Throwing a ball like a girl: On the female body experience

On Female Body Experience: Throwing Like a Girl and other Essays

Dancing lightly between academic discourse and autobiographical narrative
The final work of Alice Young, the most important feminist political philosopher of the 20th century


Throwing a Ball Like a Girl is a collection of Yang's essays on various aspects of women's bodily experience in modern Western society. Drawing on the ideas of several 20th-century European philosophers, including Simone de Beauvoir, Heidegger, Ishigahe, Kristeva, and Meroponti, Yang constructs a rigorous analytical framework for the interpretation of embodied subjectivity. These essays offer both empirical theoretical descriptions and normative critiques of the unjust limitations on freedom and opportunity that women still face today.

The book begins with Yang's rethinking of the concept of "gender" in feminist theory. In subsequent essays, Yang discusses various experiences related to women/femininity, including privacy, home, and space. She also addresses topics rarely mentioned even in feminist theory, such as the experience of breasts and the role of menstruation in women's life stories. She also describes the phenomenology of the pregnant body and the tactile pleasures of clothing.

Blending the rigorous cool of scholarship with the moving earnestness of autobiographical narrative, Throwing the Ball Like a Girl charts the personal trajectory of this exceptional thinker.


Recommendations from all parties (sorted by surname strokes)

"In my opinion, Yang is one of the most important political philosophers of the past 25 years. In the field of feminism and left-wing political thought, no one can surpass her."
—Cass Sunstein, Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Chicago

"Yang's depictions of women's bodily experiences are undoubtedly educational, but they also have a polemical and political dimension. She seeks to reinterpret certain experiences as positive, counteracting the suppression of women and femininity she observes in current and past social practices."
—Jenna Silber Storey, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Furman University

"This book combines the rigor of academic discussion with a review of personal upbringing and a narrative of personal experience, creating a balance of intellectual and emotional depth."
—Lin Fangmei, Professor of Taiwanese Language and Literature, National Taiwan Normal University

"Readers can see their own physical experiences in the book, whether positive or negative, pleasurable or disgusting, which most people rarely talk about for reasons of social etiquette or political correctness."
—Mei-hua Chen, Professor of Sociology, National Sun Yat-sen University

"Yang systematically utilizes Melloponti's body phenomenology, providing feminism with a more systematic body discourse. It also addresses the 'gender blindness' of previous phenomenological research, opening up the possibility of communication between these two research fields."
—Liu Yalan, Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Information, Aletheia University

"In contrast to the grand and authoritative philosophical tropes of older brothers and fathers, this personal meditation, carrying the promise of feminist liberation, uses a language very close to women's experience, calling on readers to think with their bodies."
—Sun Ruisui, PhD candidate in Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles

2023-02-11

商周出版

352

9786263185715