Background
Drucilla Cornell was born on June 16, 1950.
2012
Christinenstr. 18/19, Haus 8 10119 Berlin, Germany
Drucilla Cornell lecturing at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin.
2012
Christinenstr. 18/19, Haus 8 10119 Berlin, Germany
Drucilla Cornell lecturing at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin.
2016
Drucilla Cornell and Chiara Bottici speaking on OOPS Lecture Pornography's Temptation.
2017
Ridgewood, New Jersey 07451, United States
Drucilla Cornell, Rhoda Schermer, Roger Berkowitz on the Network for Responsible Public Policy Conference.
One Morgan Pl, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387, United States
Drucilla Cornell graduated from Antioch College with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Mathematics in 1978.
385 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, California 90095, United States
Drucilla Cornell earned a Juris Doctor from the University of California Los Angeles Law School in 1981.
Drucilla Cornell
Drucilla Cornell
(This is an outstanding collection of essays which brings ...)
This is an outstanding collection of essays which brings together for the first time the work of a group of writers well-known in the Marxist-feminist tradition. The essays range from Marx to Foucault and go beyond them to offer genuine advances in the way social and political life can be reconceptualized in the light of feminist critique.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Feminism-Critique-Late-Capitalist-Societies-Perspectives/dp/0745603661
1987
(The first collection of essays directed towards jurisprud...)
The first collection of essays directed towards jurisprudence with a Hegelian theme. The editors are committed to the idea that Hegel is the future source of great energy and insight within the legal academy.
https://www.amazon.com/Hegel-Legal-Theory-Drucilla-Cornell/dp/0415901634
1991
(This new edition of Drucilla Cornell's highly acclaimed b...)
This new edition of Drucilla Cornell's highly acclaimed book includes a substantial new introduction by the author, which situates the book within current feminist debates. In Beyond Accommodation, Drucilla Cornell offers a highly original vision of what feminist theory can give contemporary women. She challenges essentialist and naturalist accounts of feminine sexuality, arguing that any attempt to affirm woman's value and difference by either emphasizing her maternal role or repudiating the feminine only entraps women, once again, in a container that curtails feminine sexual difference, legitimates the masculine fantasy of woman, and reinstates, rather than dismantles, the gender hierarchy.
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Accommodation-Ethical-Feminism-Deconstruction-ebook/dp/B00E9Z0TO4
1991
(In The Philosophy of the Limit Drucilla Cornell examines ...)
In The Philosophy of the Limit Drucilla Cornell examines the relationship of deconstruction to questions of ethics, justice, and legal interpretation. She argues that renaming deconstruction "the philosophy of the limit" will allow us to be more precise about what deconstruction actually is philosophically and hence to articulate more clearly its significance for law. Cornell's focus on the importance of the limit and the centrality of the gender hierarchy allows her to offer a view of jurisprudence different from both the critical social theory and analytic jurisprudence.
https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Limit-Drucilla-Cornell/dp/0415902398
1992
(In a unique rethinking of political transformation, Druci...)
In a unique rethinking of political transformation, Drucilla Cornell argues for the crucial role of psychoanalysis in social theory in voicing connection between our constitution as gendered subjects and social and political change.
https://www.amazon.com/Transformations-Recollective-Imagination-Sexual-Difference/dp/0415907470
1993
(How can women create a meaningful and joyous life for the...)
How can women create a meaningful and joyous life for themselves? Is it enough to be equal with men? In this provocative and wide-ranging book, Drucilla Cornell argues that women should transcend the quest for equality and focus on what she shows is a far more radical project: achieving freedom.
https://www.amazon.com/At-Heart-Freedom-Drucill-Cornell/dp/0691028966
1998
(One of the distinguishing features of Drucilla Cornell's ...)
One of the distinguishing features of Drucilla Cornell's work is its emphasis on the significance of ideals. The essays collected here examine how the ideals of freedom and equality associated with the democratic revolutions of the West have survived the challenges of twentieth century critiques. Cornell argues that, far from threatening these ideals, feminism, race theory, and other new theories have deepened their meaning and so allowed them to survive.
https://www.amazon.com/Just-Cause-Freedom-Identity-Rights/dp/0847697916
2000
(The fundamental argument of Between Women and Generations...)
The fundamental argument of Between Women and Generations is that all women have dignity: we must ensure that they have the conditions under which they can claim that dignity in their own lives; even if they are physically harmed or morally wronged, their dignity cannot be lost. Cornell uses the personal as a springboard to discuss contemporary issues concerning women today. She engages with the difficult nature of intergenerational relationships between women by writing about her relationship with her own mother.
https://www.amazon.com/Between-Women-Generations-Legacies-Constructions/dp/0742543706
2002
(In this book, Drucilla Cornell examines the crisis on the...)
