Discourses often uncover underlying social boundaries related to concepts such as ethnicity, gender and religion. By applying an intersectional approach, this article shows how the gendering of ethno-religious boundaries is central in the narratives of parents of Belgian, Italian and Moroccan origin, living in Flanders, Belgium. These processes are extremely salient when discourses on partner choice are discussed, as is the focal point in the current study. The construction of boundaries and identities are deeply influenced by dominant social representations. The (...) results show how the construction and justification of boundaries can also have restrictive consequences for individuals. Parents want to restrict daughters for their own good, and exogamy seems to be the prerogative of sons. (shrink)

이 글은 다문화주의에 기초하여 여성 이해의 새로운 지평을 마련하 기 위해 서양인이 동양을 어떻게 바라보는가를 헤겔의 중국관 내지 여성관을 통해 접근하고자 한다. 헤겔은 역사 철학, 철학사, 예술 철학의 서두를 동양에서 출발하지만, 동양에는 주체성과 자유가 결핍되어 있다는 이유에서 출발점 내지 실마리의 위치에서 동양을 배제한다. 헤겔은 중국의 공자 철학에 대한 감탄에도 불구하고 공자 사상을 철학으로 간주하지 않는다. 헤겔에게 동양 철학은 근대 철학의 토대가 되지 못하며, 동양과 서양 근대 간에는 어떤 공통적인 본질적 원리도 없다. 중국은 역사의 시작이지만 몰 역사적이라서 세계사의 실마리가 될 수 (...) 없다. 중국은 역사 철학과 철학사와 예술 철학 모두에서 기본적으로 보편적 양식을 지니고는 있지만 개인의 주체성, 자유, 자기의식이 상실된 망아상태이기 때문에 보편성보다는 종교적 표상 양식에 가까운 것으로 격하된다. 헤겔은 동양인, 중국인이 기본적으로 자기의식이 없으며, 자기의식의 결핍은 가부장제 문화와 연결된다고 본다. 가부장제는 중국에서 가족 정신으로 이어지며, 가족의 기본 정신은 사랑이다. 이때 사랑은 개성과 인격이 방기되는 것이다. 인격의 방기는 가족 안에서만 그치지 않는다. 황제 개인이 전권을 행사하면서 드러내는 가부장제적 족장의 모습은 종교적 사제 역할까지 담당하는 신정 정치의 모습을 담고 있다. 헤겔은 가부장제 가족 문화에서 가족을 이끄는 정신은 가족의 경건심, 신적 법이며, 이러한 신적 법의 대표자는 여성이라고 한다. 그러나 여성은 자기의식이 없는 존재라서 가족의 정신도 가부장제도 자기의식이 없다. 그러므로 가부장제 문화 속의 동양 남성은 자기의식이 없으며 역사의, 철학의 실마리도 될 수 없는 존재이다. 게다가 헤겔은 동양 여성에 대해서는 그다지 언급하지 않으며, 심지어 동양 남성의 망아상태에서조차 관심 대상으로 부각시키지 않는다. 헤겔은 (근대) 서양 남성과 서양 여성을 비교할 때는 남성의 자기의식적 측면을 부각시키고, 그에 반해 여성은 자기의식이 없다고 강조하지만, 자기의식이 없는 서양 여성조차도 헤겔 저작 곳곳에서 자기의식에 대한 암묵적 자각과 자기의식적 분열을 시사하는 측면을 지니고 있다. 그러나 헤겔이 동양관, 중국관을 거론할 때 동양 남성은 서양 근대 여성이 지닌 분열 의식조차도 지니고 있지 않기 때문에, 동양 여성, 한국 여성은 헤겔의 논의 지평에서는 존재하지 않는 비존재적 존재들이다. 헤겔의 동양관, 동양 여성관은 알게 모르게 동양의 신비 내지 동양 여성의 신비라는 단어 속에 은폐되어 있다. 헤겔의 동양 이해, 여성 이해를 다문화주의적 차원에서 새롭게 여성을 이해하는 대척점으로 반전시키려면, 서양의 나르시스적 동양관을 극복해야 한다. 동시에 서양의 나르시스적 동양관의 영향을 받아 이미 그에 물들어 있는 우리들은 그 속에서 새로운 지평을 마련하기 위해 노력해야 한다. (shrink)

