Table of Contents

Introduction Part 1: The Normative Significance of Vulnerability 1. Responsibility for the Vulnerable 2. Thinking Vulnerability with Judith Butler Part 2: Avoidance and Disavowal 3. The Ideal of an Invulnerability 4. Risk and Control: The Formation of Entrepreneurial Subjectivity Part 3: Rethinking Vulnerability 5. Vulnerability Beyond Opposition 6. Vulnerability in Social Life: Sexuality and Pornography Conclusion

About the Author

Erinn C. Gilson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Florida, USA. Her research focuses on ethics and social thought from a feminist perspective and informed by contemporary European philosophy. She is currently exploring issues surrounding food ethics and the question of the significance of ethical failure.

Reviews

"In this finely crafted analysis of vulnerability, Gilson integrates insights from philosophers such as Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze with the feminist analyses of Margaret Walker, Judith Butler, and Hélène Cixous to present a radical reinterpretation of the concept. Gilson's analysis displaces the many constricting dichotomies associated with the concept of vulnerability, such as weakness/strength, passivity/activity, dependence/independence, and femininity/masculinity. This revised account opens up possibilities of ethical response and social critique hitherto obscured. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals/practitioners."--S. A. Mason, CHOICE