Description
Book SynopsisIn Nancy Bauer’s view, most feminist philosophers are content to work within theoretical frameworks that are false to human beings’ everyday experiences. Here she models a new way to write about pornography, women’s self-objectification, hook-up culture, and other contemporary phenomena, and in doing so she raises basic questions about philosophy.
Trade ReviewNancy Bauer’s book is a bold and original intervention in the discussion of [the] questions in recent feminist philosophy, and a refreshingly frank one. Philosophers writing on pornography have been known to err on the side of primness. No such charges could be laid against Bauer, whose book opens with a forthright discussion of
Tying Up Rebecca, the film described in prurient detail in the U.S. Attorney General’s scolding 1986 report on pornography (known as the Meese Report). Bauer draws inspiration from J. L. Austin—her title is a riff on Austin’s famous
How To Do Things with Words—in urging us not to miss the phenomena in our eagerness to theorize about them… Bauer’s book is eye-opening. -- Kate Manne * Times Literary Supplement *
It is a stunning achievement…a brilliant and immensely productive commentary on contemporary philosophy as well as on contemporary feminist/gender theory more particularly. -- Alice Crary, The New School
This is not only a strong book on the topic of pornography and the objectification of women in society today, but a fundamental contribution to our understanding of what, in our time, philosophy can achieve—and it is a contribution I think we profoundly need. -- Simon Glendinning, Professor of European Philosophy, London School of Economics and Political Science