The works of Mary Wollstonecraft ranged from the early Thoughts on the Education of Daughters to The Female Reader, a selection of texts for girls, and included two novels. But her reputation is founded on A Vindication of the Rights of Woman of 1792. This treatise is the first great document of feminism—and is now accepted as a core text in western tradition. It is not widely known that the germ of Wollstonecraft's great work came out of an earlier (...) and much shorter vindication—A Vindication of the Rights of Men , written in the context of the issues raised by the French Revolution. This edition, which follows the model of other Broadview Editions in including a range of materials that help the reader to see the work in the context of its era out of which it emerged, is arranged chronologically, opening with Wollstonecraft's "other vindication." It also includes a wide range of other documents in appendices, as well as a comprehensive and authoritative introduction, chronology, and full index. (shrink)

This essay looks at Edith Stein’s descriptions of the fundamental equality, yet distinct differences between women and men, and attempts to make clear the ontology underlying her claims. Stein’s position—although drawing from the general Aristotelian-Thomistic position—differs from Thomas Aquinas’s, and she understands gender as tied significantly to our form or soul. The particular way in which gender is “written into” our soul, however, differs from the way in which both our humanity and individuality are tied to our soul. Thus, Stein (...) wants to account for gender in a way that does not attribute it primarily to biology, nor does she understand gender as merely socially-constructed. Rather, gender is a significant part of our soul, yet not in such a way that either our common humanity orour distinct individuality are compromised. (shrink)

The Asian American identity is intimately associated with upward class mobility as the model minority, yet women's earnings remain less than men's, and Asian American women are perceived to have strong family ties binding them to domestic responsibilities. As such, the exact class status of Asian American women is unclear. The immediate association of this ethnic identity with a specific class as demonstrated by the recently released Pew study that Asian Americans are “the highest-income, best-educated” ethnicity contrasts with another study (...) that finds Asian American women have the highest suicide rates in the United States. To understand these contrasting statistics, this article explores Asian American women's sense of authenticity. If the individual's sense of authenticity is intimately related with one's group identity, the association of the Asian American identity with a particular class ambivalently ensnares her as dichotomously inauthentic—as both the poor Asian American woman who fails to achieve economic upward mobility and the model minority Asian American woman who engages in assimilation practices. Feminist philosophers understand that identities change, but exactly how these transformations occur remains a mystery. The article ends with three speculations on the difficulties for practicing and recognizing individual acts that transform one's group identity. (shrink)

Patricia Williams in her book, The Alchemy of Race and Rights, describes being denied entrance in the middle of the afternoon by a “saleschild.” Utilizing the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, this article explores their interaction phenomenologically. This small interaction of seemingly simple misunderstanding represents a limit condition in Merleau-Ponty’s analysis. His phenomenological framework does not explain the chasm between the “saleschild” and Williams, that in a sense they do not participate in the same world. This interaction between the “saleschild” and (...) Williams represents a moment when the two contest exactly what is reason in our society. To the extent that society discerns one’s actions as reasonable and the other’s actions as unreasonable, our society participates in determining that which constitutes reason. Williams’s work speaks precisely to this chasm as evident in her text’s subtitle, Memoirs of a Mad Woman. This decision relegates one subject to “judiciousness” and relegates the other to “madness.”. (shrink)

The separation of men’s and women’s competitions in the sporting world has been suggested as a necessary protection for female athletes against the superior athletic performances of male athletes. The comparison of the most elite performers in these two categories maintains the historical pattern of viewing male sport and the male athlete as the standard, and female sport and the female athlete as the inferior ‘other’. This paper argues for a transformative utilization of the separation of men’s and women’s sports (...) by female athletes and sporting organizations. Female sporting organizations may creatively change the rules and practices of the malestandard, so as to challenge the historical patterning of sport. This paper will use the image of the cyborg, and the motivation behind cyborg politics, to call for creativity in dealing with the ban on drugs in sport. (shrink)