In this book, Drucilla Cornell examines the crisis on the left and asks how we can turn back toward more left-wing ideals. She looks at the meaning of freedom through various lenses as well as the dissolution of feminism. She discusses and critiques such major thinkers as: Amartya Sen, Adorno, Martha Nussbaum, John Rawls, Richard Falk, and Paul Berman among others.
https://www.amazon.com/Defending-Ideals-Democracy-Political-Struggles/dp/0415948827
2004
(Moral Images of Freedom resurrects the Kantian project of...)
Moral Images of Freedom resurrects the Kantian project of affirmative political philosophy and traces its oft-forgotten influences found in thinkers such as Martin Heidegger, Ernst Cassirer, Frantz Fanon, and Walter Benjamin. Drucilla Cornell responds to nihilistic claims about the empty purpose of critical theory in a world so utterly captured by violence in all of its worst forms: economic, social, political, and cultural. Cornell instead draws together a sweeping thread of hope in the varied symbolic forms of freedom persistent throughout the work of a broader range of critical theorists and addresses the burning challenge for such work to respond seriously to the need for a decolonization of critical theory itself and a sustained commitment to the possible future of socialism.
https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Images-Freedom-Future-Critical/dp/0847697932
2007
(In this risk-taking book, a major feminist philosopher en...)
In this risk-taking book, a major feminist philosopher engages the work of the actor and director who has progressed from being the stereotypical “man’s man” to pushing the boundaries of the very genres the Western, the police thriller, the war or boxing movie most associated with American masculinity. Focusing on Eastwood as a director rather than as an actor or cultural icon, she studies Eastwood in relation to major philosophical and ethical themes that have been articulated in her own life’s work. In her fresh and revealing readings of the films, Cornell takes up pressing issues of masculinity as it is caught up in the very definition of ideas of revenge, violence, moral repair, and justice. Eastwood grapples with this involvement of masculinity in and through many of the great symbols of American life, including cowboys, boxing, police dramas, and ultimately war - perhaps the single greatest symbol of what it means to be a man. Cornell discusses films from across Eastwood’s career, from his directorial debut with Play Misty for Me to Million Dollar Baby.
https://www.amazon.com/Clint-Eastwood-Issues-American-Masculinity/dp/0823230120
2009
(This book pays tribute to the constitutional jurisprudenc...)
This book pays tribute to the constitutional jurisprudence of Justice Laurie Ackermann, now retired from the Constitutional Court of South Africa. The collection of essays focuses specifically on the relationship between dignity and freedom in the post-apartheid legal order. The book provides a critical perspective on a central theme in South Africa's developing constitutional law and also brings into view emerging answers to fundamental jurisprudential questions of growing international prominence.
https://www.amazon.ae/Dignity-freedom-post-apartheid-legal-order/dp/0702181374
2009
(In dialogue with Afro-Caribbean philosophy, this book see...)
In dialogue with Afro-Caribbean philosophy, this book seeks in Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms a new vocabulary for approaching central intellectual and political issues of our time. For Cassirer, what makes humans unique is that we are symbolizing creatures destined to come into a world through varied symbolic forms; we pluralistically work with and develop these forms as we struggle to come to terms with who we are and our place in the universe. This approach can be used as a powerful challenge to hegemonic modes of study that mistakenly place the Western world at the center of intellectual and political life. Indeed, the authors argue that the symbolic dimension of Cassirer’s thinking of possibility can be linked to a symbolic dimension in revolution via the ideas of Frantz Fanon, who argued that revolution must be a thoroughgoing cultural process, in which what is at stake is nothing less than how we symbolize a new humanity and bring into being a new set of social institutions worthy of that new humanity.
https://www.amazon.com/Symbolic-Forms-New-Humanity-Reconfigurations/dp/0823232514
2010
(This is the first comprehensive case to address the relat...)
This is the first comprehensive case to address the relationship of uBuntu to law. It also provides the most important critical articles on the use of uBuntu, both by the Constitutional Court and by other levels of the judiciary in South Africa. Although uBuntu is an ideal or value rooted in South Africa, its purchase as a performative ethic of the human goes beyond its roots in African languages.
https://www.amazon.com/uBuntu-Law-African-Postapartheid-Jurisprudence/dp/0823233820
2011
(Since the Second World War, dignity has increasingly been...)
