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Plato and the reception of Plato in modern European philosophy; contemporary philosophies of sex and gender; 20th century French philosophy, especially Beauvoir and Levinas; feminist philosophy; psychoanalytic theory.

Member of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective.

• Going Back: Heidegger, East Asia and 'the West '
• Thinking Sex Politically: Rethinking 'Sex' in Plato's Republic

• Plato and Sex (forthcoming 2009, Polity Press)
  What could the study of ancient texts tell us about the contemporary meaning of sex? How do recent developments in the philosophy of sex and gender help us read such texts anew? Focusing on the concepts of genos (‘kind’, translated sometimes as ‘sex’) and eros, this project proposes original interpretations of four of Plato’s dialogues (Republic, Symposium, Phaedrus and Timaeus), in an attempt to address some of the most fundamental issues in the philosophy of sex today. Paying particular attention to linguistic and philosophical contexts, each chapter develops extended new readings of well-known passages and themes – such as the proposals for female Guardians in the Republic, the three ‘kinds’ of human being in Aristophanes’speech in the Symposium, and the sexual, procreative and obstetric imagery in the Symposium and Phaedrus. Including critical readings of the theories of sex and sexuation in Freud and Lacan, and their relations to Plato’s writings, the work argues for both the historicity of ‘sex’ and its conceptual complexity, showing how Plato’s concepts call our own presumptions about sex into question, and how those presumptions have, historically, informed (and misinformed) interpretations of Plato

Authored books:

• How to Read de Beauvoir, Granta Books, London, 2006.
  
  
• The Metaphysics of Love: Gender and Transcendence in Levinas, Continuum, London, 2000.

Edited books:

• Philosophies of Race and Ethnicity [with Peter Osborne] Continuum, London, 2002.

Chapters in books:

• 'The Origins and Ends of “Sex”’, in C. Kerslake (ed.), The Origins and Ends of the Mind, University of Leuven Press, Leuven, 2007
  
  
• 'Levinas, Feminism, and the Feminine', in Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002.
  
  
• 'Maternal Mothers? Maternity in Levinas and Plato', in Tina Chanter (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas, Pennsylvania State University Press, Pennsylvania, 2002.
  
  

Journal articles:

• ‘Sexmat, Revisited’, Radical Philosophy 145, Sept/Oct 2007, pp. 28–35.
  

• ‘Sexually Ambiguous: Eros and Sexuality in Plato and Freud’, Angelaki Special Issue, ‘Encounters with Ancient Thought’ (ed. John Sellars), 11/3 (2006), pp. 43-59.
  
  
• ‘Thinking Sex Politically: Rethinking “Sex” in Plato’s Republic’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 104: 4, Fall 2005, pp. 613–630.   
  
  
• Going Back: Heidegger, East Asia and 'the West', Radical Philosophy 120, Jul/Aug 2003, pp. 11-22.
  
  
• 'Feminism Against "The Feminine"', Radical Philosophy 105, Jan/Feb 2001.
  
  
• 'Levinas in the Realm of the Senses: Transcendence and Intelligibility', Angelaki, 4.3., 2000.
  
  
• 'Contingent Ontologies: Sex, Gender and "Woman" in Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler', Radical Philosophy 97, Sept/Oct 1999.
  
  
• 'Plato and Levinas: The Same and the Other', Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 30, No. 2, May 1999.
  
  
• 'Speaking as a Man: Levinas and the Phenomenology of Eros', Radical Philosophy 87, Jan/Feb 1998 (reprinted in Claire Katz, ed. Emmanuel Levinas: Critical Assessments, Routledge, London and New York, forthcoming 2004).
  
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