In a single aphorism in The Gay Science, Nietzsche arrays “The Problem of the Artist” in a reticulated constellation. Addressing every member of the excluded grouping of disenfranchised “others,” Nietzsche turns to the destitution of a god of love keyed to the selfturning absorption of the human heart. His ultimate and irrecusably tragic project to restore the innocence of becoming requires the affirmation of the problem of suffering as the task of learning how to love. Nietzsche sees the eros of (...) art as what can teach us how to make things beautiful, desirable, lovable in the routine truth of reality: “When they are not.” The stumbling block for those of us paralyzed by impotence and frozen in a technological age of anxiety, longing for being not becoming (eternal youth), is that one can never possess but can only win great health, again and again (like erotic desire), because one gives it away again and again as sacrifice or affirmation without reserve: that is to say, with erotic artistry. (shrink)

Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009) has often been described as a ‘gothic’, if not straightforwardly ‘horror’ movie. While this claim could easily be challenged with regard to strict genre definitions, it is doubtless the case that the film deals very explicitly with fear, first and foremost the female protagonist’s fear of herself, which is placed at the top of the so-called ‘pyramid of fear’ drawn by her therapist/wanna-be-Saviour partner. My opinion is that Antichrist perfectly displays the horrific effects of the (...) direct embodiment, following a true love encounter, of the symbolic positions which Lacan associated with male and female sexuation. If human sexuality relies on the logic for which there is only one mythical man who is truly whole while every real woman is not wholly whole, what happens when He and She (the nameless protagonists of the movie) fully identify with such irreducible asymmetry between the sexes, its fundamental derailment from nature? They short-circuit the material singularity of a specific human animal with the abstract universality of gender. With the same move, they cannot overcome (or sublimate) the realisation that, in the female protagonist’s own words, woman is ‘evil’ – as long as she feels guilty of what man accuses her – and man is a ‘bastard’ – haunted by the phantasm of unifying purity which woman disrupts. Gynocide as male totalizing extermination of universal difference and genital self-mutilation as female reflexive hatred for the supposedly exceptional man mark the sadomasochistic extremes of the scene of the not-two, the frightening ob-scenity ( o-skené ), or off-representation, of human sexuality. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the idea ‘becoming-woman’ is an attempt to transform embodied experience but, because it is unable to concern itself with mechanisms, structures and processes of sexual differentiation, fails in this task. In the first section I elaborate the relationship between becoming-woman and Deleuze's ‘superior’ or ‘transcendental’ empiricism and suggest that problems can be traced back to an underlying Humean empiricism. Along with Hume, Deleuze, it seems, presumes a bundle model of the object which (...) dissolves things into episodic objects of perception and leaves the subject unable to distinguish between fanciful objects, erroneous perception and any other thing. The empiricist ontology thus has consequences for epistemology and leaves us unable to question the conservative tendencies of common sense. As an alternative to transcendental empiricism, the second section considers how transcendental realism, with its ontological commitment to the mind-independent character of things, may provide a more fruitful and productive line of enquiry. Given that there is such a choice, in the third section I speculate as to the specific desires that drive such philosophical abstraction; abstraction which culminates in the non sex-specific figure becoming-woman whilst disguising the mind-independent character of the mechanisms, structures and objects that affect the subject. So I conclude that, despite all appearances of radicalism, the philosophical model ‘becoming-woman’ – aligned as it is with schizo-processes and the philosophical loss of mind-independent things – is more of the same and sexual difference remains a hidden term. Due to this, I believe that feminists should view it with suspicion. (shrink)

