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Louise du Toit

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I am a philosopher and a feminist academic. Theoretically, I draw mainly from the African and European philosophical and wisdom traditions. My focus is on themes of women and sexuality, embodiment, violence, resistance, flourishing, and the environment.

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Western Sydney University

Central European University

Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Stephen Whittle

Manchester Metropolitan University

Francisco Vazquez-Garcia

Universidad de Cadiz

Lucas R . Platero

Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

The University of Manchester

Paola Bacchetta

University of California, Berkeley

Lorenzo Bernini

Università di Verona

Christine Sleeter

California State University, Monterey Bay

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Papers by Louise du Toit

African Conceptions of Human Dignity and Violence Against Women in South Africa

Springer eBooks, Dec 31, 2022

On thinking about interpersonal violence and the impotence of force

South African Journal of Philosophy, 2023

White Women and Antiracism in the (Post)Colony of South Africa

Signs, Mar 1, 2024

Facing the sexual demon of colonial power: Decolonising sexual violence in South Africa

European Journal of Women's Studies, Sep 23, 2017

The conditions of consent

Introduction: Meaning/s of Rape in War and Peace

Philosophical papers, Nov 1, 2009

... Smith, 2001). It is within this context and worse (because pre-TRC) that Lucy on Stott's... more

Watery Hauntings: A Glossary for African Philosophy in a Different Key

Philosophy and Rhetoric, Apr 1, 2023

ABSTRACT It is no secret that philosophy was historically established as the endeavor of white me... more ABSTRACT It is no secret that philosophy was historically established as the endeavor of white men and that this history continues to underpin and inform the workings of the institutionalized discipline in contemporary university spaces. The discipline’s inherent preoccupation with the universal rather than the particular, the abstract rather than the material, has rendered philosophy particularly obtuse for certain kinds of thinking, and oblivious to large currents of political and aesthetic reflection that have shaped contemporary intellectual engagement with our world. In this article, the authors’ aim is to read the epistemic erasures/foreclosures/violences associated with African philosophy differently, to ask whether it can change key. The article discusses Black African women’s creative work as theory or as philosophy done on different terms. The creative text that the authors center in this regard is the poem bientang (2020) by Black Afrikaans writer Jolyn Phillips.

Enigmatic Woman Facilitates Man’s Becoming

Cultural identity as narrative and performance

South African Journal of Philosophy, 1997

In this article the notion of personal identity often implied in ethnic claims as being a mere in... more In this article the notion of personal identity often implied in ethnic claims as being a mere instance of a broader and enduring ethnic identity, and as therefore being stable and given, is questioned. By introducing narrative, performance and politics as dimensions of both personal and ethnic identity, this article aims at the formulation of a model with which to evaluate cultural claims according to their degree of oppressiveness towards both insiders and outsiders.

The Geometry of Violence: Africa, Girard, Modernity, by Leonhard Praeg

Philosophical papers, Jul 1, 2009

Liggaamlikheid en verantwoordelikheid binne die bio-etiek

Dutch Reformed Theological Journal = Nederduitse Gereformeerde Teologiese Tydskrif, Dec 31, 2004

Embodiment and responsibility in bio-ethics The main argument advanced in this article is that a ... more Embodiment and responsibility in bio-ethics The main argument advanced in this article is that a certain feminist-phenomenological model of selfhood, subjectivity and agency is preferable over the classic liberal (Lockean- Cartesian) model of the self understood as standing apart from its body and possessing rights in the body. The preference for the former model is illustrated and argued in the context of bio-ethics. The former model”s advantages lies primarily in the fact that it can deal with humans as embodied beings, as sexually differentiated beings, as beings that change over time, as thoroughly intersubjective beings, and as beings always already immersed in (and in fact born from) unequal relations of power and symbolic constructs.

