ERIC Number: EJ773223
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007-Aug
Pages: 13
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-2004
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Embodied Hermeneutics: Gadamer Meets Woolf in "A Room of One's Own"
O'Neill, Linda
Educational Theory, v57 n3 p325-337 Aug 2007
Hans-Georg Gadamer has been criticized by a wide range of feminist scholars who argue that his work neglects feminine aspects of understanding, many of which are essential to sound theorizing about educational contexts. In this essay, Linda O'Neill employs Virginia Woolf's classic gender analysis both as a foil for Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics and as an exemplar of feminist reasoning. Through her striking descriptions of embodied tradition, language, and transcendence, Woolf challenges and enriches Gadamer's work. Bringing Gadamer into conversation with Woolf offers expanded horizons for philosophers of education who choose to ground their studies of teachers and learners in a feminist epistemology resonant with the rich ambiguity of educational experience. This comparison, O'Neill concludes, suggests that the pluralistic reasoning of feminist inquiry offers engendered, embodied insights absent from Gadamer's hermeneutics and crucial to what Patti Lather calls "fieldwork in philosophy," an investigative alternative capable of informing sustainable educational policy, practice, and reform.
Descriptors: Figurative Language, Epistemology, Feminism, Educational Policy, Educational Experience, Hermeneutics, Educational Practices, Educational Change, Comparative Analysis, Classics (Literature), Essays, Philosophy, Gender Issues
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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