이 글은 한국 사회에서 최근에 폭발적 인기를 끈 마이클 샌델의 『정의란 무엇인가』에 들어있는 독특한 관점을 파악하여 분배 정의 이후의 재분배를 정당화하는데 활용할 여지가 있는지를, 그리고 그러한 정당화가 여성주의 전망과 대안을 제시하는 논거가 될 수 있는지를 찾는 데 목표를 둔다. 샌델은 아리스토텔레스 덕 이론에 근간을 두는 ‘공공선’ 실현을 정의의 궁극 목표로 삼는다. 공공선을 실현하려면, 공리주의나 자유주의가 국가 중립성과 자아 중립성에 기초하는 자율 논리를 견지하면서 ‘자율 논리에 따라 분배 정의를 주장하는 것’ 및 ‘재분배를 거부하는 것’을 잠재울 수 있는 논리가 필요하다. 이를 위해 (...) 샌델은 칸트와 롤스의 이론을 분석하면서, 자유 계약이 계약의 공정성을 보장하는 것은 아니라는 점과, 능력 계발 기회가 우연적이어서 능력도 도덕적 임의성을 지닌다는 점을 부각시킨다. 자유 계약의 허점과 도덕적 임의성은 부당한 계약을 무효화할 가능성뿐만 아니라, 재분배를 정당화할 가능성을 만드는 근거가 된다. 동일한 논리를 여성 문제에 적용하면, 남성 중심적 국가에서 여성에게 분배 정의가 실현되지 않은 것도 계약 출발점에서의 기회 부등성과 도덕적 임의성 때문이라는 차원에서 비판할 수 있다. 샌델은 여성주의자도 아니고, 여성주의를 의식하여 논의를 펼친 것도 아니다. 그러나 여성주의 입장에서 가부장제국가나 자본주의적 가부장제국가가 만들어낸 ‘남성 편향적 계약 구조’와 ‘능력 계발 기회의 부등성’을 지적할 여지를 창출하기 때문에, 그 여지를 굴절된 남성 편향적 국가를 비판하는 데 활용할 수 있다. 중립적 국가와 중립적 자아에 기초하는 자율 논리를 비판하는 샌델은 도덕적 가치와 종교적 가치가 투영된 국가에서 활동하는 자아로서 ‘부담을 감수하는 자아’를 제시한다. ‘부담을 감수하는 자아’는 공공선 실현을 위해 도입되지만, 그 자아를 여성주의에 적용하면 그동안 여성을 억압했던 가부장제 남성 자아가 여성에게 부담을 느끼고 책임을 감수하는 자아로 발전시킬 수 있다. (shrink)

In ____Womanizing Nietzsche,__ Kelly Oliver uses an analysis of the position of woman in Nietzsche's texts to open onto the larger question of philosophy's relation to the feminine and the maternal. Offering readings from Nietzsche, Derrida, Irigaray, Kristeva, Freud and Lacan, Oliver builds an innovative foundation for an ontology of intersubjective relationships that suggests a new approach to ethics.

The woman who anoints Jesus is unique within Mark’s Gospel, since her action is to be remembered wherever the Gospel is proclaimed. She is portrayed as a prophetic figure because her act of anointing points to Jesus’ kingship, which is revealed at the time of his death. Her critics condemn her gift as wasteful, arguing that the perfume should have been sold and the money given to the poor. The Greek term ap ōa leia, however, may be translated as (...) ‘waste’ or ‘loss’. In the literary context of Mark’s Gospel the ‘waste’ of the perfume corresponds to the ‘loss’ of Jesus’ life, since it recalls the teaching of Jesus on discipleship in which the use of the cognate verb apollumi is used to show that only those willing to lose life will save life. The woman’s action of breaking the jar and pouring out the perfume foreshadows the Last Supper in which Jesus identifies the bread with his body, and refers to the cup of wine as his blood which is poured out for many. Her prophetic action aligns her with Jesus’ suffering and death, and her extravagance affirms the preciousness of life in the midst of death. The woman’s gift encapsulates the message of the Gospel because it foreshadows the new creation that comes about through Jesus’ death. (shrink)