Debra Bergoffen, Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape: Affirming the Dignity of the Vulnerable Body, NEW YORK: ROUTLEDGE, 2012

Hypatia reviews online, 2013

The South African Constitution as Memory and Promise: An Exploration of Its Implications for Sexual Violence

Politikon, Jan 2, 2016

ABSTRACT This article considers the South African Constitution as a living text that founds the n... more ABSTRACT This article considers the South African Constitution as a living text that founds the new democratic state and asks about its politics of memory. By its very nature, a constitution looks simultaneously backwards and forwards: the promise of the constitution cannot be understood separately from its memory of the apartheid past, and vice versa. The past continuously gets rewritten and reframed as we always reinterpret it anew in light of current concerns and power distributions. It is argued that these politics do not fade away but rather intensify as we move further away from the constitutional moment in time. Focusing on the urgent problem of on-going very high levels of sexual violence in South Africa, the article tries to capture the ways in which constitutional memory and promise function and should function in this respect. Two strategies of memory, namely the memorial and the monumental, are distinguished and applied to the constitutional promise to end sexual violence.

Gendering African Philosophy, or: African Feminism as Decolonizing Force

Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2017

Although feminist authors and publications abound in other disciplines on the continent, professi... more Although feminist authors and publications abound in other disciplines on the continent, professional African philosophy is overwhelmingly male dominated, with a conspicuous absence of feminist and gender themes. To redress the situation, du Toit and Coetzee consider the choice between applying globally dominant feminist frameworks to issues and debates in the African context or outright immersion in the masculine field of African philosophy in order to open up spaces for feminist questions in dialogue with indigenous worldviews and philosophical positions. In this chapter the authors focus on the second option, in line with recent calls to more authentically contextualize philosophical practice on the continent. The chapter examines the themes of sexual agency and motherhood. Grounded in this way, African feminist philosophy emerges as a potentially powerful source of critique and partner in dialogue with the more established strands of feminist thought.

Shifting Meanings of Postconflict Sexual Violence in South Africa

Signs, Sep 1, 2014

In this article, I identify four interpretive frames that have been or may be used to make sense ... more In this article, I identify four interpretive frames that have been or may be used to make sense of the high incidence of rape in contemporary postapartheid South Africa, namely, past perpetrator trauma, current socioeconomic exclusion, patriarchal politics, and ontological violence. This analysis aims to present each of these as a kind of story or narrative within which the phenomenon is framed, thus setting out a rough typology of rape interpretations. Each frame is then critically considered in terms of criteria such as its compatibility with the available statistics and known patterns of rape, its internal coherence, its inclusivity (accounting for the perspective of both perpetrators and victims), whether it does justice to the nature of rape, its probable effect on society, and in particular whether it furthers or obscures insight into a broader South African culture of complicity with rape. I conclude that the first two frames, the most prevalent discourses around rape, tend to adopt an uncritical perpetrator perspective, to “other” perpetrators, and ironically to privilege the perpetrator over the victim. Thus, they tend to play a powerful ideological role in society as a whole. The last two frames are more promising, but I show that the political interpretation of rape as instrumental violence needs supplementation through an understanding of rape as ontological violence.

Sexual Violence, Religion and Women’s Rights in Global Perspective

Religious Studies and Theology, Dec 20, 2017

This article cautions against spectacularizing the sexual violence that takes place in non-Wester... more This article cautions against spectacularizing the sexual violence that takes place in non-Western places, without proper contextualization. I suggest that the inertia in local African churches and communities against taking a stronger stand against the perpetrators of sexual violence, should be read against the global backdrop. This larger context contains, inter alia, western economic interests that contribute to destabilize African states, a globally dominant liberal legal order which in its turn also fails to address sexual violence, and African and western patriarchies that collude against women. Thus, if the influential African Christian Churches are to stand up against sexual violence against women, they face not only the likely resistance of church leadership and local patriarchies, but on a higher level also the resistance of international economic and patriarchal powers covertly in cahoots with local male elites.

