This is a study of the way power relationships change when women start to play candombe in Montevideo, Uruguay. Candombe is a type of music, which is traditionally played by men within the black minority in the country. This study has been done with an intersectional point of view, taking the social categories gender, class and ethnicity in account. The method used was participatory observation in a field study made in Montevideo between November 2008 and February 2009. This study’s main conclusions are that the power relationships change with the participation of women in candombe in several important ways: The women legitimize an alternative way to be a woman when they take the men’s role as a drum player. Hegemonic relationships are made visible. The men’s privileged position within candombe is questioned. Hegemonic ideas of ethnicity and class are in some way challenged since candombe is a space where categories with low status may gain respect from society. However, there is a risk that “the social norm” outlines a framework for what is accepted and approved within candombe, and what is not. It is therefore crucial that the players in candombe define its meaning themselves.

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I argue that virginity is a distinct phenomenon with essential structures that can be apprehended and described using a phenomenological method, and thus offer the first robust phenomenology of virginity. A more complex passage than the physical transaction of first sexual intercourse, virginity manifests the event of a coming to love through the conduit of the sexual-erotic body. Calling on Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of givenness, I argue that virginity qualifies as a saturated phenomenon, exceeding or overflowing intuition and signification in its paradoxical phenomenality. As a study in saturated phenomena my work pushes the limits of phenomenology by endorsing the exigency of a phenomenology of the evanescent and enigmatic to engage denigrated domains of human experience such as sex and love. Our access to virginity is possible because of our ontological constitution as sexuate beings, but also because of our essential potential to cultivate our sexuate existence through the lens of a primordial erotic attunement. Conscious development of our erotic potential is a form of ascesis that can elevate the sexual-erotic encounter to the ethical height of love. Still, virginity can never be forced, taken, or lost, since the phenomenon is ultimately only gifted through an act of erotic generosity and the intervention of grace. Virginity is not a one-time threshold crossing. It has the essential possibility of being perpetually renewed with each singular sexual-erotic encounter. I seek to sever sex from its legacy as mere animal instinct and from its functional and reproductive teleology in order to open a new way of thinking about our sexual-erotic being that focuses on its ethical potential and its usefulness as a model for being with others outside of the sexual-erotic relation. I take seriously the Irigarayan possibility that we can craft an ethics of Eros. My work draws broadly from twentieth-century literature on phenomenology, poststructuralism, and psychoanalysis, including that of Marion, Beauvoir, Irigaray, Derrida, Heidegger, Foucault, and Butler.

In this essay I defend Simone de Beauvoir against the charge that her chapter <i>The Givens of Biology</i> from The Second Sex is biologistic. A work can be said to make the mistake of biologism when it assigns a particular nature or essence to human beings based on their biology. De Beauvoir has been accused of making this mistake because her critics have not understood the philosophical landscape in which she was working. Not only have they missed the subtleties of her arguments, but many formulated their criticisms from a poor translation, provided by H.M. Parshley in 1952. In order to combat the decontextualizing of her theory I provide a conceptual backdrop that locates de Beauvoirs work in relation to her philosophical influences, her contemporaries, and her own philosophical works that predate The Second Sex. I give a phenomenological re-reading of The Givens of Biology based on my situating of de Beauvoir. My work is expositional and argumentative to the point of dissuading the reader from understanding de Beauvoir not only as a biological essentialist, but also as holding especially negative views about womens embodiment.

The effects of colonization are still evident in Aboriginal communities. This thesis examines feminism in relation to the colonial experiences of Aboriginal people. Drawing on feminist theories, this thesis explores how the ideology and practices of male dominance were imposed through colonization in Aboriginal societies. European male dominance has been modeled throughout colonization and assimilation, and this set the standard for future gender relations in Western society and in Aboriginal communities. Patriarchy is deeply embedded in our society, and because Aboriginal people have been affected by this, historically and in the present, they in turn absorb these practices as normal thought and behavior. The marginalization and oppression of Aboriginal people is due to colonization; however, patriarchal practices were also modeled in this process and this has caused Aboriginal women to be further marginalized. This thesis uses feminist theory, an analysis of patriarchy, and social constructionism to demonstrate how Aboriginal women continue to be marginalized, and how feminism may be a source of empowerment for Aboriginal people.

