited to a considerable extent.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter V
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. List of Abbreviations
  4. 1 Introduction Women and Their Body: Breaking the Silence 1
  5. Part I The Feminist Perspective
  6. 2 The Panoptic Gaze: Female Body and Place 19
  7. 3 The Female Body and Freedom: Conflict of Life or Colonial Dilemma in Marko Vovchok’s Narrations? 41
  8. 4 Relative (Non-)Existence of Female-Specific Neuropathology in Current Neuroimaging Research into Hysteria/Functional Neurological Disorders 53
  9. 5 Sexual Bodies: On Desire and Pleasure in Feminist and Thoughts 79
  10. 6 Beauty and the Duty to be Beautiful 95
  11. 7 Beauty Practices and Ukrainian Women Refugees in the Context of Russia-Ukraine War: Another Double Bind 109
  12. Part II The Feminist Ethics Perspective
  13. 8 Distractibility: Wandering Between Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen 129
  14. 9 On Being ‘Indisposed’ to Study and Work, or the Discourse of the Victorian Women’s Menstruation 147
  15. 10 Female Reproductive Bodies and the Shift from Risk to Threat Society: The (Mis)Use of the Powers of Pregnancy in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Amy Ewing’s The Lone City-Series 163
  16. 11 Andrea Dworkin. Life, Death, War, and Virginity: A Radical Truth 179
  17. 12 Reproduction, Structural Injustice, and the Problem of Speaking for Others 197
  18. Part III The Phenomenological Perspective
  19. 13 Women, Bodies, and Experiences: Feminist Interventions in the Philosophy of the Body 213
  20. 14 Between Feminist Phenomenology and Socio-Structural Critique: The Hybrid Construction of Female Embodiment in the Early Theoretical Framework of Iris Marion Young as a Locus of Radical Interdisciplinarity 233
  21. 15 Confined Spatiality as Deontological Feeling: Iris Marion Young, the Embodied Sense of Entitlement and Its Varieties 251
  22. 16 Mothers Matter: Discussing Motherhood in Gender Studies and Feminist New Materialisms 269
  23. Part IV The Alternative Femininities Perspective
  24. 17 The Female Body and Leontion: Why Were Epicurean Women Capable of Philosophy? 287
  25. 18 Do Women Think with Their Body? Descartes, Malebranche, Poulain de la Barre 303
  26. 19 Arca as Demiurge: Cyborg’s Body, Mutant’s Body 321
  27. 20 The Reinvention of the Human Body: Cyborgs, String Figures and New Boundaries 339
  28. List of Contributors 339
  29. List of names
  30. List of subjects
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111396934-016

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter V
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. List of Abbreviations
  4. 1 Introduction Women and Their Body: Breaking the Silence 1
  5. Part I The Feminist Perspective
  6. 2 The Panoptic Gaze: Female Body and Place 19
  7. 3 The Female Body and Freedom: Conflict of Life or Colonial Dilemma in Marko Vovchok’s Narrations? 41
  8. 4 Relative (Non-)Existence of Female-Specific Neuropathology in Current Neuroimaging Research into Hysteria/Functional Neurological Disorders 53
  9. 5 Sexual Bodies: On Desire and Pleasure in Feminist and Thoughts 79
  10. 6 Beauty and the Duty to be Beautiful 95
  11. 7 Beauty Practices and Ukrainian Women Refugees in the Context of Russia-Ukraine War: Another Double Bind 109
  12. Part II The Feminist Ethics Perspective
  13. 8 Distractibility: Wandering Between Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen 129
  14. 9 On Being ‘Indisposed’ to Study and Work, or the Discourse of the Victorian Women’s Menstruation 147
  15. 10 Female Reproductive Bodies and the Shift from Risk to Threat Society: The (Mis)Use of the Powers of Pregnancy in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Amy Ewing’s The Lone City-Series 163
  16. 11 Andrea Dworkin. Life, Death, War, and Virginity: A Radical Truth 179
  17. 12 Reproduction, Structural Injustice, and the Problem of Speaking for Others 197
  18. Part III The Phenomenological Perspective
  19. 13 Women, Bodies, and Experiences: Feminist Interventions in the Philosophy of the Body 213
  20. 14 Between Feminist Phenomenology and Socio-Structural Critique: The Hybrid Construction of Female Embodiment in the Early Theoretical Framework of Iris Marion Young as a Locus of Radical Interdisciplinarity 233
  21. 15 Confined Spatiality as Deontological Feeling: Iris Marion Young, the Embodied Sense of Entitlement and Its Varieties 251
  22. 16 Mothers Matter: Discussing Motherhood in Gender Studies and Feminist New Materialisms 269
  23. Part IV The Alternative Femininities Perspective
  24. 17 The Female Body and Leontion: Why Were Epicurean Women Capable of Philosophy? 287
  25. 18 Do Women Think with Their Body? Descartes, Malebranche, Poulain de la Barre 303
  26. 19 Arca as Demiurge: Cyborg’s Body, Mutant’s Body 321
  27. 20 The Reinvention of the Human Body: Cyborgs, String Figures and New Boundaries 339
  28. List of Contributors 339
  29. List of names
  30. List of subjects
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