Debating brain drain: Three objections that complicate the picture

South African Journal of Philosophy, Mar 3, 2017

In my contribution to this brain drain debate sparked by Brock and Blake's book, Debating Brain D... more In my contribution to this brain drain debate sparked by Brock and Blake's book, Debating Brain Drain, I respond only to Brock's position, and raise three objections which I suggest complicate the picture that she sketches. First, I take issue with the way in which she frames the moral question, namely by limiting her focus to what home countries may legitimately do to address the problems associated with the brain drain. I argue that the way in which she frames the question has important ideological consequences, because she does not adequately account for the larger context, in particular, by leaving out the moral obligations of the host countries who are the main beneficiaries of the brain drain. My second objection is rooted in the distinction between technical knowledge and practical knowledge found in the work of Habermas-an important distinction which gets obscured in Brock's analysis in precisely the kind of ideological ways that Habermas was concerned about. She namely attempts to solve what are mainly practical (political) problems through purely instrumental, technical means. Several distortions accompany this fundamental confusion. My third point of critique has to do with the problem that an ethics of care (an ethics of responsibility and obligation) encounters within a liberal paradigm strongly shaped by an ethics of rights. Drawing on the work of Kroeger-Mappes, I argue that Brock arbitrarily singles out a group of people and holds them to an ethics of care which is strictly supererogatory within her own liberal paradigm.

Reading International Rape Law from the South

Routledge eBooks, May 12, 2023

An African Feminist Approach to Forgiveness: Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela Considered

Springer eBooks, 2022

Towards a Slow Decolonisation of Sexual Violence

Philosophical journal of conflict and violence, May 1, 2019

This paper explores how we could approach the decolonising of the debate on sexual violence withi... more This paper explores how we could approach the decolonising of the debate on sexual violence within the South African post-colony. For this purpose, a historical event is analysed: two presbytery hearings of 1843 and 1845, both involving Xhosa convert John Beck Balfour, at the Scottish mission station of Burnshill based in Xhosaland (later called British Caffraria). The hearings involve (extra-)marital and sexual behaviour. Walter Mignolo's notions of border thinking and colonial difference, further complicated with the idea of colonial-sexual differentiation, are employed to show aspects of what is at stake in a decolonising reading of Xhosa convert sexual behaviour.

African Conceptions of Human Dignity and Violence Against Women in South Africa

Springer eBooks, Dec 31, 2022

On thinking about interpersonal violence and the impotence of force

South African Journal of Philosophy, 2023

White Women and Antiracism in the (Post)Colony of South Africa

Signs, Mar 1, 2024

Facing the sexual demon of colonial power: Decolonising sexual violence in South Africa

European Journal of Women's Studies, Sep 23, 2017

The conditions of consent

Introduction: Meaning/s of Rape in War and Peace

Philosophical papers, Nov 1, 2009

... Smith, 2001). It is within this context and worse (because pre-TRC) that Lucy on Stott's... more

Watery Hauntings: A Glossary for African Philosophy in a Different Key

Philosophy and Rhetoric, Apr 1, 2023

ABSTRACT It is no secret that philosophy was historically established as the endeavor of white me... more ABSTRACT It is no secret that philosophy was historically established as the endeavor of white men and that this history continues to underpin and inform the workings of the institutionalized discipline in contemporary university spaces. The discipline’s inherent preoccupation with the universal rather than the particular, the abstract rather than the material, has rendered philosophy particularly obtuse for certain kinds of thinking, and oblivious to large currents of political and aesthetic reflection that have shaped contemporary intellectual engagement with our world. In this article, the authors’ aim is to read the epistemic erasures/foreclosures/violences associated with African philosophy differently, to ask whether it can change key. The article discusses Black African women’s creative work as theory or as philosophy done on different terms. The creative text that the authors center in this regard is the poem bientang (2020) by Black Afrikaans writer Jolyn Phillips.

Enigmatic Woman Facilitates Man’s Becoming

Cultural identity as narrative and performance

South African Journal of Philosophy, 1997

In this article the notion of personal identity often implied in ethnic claims as being a mere in... more In this article the notion of personal identity often implied in ethnic claims as being a mere instance of a broader and enduring ethnic identity, and as therefore being stable and given, is questioned. By introducing narrative, performance and politics as dimensions of both personal and ethnic identity, this article aims at the formulation of a model with which to evaluate cultural claims according to their degree of oppressiveness towards both insiders and outsiders.

