Ecstatic subjects, utopia, and recognition1998

Ecstatic Subjects, Utopia, and Recognition is a study in critical postmodern social theory. By engaging a dialogue with Heidegger, Kristeva, and Irigaray, it offers unique insights into Heidegger's heroic embrace of the manly ethos of National Socialism. Against certain poststructuralist feminist tendencies to throw the baby of intentionality out with the bath water of voluntarism, Huntington interweaves elements of Kristevan and Heideggerian thought in order to reconstruct a linguistically embedded, existentially and affectively rich, dialectical model of willed self-regulation. Pressing Heideggerian ontology into the service of a viable social theory, she argues that this ontology accounts for the utopian impulse in Irigaray's search for a critical poetic reenchantment of the life-world and supplies Irigaray with the philosophical foundation for a model of ethical recognition based upon asymmetrical reciprocity.