Beyond Ontology and Sexual Difference: An Interview with the Italian Feminist Philosopher Adriana Cavarero

Abstract

This interview with the Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero situates Cavarero's thought among the philosophical positions of such thinkers as Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Luc Nancy, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Hannah Arendt, as well as engaging the feminist theory of Judith Butler. While addressing such topics as globalization, terrorism, violence, and vulnerability, the question of ontology is central to the interview. Cavarero refines Arendt's perspective and emphasizes an ontology of singularity characterized by the materiality of human uniqueness together with its necessary relationality and vulnerability. Sceptical of postmodern, poststructuralist, and deconstructive theories that share a refusal of ontology and an avoidance of metaphysical closure, Cavarero points out that such a refusal tends to think ontology as something necessarily metaphysical. In contrast, for Cavarero ontology, must be reconsidered and treated with cattive intenzioni, bad intentions, because if it is simply questioned or deconstructed, and thus avoided, then ontology itself is not transformed. By focusing on the uniqueness of the individual as an ontological category, Cavarero disrupts the sacrificial economy of traditional ontology.