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In this article I explore the use of the term vulnerability in the work of two leading feminist theorists, Adriana Cavarero and Judith Butler. Approaching their work with the 'politics of philosophy' method I show how Cavarero's and Butler's usage of the term vulnerability in relation to other terms in their texts testifies for differences in their relation to the academic tradition of philosophy. I argue that Cavarero's usage of the term shows that she engages with the basic questions of the phenomenological-existential tradition of Husserl and Heidegger through the notion of the human, while arguing for the view of singular human existent as vulnerable and relational. In contrast, Butler's usage of the term vulnerability expresses distancing from the basic questions of the same tradition of the abstracted and transcendentalized human. Instead, Butler's systematic connecting of vulnerability to social norms and infrastructures which are contingent and historically changing points towards the antifoundational challenge that she presents in relation to this particular tradition of philosophy.

The article analyses Judith Butler's Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015), arguing that the volume can be read as presenting Butler's politics of philosophy with respect to Hannah Arendt and Adriana Cavarero, and the existentialist philosophy of the human that they represent. The first part of the article introduces the approach of the "politics of philosophy," and the rest of the article scrutinizes Butler's use of two concepts, "appearing" and "plurality," in the book, presenting how they shift into different meanings in Butler's text in comparison to their charged philosophical meaning in Arendt and Cavarero. The article argues that Butler engages in "discharging" of these concepts of their existentialist philosophical charge, and that this gives evidence of her different philosophical choice. Instead of asking the existential philosophical question "what is a human being" in the omnitemporal philosophical tradition, Butler's different philosophical starting point is in changing sociality, and she engages the tradition of philosophy in interventions in the here and now, asking "who counts as the human".

In this article on Elizabeth Grosz's philosophy and its implications for discussions about feminist theory, I first suggest that Charles Darwin plays a particular role in Grosz's recent ontological thought. This role is to provide help in joining together two incompatible sources in her work: Gilles Deleuze's monistic ontology of a constant flow of new differentiations, on the one hand, and Luce Irigaray's thought of sexual difference as the primary ontological difference, on the other. I argue that Grosz's intellectual project has developed into a grand general theory of change in which both Darwin and Irigaray are turned into ontologists in a Deleuzian vein. I then point out that Grosz's ontology also includes a political aspect, which manifests in the fact that Grosz redescribes Darwin through interpreting him primarily as a theorist of "event" and the unexpected. However, through an analysis of the discussion on Grosz between Luciana Parisi and Jami Weinstein, I speculate whether Grosz's ambition to provide a total and complete explanation of change encourages the tone of feminist discussion toward one of explanation rather than intervention.

This essay concerns the contingent and pluralized history of feminist institutions in academia, arguing against two commonly misconstrued oppositions: first, that between the feminist movement and feminist academic institutions; and second, that between the feminist focus on gender (and women) and on sexuality (and minorities). Feminist institutions, the essay contends, are inseparably both academic and activist. Referring to Jean-François Lyotard's notion of the différend, the essay posits that these institutions primarily intervene by finding expressions for wrongs that are hard to express in dominant language. Gender equality and sexuality/gender minority issues belong together institutionally because they are strongly implicated in one another: gender hierarchies are ultimately achieved by asserting and enforcing the necessity of gender and through what is here called "the terror of gendering": when the threat to life replaces the plurality of compulsions of various gendered norms.

Die Autorin zeigt am Beispiel des Identitätsbegriffs, wie weit der Bogen der Rezeptionsmöglichkeiten von Hannah Arendts Schriften gespannt werden kann. In der Auseinandersetzung mit verschiedenen feministischen Lesarten von Arendts Denken verdeutlicht sie, dass Arendts aufgeworfene Fragen sowohl modern als auch postmodern gelesen werden. Die verschiedenen Rezeptionsweisen stehen in enger Beziehung zur persönlichen, geschlechtlichen und nationalen Identität und zeigen, wie komplex und vielschichtig diese Identitätsfragen in Arendts Denken angelegt sind. Die Autorin geht von der These aus, dass sich in all diesen Bereichen ein an Ursprüngen orientiertes Interesse von einem performativen, auf unzählbare Wiederholungen hin orientierten Verständnis unterscheidet. Es stellt sich daher die Frage, wie weit sich das Denken Hannah Arendts jeweils in diese beiden Richtungen orientiert und inwieweit ihre behandelten Fragen der Identität tatsächlich in die postmoderne Richtung weisen, die verschiedene Identitäten als Produkte von sich wiederholenden Tätigkeiten ohne Grund, Anfang, Kern und Ursprung betrachtet. (ICI2)