Premised by Vuyani Vellem’s deep-seated understanding of spirituality and the cross expressed in ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’, the paper explores the paradox of learning to die in order to live, which is a dominant message of the Gospel. The cross that symbolises humiliation, oppression and death, is also the cross that symbolises liberation, life and resurrection. The liberative power of the cross concealed in the establishment/dungeons of oppression (...) and bigotries of racism and sexism, can be located in the institution of the church that has become an establishment that Christ stood against. The paper thus looks at the cross, that is, spirituality in juxtaposition to racism, patriarchy and the establishment/dungeons, and posits that one cannot begin to embrace the cross unless one is also conscious of the darker side of the cross. Excavating spirituality and the cross from the establishment is a statement of critique of ideological frames that have shaped the liberation story or narrative that is indisputably racist and patriarchal. To follow Christ is to embrace a spirituality epitomised and exemplified in struggles against the bigotry of racism and patriarchy, and it is to embrace a spirituality that enables one to learn to die in order to live.Contribution: This paper on womanism, land and the cross that attempts to deal with paradoxes, at epistemological, cultural and metaphysical levels, engages the work of the late Prof Vuyani Vellem whose life and scholarship was embedded in paradoxes in the quest for the liberation of black humanity. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the golden era and proposes an exercise of creativity whereby we imagine Diana, the Amazon, becoming Wonder Woman in order to overthrow Man's World. Through Wonder Woman's story, we can build a feminist epic that depicts women who fight patriarchy. In the novel Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary, Wittig and Zeig describe the Amazons as the warriors thanks to whom we have been able to enter the Golden Age, an age without patriarchy or (...) sex differences. Diana, by becoming Wonder Woman and by fighting against heteropatriarchal injustice, leads the war toward the destruction of this dualistic division. The connection between Amazons and Guerrilleres, between two generations of fighters against patriarchy, aims to inspire our sorority and union in this fight against heteronormative, oppressive structures that affect us all, especially women and other subjects with alternative sexual and gender identities. (shrink)

Woman and Authority in Ian McEwan's "Conversation with a Cupboard Man" and Its Film Adaptation The paper analyzes Ian McEwan's short story "Conversation with a Cup-board Man" and its film adaptation made in Poland by director Mariusz Grzegorzek in 1993. In many works McEwan shows women in more positive light than men. This short story, however, deals with a mother's total domination of her son's life. The text is in the form of first-person narration of the son but it (...) is the figure of the mother that is of utmost importance.The protagonist describes his life from his childhood. His mother wanted him to remain a baby as long as possible, depriving him of free will and leaving him totally dependent on her. Her attitude changed when she found a partner. The protagonist, now seventeen, had rapidly to grow up from a baby into an adult. Childhood and total passivity remain for him ideals to be pursued, and a cramped cupboard becomes his favourite environment. The influence of his upbringing remains with him for ever. After analyzing the short story the paper explores parallels to other works by McEwan and other writers. The importance of the use of the indeterminate article in the title is discussed. Attention is given to the issue of defamiliarization. And the ambivalent attitude of the protagonist towards his mother is examined.The second part of the paper deals with the film adaptation. Grzegorzek has imaginatively developed the short story into a full-blown feature film. It preserves most of the important elements of the short story, at the same time providing new material largely in keeping with the original's tone. The director not only extrapolates, inventing new scenes to fill in the short story's unspoken gaps but also skilfully changes the narrator's comments into scenes, and this is not purely a change from telling into showing. The paper discusses the imagery of the movie, especially Oedipal motifs, references to Christ, and the impression of blood-red lips. It stresses the stronger role of the teacher from the home and his influence on the only independent action of the protagonist—the revenge on Pus-face. It is also important that the film omits any verbal expression of the protagonist's hatred towards his mother. (shrink)

The history of the Wonder Woman comic book character is full of events and personalities as dramatic as the tales detailed in the text. The origins and development of this iconic female superhero demonstrate how competing ideas of what womanhood meant were reflected in popular culture. In this essay, the focus is on a particular issue of the Wonder Woman comic book, with a story by writer and literary critic Samuel R. Delany in 1972. In this issue Wonder (...) Woman takes on the role of a women’s liberation activist in New York City. This chapter in Wonder Woman’s history is either unknown or dismissed as misguided by many fans past and present, but it provides an interesting insight into how American comic books responded to second-wave feminism and Gloria Steinem’s appropriation of the Wonder Woman image. (shrink)

The woman who decided to die -- Like leaving a note -- The agents -- Unsuitable -- Nothing personal -- "He's had enough" -- Not more equal -- The last thing you can do for him -- The boy who was addicted to pain -- It seemed like a good idea.