The Geometry of Violence: Africa, Girard, Modernity, by Leonhard Praeg

Philosophical papers, Jul 1, 2009

Liggaamlikheid en verantwoordelikheid binne die bio-etiek

Dutch Reformed Theological Journal = Nederduitse Gereformeerde Teologiese Tydskrif, Dec 31, 2004

Embodiment and responsibility in bio-ethics The main argument advanced in this article is that a ... more Embodiment and responsibility in bio-ethics The main argument advanced in this article is that a certain feminist-phenomenological model of selfhood, subjectivity and agency is preferable over the classic liberal (Lockean- Cartesian) model of the self understood as standing apart from its body and possessing rights in the body. The preference for the former model is illustrated and argued in the context of bio-ethics. The former model”s advantages lies primarily in the fact that it can deal with humans as embodied beings, as sexually differentiated beings, as beings that change over time, as thoroughly intersubjective beings, and as beings always already immersed in (and in fact born from) unequal relations of power and symbolic constructs.

Debra Bergoffen, Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape: Affirming the Dignity of the Vulnerable Body, NEW YORK: ROUTLEDGE, 2012

Hypatia reviews online, 2013

The South African Constitution as Memory and Promise: An Exploration of Its Implications for Sexual Violence

Politikon, Jan 2, 2016

ABSTRACT This article considers the South African Constitution as a living text that founds the n... more ABSTRACT This article considers the South African Constitution as a living text that founds the new democratic state and asks about its politics of memory. By its very nature, a constitution looks simultaneously backwards and forwards: the promise of the constitution cannot be understood separately from its memory of the apartheid past, and vice versa. The past continuously gets rewritten and reframed as we always reinterpret it anew in light of current concerns and power distributions. It is argued that these politics do not fade away but rather intensify as we move further away from the constitutional moment in time. Focusing on the urgent problem of on-going very high levels of sexual violence in South Africa, the article tries to capture the ways in which constitutional memory and promise function and should function in this respect. Two strategies of memory, namely the memorial and the monumental, are distinguished and applied to the constitutional promise to end sexual violence.

Gendering African Philosophy, or: African Feminism as Decolonizing Force

Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2017

Although feminist authors and publications abound in other disciplines on the continent, professi... more Although feminist authors and publications abound in other disciplines on the continent, professional African philosophy is overwhelmingly male dominated, with a conspicuous absence of feminist and gender themes. To redress the situation, du Toit and Coetzee consider the choice between applying globally dominant feminist frameworks to issues and debates in the African context or outright immersion in the masculine field of African philosophy in order to open up spaces for feminist questions in dialogue with indigenous worldviews and philosophical positions. In this chapter the authors focus on the second option, in line with recent calls to more authentically contextualize philosophical practice on the continent. The chapter examines the themes of sexual agency and motherhood. Grounded in this way, African feminist philosophy emerges as a potentially powerful source of critique and partner in dialogue with the more established strands of feminist thought.

Shifting Meanings of Postconflict Sexual Violence in South Africa

Signs, Sep 1, 2014

In this article, I identify four interpretive frames that have been or may be used to make sense ... more In this article, I identify four interpretive frames that have been or may be used to make sense of the high incidence of rape in contemporary postapartheid South Africa, namely, past perpetrator trauma, current socioeconomic exclusion, patriarchal politics, and ontological violence. This analysis aims to present each of these as a kind of story or narrative within which the phenomenon is framed, thus setting out a rough typology of rape interpretations. Each frame is then critically considered in terms of criteria such as its compatibility with the available statistics and known patterns of rape, its internal coherence, its inclusivity (accounting for the perspective of both perpetrators and victims), whether it does justice to the nature of rape, its probable effect on society, and in particular whether it furthers or obscures insight into a broader South African culture of complicity with rape. I conclude that the first two frames, the most prevalent discourses around rape, tend to adopt an uncritical perpetrator perspective, to “other” perpetrators, and ironically to privilege the perpetrator over the victim. Thus, they tend to play a powerful ideological role in society as a whole. The last two frames are more promising, but I show that the political interpretation of rape as instrumental violence needs supplementation through an understanding of rape as ontological violence.

