Heidegger, Dasein, and Gender: Thinking the Unthought

Heidegger, Dasein, and Gender takes Heidegger to task on gender by assessing his views on women as thinkers and exploring what his work offers to contemporary LGBTQ+ and women’s studies. Scholars come together whose Heidegger research engages bioethics, pregnancy, motherhood and maternal Dasein; whether Dasein can be gender neutral or non-binary, and what it means when ’neutrality’ and gender are defined by patriarchy rather than the spectrum of lived genders; the question of human capacity for transcendence in the immanence of flesh; and the possibility of re-imaging Dasein as gendered, i.e., born into embodiment and bound to memory, and the capacity to create new futures by transitioning the present as it slips into history. Authors ask who and what, including animals, can be Dasein and bring Heidegger to issues of sexual abuse and violence, men’s experience when thrust into women’s daily (and not so daily) routine, and the intersection of queerness and death. The book aims not to provide final answers, but to open possibilities for further thinking with, on, against, through and because of Heidegger.

Tricia Glazebrook is professor in the School of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs and affiliate professor in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at Washington State University.

Susanne Claxton is instructor of philosophy at Southern New Hampshire University and Santa Fe Community College.