Since the Second World War, dignity has increasingly been recognized as an important moral and legal value. Although important examples of dignity-based arguments can be found in western European and North American case law and legal theory, the dignity jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of South African is widely considered to be the most sweeping in the world. In part, this is related to the unique provisions of the South African Constitution in areas such as socioeconomic rights and allowing dignity to be taken into the sphere of economic justice as well as that of human rights. This book brings together the first sixteen years of constitutional jurisprudence addressing the meaning, role, and reach of dignity in the law of South Africa as a multiracial democracy. The case law is coupled with analysis from a range of selected contributors. The book will, therefore, be a crucial source for anyone seeking to evaluate dignity, whether in law or in human life more broadly.
https://www.amazon.com/Dignity-Jurisprudence-Constitutional-Court-Africa/dp/0823250083
2013
(Emeritus Justice Albie Sachs was a freedom fighter for mo...)
Emeritus Justice Albie Sachs was a freedom fighter for most of his life. He then played a major role in the negotiating committee for the new constitution of South Africa and was subsequently appointed to the new Constitutional Court of South Africa. Therefore, the question of what it means to make the transition from a freedom fighter to a participant in a revolutionary government is not abstract, in Hegel’s sense of the word, it is an actual journey that Albie Sachs undertook. The essays in this book raise the complex question of what it actually means to make this transition without selling out to the demands of realism. In addition, the preface written by Emeritus Justice Albie Sachs and his interview with Drucilla Cornell and Karin van Marle, further address key questions about the revolution in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries: from armed struggle to the organization of a nation-state committed to ethical transformation in the name of justice. Albie Sachs and transformation in South Africa: from revolutionary activist to constitutional court judge illuminates the theoretical and practical experiences of revolution and its political aftermath.
https://www.amazon.com/Albie-Sachs-Transformation-South-Africa-ebook/dp/B00ISVUC9C
2014
(This vibrant collection expands the parameters of the fem...)
This vibrant collection expands the parameters of the feminist debate on pornography. In an effort to move away from the divisive frameworks in feminist disputes over pornography, this volume seeks to understand what pornography means to those who consume it, fight against it, and work within it. By opening up a space for divergent points of view to address the complexity of sexual material, this book seeks to forge solidarity among academics, activists, and sex workers from diverse social and political contexts. Feminism and Pornography explores a wide range of contentious issues, including how the meaning of pornography is shaped by changing historical and political realities; the role law should play, if any, in the sex industry; whether union organizing can change the working conditions in the sex industry; and how sexually explicit literature, videos, art, and music can promote sexual freedom.
https://www.amazon.com/Feminism-Pornography-Oxford-Readings/dp/0198782500
activist philosopher professor writer
Drucilla Cornell was born on June 16, 1950.
Drucilla Cornell graduated from Antioch College and earned her Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Mathematics in 1978, and a Juris Doctor from the University of California Los Angeles Law School in 1981.
Prior to beginning her life as an academic, Drucilla Cornell was a union organizer for a number of years in California, New Jersey, and New York. She worked as a field organizer for United Auto Workers (U.A.W.) District 65, 1974-1975; then for United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (U.E.), 1975-1976 and for United Auto Workers (U.A.W.) District 6, 1977-1978.
Cornell was a clerk for Honourable Judge Warren J. Ferguson at the United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, 1981-1982; an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Law from 1983 to 1987, a visiting scholar Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, 1985-1986, was appointed as a visiting professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New School for Social Research Summer Institute on Law and Critical Theory from summer 1986 to 1987, a visiting professor (fall 1988) and professor of Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University from 1988 to 1995.
She played a key role in organizing the conference on deconstruction and justice at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 1989, 1990, and 1993 - a conference at which Jacques Derrida is thought by many to have made his definitive philosophical turn toward the ethical. In addition, she has worked to coordinate Law and Humanities Speakers Series with the Jacob Burns Institute for Advanced Legal Studies and the Committee on Liberal Studies at the New School for Social Research.
Drucilla also worked as a senior fellow at Andrew Dickson White House, Cornell University in spring 1989, adjunct visiting professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in spring 1991, a short term fellow at the Humanities Research Institute, the University of California in April 1992.
In 1991 Cornell received grants from the Mellon Foundation and Grant American Council of Learned Societies and was hired at Princeton University, Institute for Advanced Study as a visiting member and Mellon fellow, where she worked till 1992.
