ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up feminist perspectives to analyze some of the social, cultural, and intellectual contexts that have shaped current approaches to disgust. In particular, the chapter demonstrates that mind/body dualism, especially in its Cartesian form, as well as Western traditions of individualism, and patriarchal power structures have been significant in shaping conceptions of subjectivity and emotion broadly, and disgust specifically. Though feminist critiques of these areas are well established and some of the literature is two decades old, they have not been applied to the study of disgust specifically, especially not to the study of disgust as it relates to subjectivity. This chapter serves not only to account for the contexts shaping existing disgust accounts, but also to situate an alternative approach to disgust research. In other words, one cannot develop a different approach without understanding why and how current conceptualizations of disgust have come to be. Accordingly, the chapter proposes that a feminist politics of disgust offers an alternative approach to analyzing disgust.