Sexual Violence, Religion and Women’s Rights in Global Perspective

Religious Studies and Theology, Dec 20, 2017

This article cautions against spectacularizing the sexual violence that takes place in non-Wester... more This article cautions against spectacularizing the sexual violence that takes place in non-Western places, without proper contextualization. I suggest that the inertia in local African churches and communities against taking a stronger stand against the perpetrators of sexual violence, should be read against the global backdrop. This larger context contains, inter alia, western economic interests that contribute to destabilize African states, a globally dominant liberal legal order which in its turn also fails to address sexual violence, and African and western patriarchies that collude against women. Thus, if the influential African Christian Churches are to stand up against sexual violence against women, they face not only the likely resistance of church leadership and local patriarchies, but on a higher level also the resistance of international economic and patriarchal powers covertly in cahoots with local male elites.

Debating brain drain: Three objections that complicate the picture

South African Journal of Philosophy, Mar 3, 2017

In my contribution to this brain drain debate sparked by Brock and Blake's book, Debating Brain D... more In my contribution to this brain drain debate sparked by Brock and Blake's book, Debating Brain Drain, I respond only to Brock's position, and raise three objections which I suggest complicate the picture that she sketches. First, I take issue with the way in which she frames the moral question, namely by limiting her focus to what home countries may legitimately do to address the problems associated with the brain drain. I argue that the way in which she frames the question has important ideological consequences, because she does not adequately account for the larger context, in particular, by leaving out the moral obligations of the host countries who are the main beneficiaries of the brain drain. My second objection is rooted in the distinction between technical knowledge and practical knowledge found in the work of Habermas-an important distinction which gets obscured in Brock's analysis in precisely the kind of ideological ways that Habermas was concerned about. She namely attempts to solve what are mainly practical (political) problems through purely instrumental, technical means. Several distortions accompany this fundamental confusion. My third point of critique has to do with the problem that an ethics of care (an ethics of responsibility and obligation) encounters within a liberal paradigm strongly shaped by an ethics of rights. Drawing on the work of Kroeger-Mappes, I argue that Brock arbitrarily singles out a group of people and holds them to an ethics of care which is strictly supererogatory within her own liberal paradigm.

Reading International Rape Law from the South

Routledge eBooks, May 12, 2023

An African Feminist Approach to Forgiveness: Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela Considered

Springer eBooks, 2022

Towards a Slow Decolonisation of Sexual Violence

Philosophical journal of conflict and violence, May 1, 2019

This paper explores how we could approach the decolonising of the debate on sexual violence withi... more This paper explores how we could approach the decolonising of the debate on sexual violence within the South African post-colony. For this purpose, a historical event is analysed: two presbytery hearings of 1843 and 1845, both involving Xhosa convert John Beck Balfour, at the Scottish mission station of Burnshill based in Xhosaland (later called British Caffraria). The hearings involve (extra-)marital and sexual behaviour. Walter Mignolo's notions of border thinking and colonial difference, further complicated with the idea of colonial-sexual differentiation, are employed to show aspects of what is at stake in a decolonising reading of Xhosa convert sexual behaviour.

Debating Brain Drain: three objections that complicate the picture

In my contribution to this brain drain debate sparked by Brock and Blake's book, 'Debating Brain ... more In my contribution to this brain drain debate sparked by Brock and Blake's book, 'Debating Brain Drain' (2015), I respond only to Brock's position and raise three objections which I suggest complicate the picture that she sketches. First, I take issue with the way in which she frames the moral question, namely by limiting her focus to what home countries may legitimately do to address the problems associated with the brain drain. I argue that the way in which she frames the question, has important ideological consequences, because she does not adequately account for the larger context, in particular, by leaving out the moral obligations of the host countries who are the main beneficiaries of the brain drain. My second objection is rooted in the distinction between technical knowledge and practical knowledge found in the work of Habermas-an important distinction which gets obscured in Brock's analysis in precisely the kind of ideological ways that Habermas was concerned about. She namely attempts to solve what are mainly practical (political) problems through purely instrumental, technical means. Several distortions accompany this fundamental confusion. My third point of critique has to do with the problem that an ethics of care (an ethics of responsibility and obligation) encounters within a liberal paradigm strongly shaped by an ethics of rights. Drawing on the work of Kroeger-Mappes, I argue that Brock arbitrarily singles out a group of people and holds them to an ethics of care which is strictly supererogatory within her own liberal paradigm.

