ABSTRACT
Many feminists critics have taken to task the traditions of Western science and philosophy for their reliance upon hierarchical dichotomies such as male/female, mind/body, rational/emotional, objective/subjective, science/nature and the ways in which woman came to represent the supposedly weaker side of each dualism (body, emotion, nature, etc). These hierarchical divisions have been highlighted by feminists and other critical scholars in many disciplines, for example: in science by critics such as Sandra Harding (1991), in ecology by Vandana Shiva (1989), in law by Catharine MacKinnon (1989), in psychology by Carol Gilligan (1982) and in language by Luce Irigaray (1985). Such feminist analytical work has in the main been spawned by radical feminist critique, but it has recently been extended through post-modern scholarship to focus not only on the designation of Woman as ‘other’ and inferior, but also on the very distinction itself – to what extent can we really separate nature from science, or mind from body?
