This chapter explores the possibility of an alliance between Deleuze's philosophy and feminist philosophy with respect to ethics. I begin by specifying some of the general points of convergence between Deleuzian ethics and feminist ethics. In the second section, I turn away from feminist ethics in particular to consider feminist engagement with Deleuze's (and Deleuze and Guattari's) work; in this section, I describe the central criticisms of Deleuze offered by feminist philosophers and point out the aspects of his thought that have been valuable for feminist theorizing. In order to respond to what I take to be the overarching concern feminists have about Deleuze's philosophy, the third section develops a proposal for a Deleuzian conception of ethics that is able to do (much of) what feminists require of an ethical theory.

Ethics Away from Tradition

Feminist ethics emerged as a unique subdiscipline in the 1970s and 1980s in particular through the work of Nel Noddings and Carol Gilligan. While it has become a diverse field with various perspectives and threads of interest, I will attempt briefly to draw a general picture of the concerns that animate it so that we might see in what ways Deleuzian ethics and feminist ethics may coincide. Central to feminist ethics is both a critical perspective, criticizing gender bias and the attendant gender-associated dualisms within mainstream ethics and the history of ethics, and a reconstructive endeavor to provide a more adequate ethical theory (Held 1990).