A CONVERSATION WITH ANNE PHILLIPS ON MULTICULTURALISM

by Louise du Toit and Stella Viljoen

“WHEN EVERYTHING STARTS TO FLOW”: NKRUMAH AND IRIGARAY IN SEARCH OF EMANCIPATORY ONTOLOGIES

A more explicit, comprehensive and sustained dialogue between the African philosophical and Weste... more A more explicit, comprehensive and sustained dialogue between the African philosophical and Western feminist traditions would yield insights at once rich and useful to both traditions, and beyond, e.g. to the African feminist tradition. Here, I place the work of Belgian philosopher Luce Irigaray in discussion with Ghanaian Kwame Nkrumah's conception of " consciencism ". What they most saliently share is an understanding of how the dichotomies central to traditional Western philosophy (mind-body and idealism-materialism) have been key in the structural exclusion and oppression of the " others " of this dominant tradition. Both are convinced that Western metaphysics serve ideological purposes and help to perpetuate relations of domination. Both struggle with the question of how to effectively resist this specific violence of the Western philosophical tradition without repeating its logic. Most importantly for the current analysis, in their search for sources for resistance and emancipation, Nkrumah and Irigaray do not remain with diagnoses; instead both assume or construct a fluid ontology outside or a beyond this dominant symbolic order.

Human rights discourse: friend or foe of African women's sexual freedoms?

From an overview of the current state of the global debate on human rights, the need to strike a ... more From an overview of the current state of the global debate on human rights, the need to strike a balance between the transcendent and immanent dimensions of such rights claims is distilled as an important guideline. The implications of such a balance are spelled out in a list of seven principles that should guide the activation of human rights claims in any context. In the second section of the article this general framework is brought to bear on the serious issue of sexual violence against women in the South African postcolony. I argue that at least one of the reasons for the fundamental un-freedom of women in contemporary South Africa is the clash between two dominant, but opposing frameworks that tend to quash the radical potential that a claim to the fundamental right to bodily integrity holds for women. Strategically, it is vitally important that human rights activism be used to bolster this cause in the South African context. This should, however, be done very consciously and explicitly with the various dangers for perversion and co-optation, as spelled out in this article, firmly in mind. Ideally, feminist thinkers and activists should forge solidarity around a critical, transcendent claim to bodily bolstered integrity as strongly as possible by indigenous traditions of women's resistance to oppression and exploitation. Such a claim should be mobilised for an internal critique of the master narrative of South African liberation. Such a stance will resist and refuse both dominant frameworks that collaborate – despite their overt mutual opposition – to portray African tradition and identity as irredeemably patriarchal.

Old wives' tales and philosophical delusions: on 'the problem of women and African philosophy'

This article represents a response to 'the problem of women and African phi-losophy', which refer... more This article represents a response to 'the problem of women and African phi-losophy', which refers mainly to the absence of strong women's and feminist voices within the discipline of African philosophy. I investigate the possibility that African women are not so much excluded from the institutionalized discipline of philosophy, as preferring fiction as a genre for intellectual expression. This hypothesis can be supported by some feminists who read the absolute prioritisation of abstraction and generalization over the concrete and the particular as a masculine and western oppressive strategy. Attention to the concrete and the unique which is made possible by literature more readily than by philosophy, could thus operate as a form of political resistance in certain contexts. If fiction is currently the preferred form of intellectual expression of African women, it is crucial that the community of professional philosophers in a context like South Africa should come to terms with the relevance of such a preference for philosophy's self-conception, and it should work to make these intellectual contributions philosophically fruitful. In the process, we may entertain the hope that philosophy itself will move closer to its root or source as 'love of wisdom'.