Drawing on previous work, I argue that a family resemblance account of the concept woman has several beneficial consequences. Namely, it promotes hermeneutical justice, and, in time, it may serve to change the prototypes and stereotypes people tend unreflectively to associate with woman. I claim that only at that point will full hermeneutical justice be achieved. To this end, I propose a reconceptualization of the notion of hermeneutical injustice, first presented by Fricker (2007). First, I present the family (...) resemblance account of woman. Accordingly, that concept isn’t identified by a set of necessary and (jointly) sufficient conditions, but, roughly, by different criteria. Second, I show how concepts, prototypes and stereotypes relate to one another and how they may contribute to hermeneutical injustice. Finally, I show how the proposed account of woman may in time foster a change in the associated prototype and stereotypes, which will ameliorate societies by doing more justice to the lived experience of trans women – that is, by promoting full hermeneutical justice. (shrink)

What does woman mean? According to two competing views, it can be seen as a sex term or as a gender term. Recently, Jennifer Saul has put forward a contextualist view, according to which woman can have different meanings in different contexts. The main motivation for this view seems to involve moral and political considerations, namely, that this view can do justice to the claims of trans women. Unfortunately, Saul argues, on further reflection the contextualist view fails to (...) do justice to those moral and political claims that motivated the view in the first place. In this article I argue that there is a version of the contextualist view that can indeed capture those moral and political aims, and in addition, I use this case to illustrate an important and more general claim, namely, that moral and political considerations can be relevant to the descriptive project of finding out what certain politically significant terms actually mean. (shrink)

It surely would lighten the tasks of feminism tremendously if we could cut to the quick of women's lives by focusing on some essential "woman- ness." However, though all women are women, no woman is only a woman. Those of us who have  ...

To feminists and some postmodernists reason/emotion and man/woman represent two fundamental polarities, fixed deep within Western philosophy and reflected in the structures of our languages, and two sets of hierarchical power relations in patriarchal society. Raia Prokhovnik challenges the tradition of dualism and argues that rational woman need no longer be a contradiction in terms. Prokhovnik examines in turn: · the nature of dichotomy, its problems and an alternative · the reason/emotion dichotomy · dichotomies central to the man/ (...) class='Hi'>woman dualism, such as sex/gender and the heterosexual/ist norm. (shrink)

I would like to thank Barbara S. Kanner, Occidental College, for her inspiration is establishing the importance of historiographical and bibliographical essays in women's history and Mary Elizabeth Perry, University of Southern California, for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. My students in ‘The Reformation Debate on Women’ at the Harvard Divinity School and in ‘The Renaissance’ and ‘Woman and Man in Western Thought’, at Occidental College fostered lively discussions on the ‘image’ of the Renaissance woman. (...) In particular, I would like to thank Muffy Barman, Occidental College, for an Occidental Independent Study in 1986, parallel to my research on the woman question in the Renaissance. At the Huntington Library Seminar on Women's Studies, 6 December 1986, I gave an address on 'The Renaissance Debate on Women' which will appear in the 1986–1987 Proceedings. (shrink)

"White Woman Feminist," keynote address, New Jersey Project Conference, Rutgers University, May 30, 1992.

The need for the political empowerment of women, and the role played by the media in both promoting and hindering it are well-known problems. A new opportunity to consider these problems as regards the Italian case was afforded by the 1999 presidential election. During that selection process, the proposal to appoint a woman as head of the nation was, for the first time, brought into the arena for debate. Neither of the two women who were candidates – European Commissioner (...) Emma Bonino and Minister of the Interior Rosa Russo Jervolino – were elected. Using the `public arenas model' and the concept of `framing', the article explores the rise and fall of the two female candidatures by highlighting the limits in the social construction of the women's agenda. Considered from this point of view, the campaign offers an interesting case study in order to better understand the mechanisms of gender exclusion. (shrink)

