Lisa Downing (University of Birmingham)
Feminist Philosophy and the Politics of Selfishness
In this talk I examine the place occupied by the freighted concepts of “selfishness” and
“selflessness" in the history of feminist thought and politics. After first outlining the feminist
critique of the Kantian self and the homo economicus as masculinist constructions (Simone
de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, Patricia Hill Collins), I move on in the main part of the talk to focus
on two second-wave texts: Shulamith Firestone’s manifesto for feminist revolution, The
Dialectic of Sex (1970), and Carol Gilligan’s psychological study of the ways in which men
and women appear to conceive differently of ethical dilemmas, In A Different Voice (1982).
Both texts highlight a key tension: women report feeling "self-less” (or "deprived of Self”, in
Firestone’s words), while simultaneously experiencing a disproportionate fear of being
considered selfish. The talk concludes by revisiting this issue in the context of our
contemporary moment, which has been defined as "the age of selfishness" or "me culture”. I
briefly examine recent iterations of muscular, self-interested “feminism", such as Sheryl
Sandberg’s agenda of "lean-in”, and the response to such neoliberal, individualist discourses
by Lacanian analyst Paul Verhaeghe which risks calling for the reestablishment of reactionary
hierarchies (of gender, class and race) and the strengthening of the nuclear family in the name
of connected community. In sum, I conjecture that a new conceptualization of female
self(ishness), that harks back to the passion and radical agenda of the second wave, and that
incorporates the ideas of feminisms of colour, may be needed to address properly feminist
ends as an antidote both to so-called post-feminist, neoliberal individualism and to the
pernicious nostalgia of agendas such as Verhaeghe’s.

Lisa Downing is Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality at the University of Birmingham,
UK. She is the author of numerous books, articles, and chapters on sexuality and gender
studies, film, and critical theory. Authored books include: The Cambridge Introduction to
Michel Foucault (Cambridge University Press, 2008), Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters
(co-authored with Libby Saxton, Routledge, 2010), The Subject of Murder: Gender,
Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer (University of Chicago Press, 2013), and Fuckology:
Critical Essays on John Money’s Diagnostic Concepts (co-authored with Iain Morland and
Nikki Sullivan, University of Chicago Press, 2015). She is currently editing a volume entitled
After Foucault for Cambridge University Press, and writing a monograph on gender and
selfishness, from which the Lecture at Brighton is taken.