Liggaamlikheid en verantwoordelikheid binne die bio-etiek

Embodiment and responsibility in bio-ethics The main argument advanced in this article is that a ... more Embodiment and responsibility in bio-ethics The main argument advanced in this article is that a certain feminist phenomenological model of selfhood, subjectivity and agency is preferable over the classic liberal (Lockean Cartesian) model of the self understood as standing apart from its body and possessing rights in the body. The preference for the former model is illustrated and argued in the context of bio ethics. The former model " s advantages lies primarily in the fact that it can deal with humans as embodied beings, as sexually differentiated beings, as beings that change over time, as thoroughly intersubjective beings, and as beings always already immersed in (and in fact born from) unequal relations of power and symbolic constructs. INLEIDING In hierdie artikel word geargumenteer dat enkele feministiese en fenomenologiese (of feministies fenomenologiese) modelle van die self of subjek 'n belangrike korreksie aanbring op tradisionele en hoofstroom bio etiese sienings van die morele rol van die " pasiënt ". Dit gebeur deurdat hierdie modelle 'n vars beskrywing bied van wat op die spel is in die vryheid, outonomie en seggenskap oor die eie liggaam. Die voordele van die feministies fenomenologiese siening van die self binne die medies etiese konteks bo dié van tradisionele modelle, bestaan daarin dat die self van bio etiese diskoers gesien word as beliggaam, seksueel gedifferensieerd, veranderend oor tyd, en radikaal intersubjektief. Hierdie self is ook altyd alreeds ingebed in (en gebore uit) ongelyke magsverhoudinge en institusioneel beliggaamde simboliese ordes (meaningful universes). DIE PROBLEMATIESE AARD VAN TRADISIONELE BIO ETIESE MODELLE Vanuit feministiese en postmoderne kringe is al meermale gewys op die finale onhoudbaarheid van die stem en posisie van die tradisionele etikus wat objektiwiteit en neutraliteit pretendeer, veral na analogie van die Westers wetenskaplike model van afstandelikheid en belangeloosheid 1. Afgesien van die argument dat objektiwiteit uiteindelik nie haalbaar is nie, en dat die pretensie van objektiwiteit dus 'n veelvoud van subjektiewe belange en vooroordele ongemerk laat meespeel in enige moeilike of omstrede etiese beslissing, is daar ook nog die belangrike argument teen die afgetrokke of neutrale etiese arbiter wat daarop berus dat die sogenaamd objektiewe arbiter as 818 DEEL 45 NOMMERS 3 & 4 SEPTEMBER & DESEMBER 2004 1 As voorbeelde kan gekyk word na Rosi Braidotti se Nomadic Subjects, Susan Brison se Aftermath, en Cornell, Rosenfeld en Carlson se Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice.

Integrating care and justice in South African family law: Dealing with maternal and paternal vulnerabilities

Integrating care and justice in South African family law: Laying the theoretical foundation

With Miranda Alison, Pascale Bos et.al., "Meine Not ist nicht einzig" Sexuelle Gewalt in kriegerischen Konflikten. Ein Werkstattgespräch. In: Mittelweg 36, 18 (2009), 1, pp. 3-25 (published online in: Eurozine, 02. September 2009).

by Regina Mühlhäuser, Debra Bergoffen, Pascale Bos, and Louise du Toit

Mittelweg 36, 2009

Gaby Zipfel: Empirische Daten verweisen darauf, dass sowohl Formen als auch Häufigkeit sexueller ... more Gaby Zipfel: Empirische Daten verweisen darauf, dass sowohl Formen als auch Häufigkeit sexueller Gewalt an unterschiedlichen Kriegsschauplätzen stark variieren. In manchen Konflikten ist deren Ausübung weit verbreitet, in anderen tritt sie eher als Randerscheinung auf. Sie kann im Verlauf eines Konflikts zu-, aber auch abnehmen. In manchen Fällen scheint sexuelle Gewalt ein Einzelphänomen zu sein und nur in bestimmten Kampfsituationen aufzutauchen, in anderen geht sie mit einer Eskalation militärischer Gewalt einher, die üblicherweise mit der Triade Mord – Plünderung – Vergewaltigung beschrieben wird. Sexuelle Gewalt kann offenbar sowohl Teil einer militärischen Strategie als auch Folge einer zunehmenden Missachtung von Verhaltensregeln und disziplinarischen Vorgaben sein. Militärische Befehlshaber rechnen damit, dass Normen, die die Ausübung von Gewalt kontrollieren und begrenzen sollen, sich im Kampfgeschehen auflösen können. Strategische Überlegungen können darauf abzielen, sexuelle Gewalt als Mittel der Kriegführung einzusetzen, sofern dieser Einsatz geeignet ist, Kampfziele zu unterstützen. Zugleich können Verstöße gegen die militärische Disziplin mit harten Strafen belegt werden, wenn sie diesen Zielen zuwiderlaufen.