Rhetoric is the power of persuasion, or influence, through words. And in many ways, comics exemplify, through their heroes and heroines, the power of rhetoric, of the written and spoken word to convince, persuade, and ultimately move people. Wonder Woman exemplifies wisdom, or sophia, and as an ambassador and an emissary her character not only demonstrates the value of wisdom, but actively disarms threats, promoting peace through discourse. Wonder Woman remains relevant in the twenty‐first century, holding her own (...) against her male counterparts, and arguably embodying a passionate plea of persuasion. More than any other character, beyond brute force, beyond the use of technology and battle tactics where might makes right, even if right is just, Wonder Woman often mobilizes argumentation as her greatest weapon. She is sent to Man's World as an emissary for Amazonian values, for justice and equality, not simply to physically fight. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"A Woman's Thought Runs Before Her Actions":Vows as Speech Acts in As You Like ItWilliam O. ScottAbout a decade ago Susanne Wofford discussed As You Like It from the viewpoint that Rosalind uses a "proxy," her guise as Ganymede, in uttering "the performative language necessary to accomplish deeds such as marriage." 1 Thus Wofford complicated and qualified the success-oriented assumptions about performative usage of language as envisioned in (...) Austin's speech-act theories. 2 Her starting point was that (as Austin himself said) these performative usages don't have the same kind of force if they are included in a play; and so she proposed to take Rosalind's uses of vows as playful, both theatrically and personally. Her notion of the proxy, which raises questions too about the binding force of the speech act through the identity and tactics of the speaker, is especially apt in describing exactly what Rosalind does. Understandably Rosalind's performative manqué may be a prelude to the perfected form. Another complication suggests itself if one is going to attend to niceties of language usage: given that for Austin a performative procedure is founded on conventions of language, shouldn't one also examine such linguistic forms historically? For this play the most relevant form to consider historically is the vow.The precise formulation of vows, in espousal or marriage (both legally enforceable in church courts), was very important in early-modern England. One may wonder, then, what the formal requirements of [End Page 528] vows were, how much the analysis of them resembled and diverged from modern speech-act philosophy, and how the vows functioned. And one might ask such questions both about this play and about real-life practice. A more exact notion of vows may enrich our notions of Rosalind's playfulness with them and broaden our sense of the uses and tactics of performatives; and to the extent that this playfulness contrasts with Rosalind's serious (re)iteration of vows at the end of the play, we should give due weight to Carol Neely's suggestion that much of the pleasure for early-modern audiences lay in the body of the play rather than its conclusion. 3The actual vows between lovers would indeed lend themselves to historicized analysis of the speech acts that constitute them. The early-modern ecclesiastical court judge Henry Swinburne made something like that in his Treatise of Spousals, with his section "By what Form of Words Spousals de futuro are contracted," and similarly on the form of words in "Spousals de praesenti." 4 The implied time of effectiveness in the commitment to marriage is crucial in church law of the time, because it determines whether the vows are, respectively, a betrothal that promises a future marriage, or a present binding (whether inside or outside church) that becomes an instant marriage upon carnal consummation. Both these declarations of commitment are performatives (once reciprocated), and they are normally established by social convention, what Swinburne calls "the Common use of Speech or Custom" (p. 83). Swinburne also concerns himself with what amount to the conditions of "felicity" that are requisite to make the speech valid—for instance, who is allowed to contract spousals (cp. Austin, pp. 14–24).Both of these issues of timing and eligibility are important to Rosalind in the pretense of wedding in Act 4, Scene 1. As it is for Swinburne, the context is important: when Celia as priest asks, "Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosalind?" his answer "I will" is not good enough for Rosalind until he adds at her direction, "I take thee, Rosalind, for wife." 5 Likewise Swinburne considers at length the arguments whether there is a distinction between "I will" and "I do," and whether the future-sounding verb refers only to the beginning of a process and not its completion (pp. 8–9, 57–61). Though in general he allows the distinction (so that "I will" makes a spousal and "I do" a marriage), one of his exceptions sounds like the question that Celia first puts: "The Man demanding of the Woman whether she will take him to her Husband, she answereth [I will... (shrink)