Living Attention: On Teresa Brennan

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Interdisciplinary exploration of the scope and impact of Teresa Brennan’s lifework.

As an internationally respected feminist philosopher, radical social and political theorist, and tireless activist, Teresa Brennan was one of the most provocative thinkers of our time. Living Attention is a tribute to the significance of her thought and a testament to the transformative power of her life.

This book demonstrates the scope of Brennan’s thought as it continues to challenge academics, public intellectuals, and government leaders. Her concerns ranged from the implications of psychoanalytic theory to relations between men and women to the effects of globalization on our ecological system. The contributors to this volume—from a broad variety of disciplines, including philosophy, literature, government, literary and critical theory, and women’s studies—take up Brennan’s call to radical thinking and, by examining different aspects of Brennan’s work, critically engage with her oeuvre.

“These extraordinary essays show the far-ranging significance of Teresa Brennan’s thought, while at the same time continue her project of envisioning the possibility of creating something new from the remains of patriarchy and globalization. Situating her work within the feminist tradition known as ‘Australian materialism,’ the essays included here respond to Brennan’s work on affectivity, mourning, modernity, contemporary biological and neurological research, and ethical responsibility. Together they offer sustenance and new directions of thought for those of us who are left to carry on the work of this much-admired and important thinker.” — Peg Birmingham, author of Hannah Arendt and Human Rights: The Predicament of Common Responsibility

Alice A. Jardine is Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Studies on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. She is the coeditor of Shifting Scenes: Interviews on Women, Writing, and Politics in Post-68 France.

Shannon Lundeen is Associate Director of the Alice Paul Center for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at the University of Pennsylvania and the coeditor of The Voice of Breast Cancer in Medicine and Bioethics.

Kelly Oliver is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and the author of The Colonization of Psychic Space: A Psychoanalytic Social Theory of Oppression.