Ist das Vorkommen oder Ausbleiben sexueller Gewalt demnach fundamental abhängig von der Art der Kriegführung? Welche Genderkonstruktionen liegen dem Umgang mit sexueller Gewalt zugrunde? Lässt sich möglicherweise gar eine kulturübergreifende verdeckte Übereinkunft beobachten, der zufolge Männer sich grundsätzlich das Recht zugestehen, auf einen als weiblich identifizierten Körper zuzugreifen, und die dem Umgang mit sexueller Gewalt in kriegerischen Konflikten als Subtext unterlegt sind?

Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape: Affirming the Dignity of the Vulnerable Body: Review

Debra Bergoffen scrutinizes the February 22, 2001 groundbreaking verdict delivered by the Interna... more Debra Bergoffen scrutinizes the February 22, 2001 groundbreaking verdict delivered by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) from a feminist perspective and draws out some of the philosophical implications of this development in international law. The tribunal convicted three Bosnian-Serb soldiers for their involvement in the war rape of Muslim women and girls, finding them guilty of both war crimes and crimes against humanity (hereafter referred to as the Kunarac case). Illuminating from diverse angles the war rapes as well as the legal process, Bergoffen sees the verdict as indicative of a paradigm shift in human rights law. In line with established feminist arguments such as by Catharine MacKinnon and Ann Cahill (Cahill 2001; MacKinnon 2005), she argues that traditional human rights discourse hides an imaginary and idealized masculine body (intact and nonporous) as the most plausible subject of human rights underneath its gender-neutral facade. Such masculine bias underlying gender-neutral discourses often ensures that the most salient aspects of female embodiment are used to justify discriminatory treatment of women. Put differently, where embodied, materially lived differences between the sexes such as pregnancy are concerned, gender-neutral legal approaches tend to ?naturalize? these differences as prepolitical, to frame them as an exception to or deviance from the human norm, and thus use them to justify treating women as less than fully human. A good example of this problem, Bergoffen argues, is seen in the arguments for the defense in the Kunarac case where it was proposed that war rape be measured against the apparently gender-neutral standard of torture in order to decide whether rape qualifies as a human rights violation (23). In agreeing with the defense that rape is not torture, in the crucial respect that rape need not entail physical wounding, the court granted the defense their point only, however, to radically challenge the deeper assumptions upon which their argument rested, notably that human dignity is violated only when body borders are forcibly breached. By attending carefully to the testimonies of the war rape victims, the court implicitly asserted the need to reimagine the material form of the subject of human rights. The idea that the body?s dignity is violated only when its integrity (its borders) is violated through violent and painful wounding is rooted in an imagined masculine body whose default condition is to be invulnerable and capable of actively resisting an attack; this supposed closedness, moreover, constitutes an important aspect of its dignity. Under this imagined paradigm, the body?s dignity is violated only once the normally invulnerable, impenetrable fortress of the body?s defenses is breached, and when it is thereby exposed as (shamefully) weak and vulnerable (literally woundable). Under the sway of images such as these, when women?s bodies are understood as already humiliatingly open and therefore vulnerable to the world, when women?s sexuality is coded as ontologically shameful, to sexually penetrate the hole, the female ?wound,? cannot constitute a breach in her defenses, since no new wound is inflicted, and she has not actively resisted. Bergoffen reads the verdict as a radical shift in that, by affirming the dignity of women?s bodies coded as sexually vulnerable in specific ways, it rewrites the subject of dignity and of human rights as the always already passively exposed, vulnerable body, rather than the invulnerable, active, and impenetrable body (44?45).