In 1995 Drucilla became a professor of Law at Newark Law School, Rutgers University and worked till 2001, a fellow at Rutgers University, Center for the Analysis of Contemporary Culture in New Brunswick in 1996, a visiting Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Warwick University, England in May 1997, and a professor at the National Endowment of the Humanities Summer Institute, University of California, Santa Cruz in July 1997.
Cornell had an international experience teaching in South Africa from summer 2001 at the University of Stellenbosch as Rector’s Lecturer, a research fellow at Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study from 2003 to 2005, an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria, Department of Legal History, Comparative Law, and Legal Philosophy from 2005 to December 2012, a National Research Foundation Professor in Customary Law, Indigenous Values, and the Dignity Jurisprudence, Faculty of Law at the University of Cape Town from July 2007 to December 31, 2009.
In 2003, Cornell founded the uBuntu Project, which combines research into indigenous ideals and values, and advocacy for their importance in all aspects of the new dispensation, including law. The project advocated for the reconstitutionalization of uBuntu at the level of the constitutional court. Since that time the court has developed a rich uBuntu jurisprudence. The project works closely with both members of the court and parliament and holds yearly seminars in South Africa, Japan, Serbia, Macedonia, The United States, and Canada. In March 2003, she delivered the prestigious Ryle Lectures at Trent University in Canada.
From January 2010 Drucilla served as a visiting professor at Birkbeck College, University of London, School of Law, till December 2012.
Since 2001 Drucilla has been working as Distinguished Professor and was named Professor Emerita at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey at the Departments of Political Science, Comparative Literature, and Women’s and Gender Studies.
Drucilla Cornell has authored several books including Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender (1987), Hegel and Legal Theory (1991), The Imaginary Domain: Abortion, Pornography, and Sexual Harassment (1995), and At the Heart of Freedom: Feminism, Sex, and Equality (1998), as well as numerous articles on critical theory, feminism, and postmodern theories of ethics. Her work has been translated into French, German, Japanese, Serbo-Croatian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
She is also a produced playwright. The productions of her plays The Dream Cure, Background Interference, and Lifeline have been performed in New York, Los Angeles, Florida, and Ohio. Her dramatization of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake runs every year in Dublin, Ireland.
(In this risk-taking book, a major feminist philosopher en...)
2009(How can women create a meaningful and joyous life for the...)
1998(The fundamental argument of Between Women and Generations...)
2002(In a unique rethinking of political transformation, Druci...)
1993(Moral Images of Freedom resurrects the Kantian project of...)
2007(In dialogue with Afro-Caribbean philosophy, this book see...)
2010(This new edition of Drucilla Cornell's highly acclaimed b...)
1991(This is an outstanding collection of essays which brings ...)
1987(In The Philosophy of the Limit Drucilla Cornell examines ...)
1992(This book pays tribute to the constitutional jurisprudenc...)
2009(In this book, Drucilla Cornell examines the crisis on the...)
2004(One of the distinguishing features of Drucilla Cornell's ...)
2000(Since the Second World War, dignity has increasingly been...)
2013(The relation between law and revolution is one of the mos...)
2014(This vibrant collection expands the parameters of the fem...)
(The first collection of essays directed towards jurisprud...)
1991(This is the first comprehensive case to address the relat...)
2011(Emeritus Justice Albie Sachs was a freedom fighter for mo...)
2014Professor Cornell has written in the fields of German Idealism and Critical Theory, including contemporary French Philosophy. In the last years, her research has focused on feminist theory, race critical theory, and more specifically, on the substantive revolution of South Africa. In 2003, she founded the uBuntu Project, which both researched and advocated for the significance of indigenous ideals and values such as uBuntu in the new dispensation. The project advocated for the reconstitutionalization of uBuntu at the level of the constitutional court.
Drucilla Cornell offers a highly original vision of what feminist theory can give contemporary women. She challenges essentialist and naturalist accounts of feminine sexuality, arguing that any attempt to affirm woman's value and difference by either emphasizing her maternal role or repudiating the feminine only entraps women, once again, in a container that curtails feminine sexual difference, legitimates the masculine fantasy of woman, and reinstates, rather than dismantles, the gender hierarchy. In response to these movements, she strives to broaden the scope of feminist theory by articulating a platform, under the concept of relative universalism, which proposes the idea that women are not a unified and homogenous group although they are positioned as women in patriarchy. Cornell's theory allows for differences in women's situations without giving up on the idea that women are fighting a common phenomenon called patriarchy.
Drucilla Cornell lives in New York. She has adopted Sarita Graciela Kellow Cornell, her Paraguayan daughter.