Between Femininity and Feminism: Colonial and Postcolonial Perspectives on Care - Hardcover

Although the feminist debate on the ethics of care has demonstrated that philosophical concepts are gender-laden, the relation of care to justice and autonomy is not self-explanatory. Moreover, given its Western context, the normative relevance of the care debate to non-Western feminisms remains problematic. This book addresses this debate and investigates the extent to which notions of justice and autonomy can be reformulated without Eurocentrism from the perspective of care. In this endeavour, this book maps the shifts in feminist approaches to care form the colonial to the post-colonial periods, taking both inter-disciplinarity and inter-sectionality into account. The book also argues that the feminist debate on care has contributed towards making philosophy's boundaries with culture and social science more porous.

Kanchana Mahadevan is Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Mumbai. Her teaching and research interests in philosophy include ethics, hermeneutics, critical theory, gender studies and political theory. She has published various papers in journals and anthologies on these themes.