I argue that virginity is a distinct phenomenon with essential structures that can be apprehended and described using a phenomenological method, and thus offer the first robust phenomenology of virginity. A more complex passage than the physical transaction of first sexual intercourse, virginity manifests the event of a coming to love through the conduit of the sexual-erotic body. Calling on Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of givenness, I argue that virginity qualifies as a saturated phenomenon, exceeding or overflowing intuition and signification in its paradoxical phenomenality. As a study in saturated phenomena my work pushes the limits of phenomenology by endorsing the exigency of a phenomenology of the evanescent and enigmatic to engage denigrated domains of human experience such as sex and love. Our access to virginity is possible because of our ontological constitution as sexuate beings, but also because of our essential potential to cultivate our sexuate existence through the lens of a primordial erotic attunement. Conscious development of our erotic potential is a form of ascesis that can elevate the sexual-erotic encounter to the ethical height of love. Still, virginity can never be forced, taken, or lost, since the phenomenon is ultimately only gifted through an act of erotic generosity and the intervention of grace. Virginity is not a one-time threshold crossing. It has the essential possibility of being perpetually renewed with each singular sexual-erotic encounter. I seek to sever sex from its legacy as mere animal instinct and from its functional and reproductive teleology in order to open a new way of thinking about our sexual-erotic being that focuses on its ethical potential and its usefulness as a model for being with others outside of the sexual-erotic relation. I take seriously the Irigarayan possibility that we can craft an ethics of Eros. My work draws broadly from twentieth-century literature on phenomenology, poststructuralism, and psychoanalysis, including that of Marion, Beauvoir, Irigaray, Derrida, Heidegger, Foucault, and Butler.

In this essay, I argue that issues of voyeurism and scopophilia raised in Laura Mulvey’s early essay, “Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema,” are closely related to the social and economic shifts which occurred during the post-war period. Specifically, I argue that Mulvey’s essay articulates a particular kind of formal technique associated with what she calls “non-narrative scopophilia,” a kind of long-take shot that is utilized to great effect by Alfred Hitchcock in two of his later films, Rear Window (1955) and Psycho (1960). I argue that these shots represent a disruption to the smooth functioning of the classical Hollywood model of narrative and gender ideology in the post-war period tied closely to the changing economic realities of the period. I further argue that such a disruption is closely related to a new model of consumerism that emerges during this period.

The effects of colonization are still evident in Aboriginal communities. This thesis examines feminism in relation to the colonial experiences of Aboriginal people. Drawing on feminist theories, this thesis explores how the ideology and practices of male dominance were imposed through colonization in Aboriginal societies. European male dominance has been modeled throughout colonization and assimilation, and this set the standard for future gender relations in Western society and in Aboriginal communities. Patriarchy is deeply embedded in our society, and because Aboriginal people have been affected by this, historically and in the present, they in turn absorb these practices as normal thought and behavior. The marginalization and oppression of Aboriginal people is due to colonization; however, patriarchal practices were also modeled in this process and this has caused Aboriginal women to be further marginalized. This thesis uses feminist theory, an analysis of patriarchy, and social constructionism to demonstrate how Aboriginal women continue to be marginalized, and how feminism may be a source of empowerment for Aboriginal people.

In this essay I defend Simone de Beauvoir against the charge that her chapter <i>The Givens of Biology</i> from The Second Sex is biologistic. A work can be said to make the mistake of biologism when it assigns a particular nature or essence to human beings based on their biology. De Beauvoir has been accused of making this mistake because her critics have not understood the philosophical landscape in which she was working. Not only have they missed the subtleties of her arguments, but many formulated their criticisms from a poor translation, provided by H.M. Parshley in 1952. In order to combat the decontextualizing of her theory I provide a conceptual backdrop that locates de Beauvoirs work in relation to her philosophical influences, her contemporaries, and her own philosophical works that predate The Second Sex. I give a phenomenological re-reading of The Givens of Biology based on my situating of de Beauvoir. My work is expositional and argumentative to the point of dissuading the reader from understanding de Beauvoir not only as a biological essentialist, but also as holding especially negative views about womens embodiment.