Vulnerability and Its Power: Recognition, Response, and the Problem of Valorization by Anna F. Bialek A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University Providence, RI May 2016 © Copyright 2016 by Anna F. Bialek This dissertation by Anna F. Bialek is accepted in its present form by the Department of Religious Studies as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date_________________ ___________________________________ Mark Cladis, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date_________________ ___________________________________ Thomas A. Lewis, Reader Date_________________ ___________________________________ Stephen Bush, Reader Date_________________ ___________________________________ Bonnie Honig, Reader Date_________________ ___________________________________ Kevin Hector, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date_________________ ___________________________________ Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii Curriculum Vitae Anna F. Bialek was born in Berkeley, CA on October 6, 1987. She attended the Princeton, NJ public schools for her primary and secondary education, after which she matriculated at Princeton University in the fall of 2005. She graduated from Princeton in 2009 with an A. B. (summa cum laude) in Religion with Highest Departmental Honors, and a certificate in Creative Writing. She then began her graduate education at Brown University in the fall of 2009, where she has pursued studies in the Religion and Critical Thought subfield of the Department of Religious Studies. At Brown, Bialek has taught in undergraduate courses in religious ethics and modern Western religious thought, and as an advisor to an independent study on trauma theory. She has also served as an advisor to undergraduate students pursuing major fellowships during and after their time at Brown. Bialek has been the recipient of the Chancellor Thomas A. Tisch Fellowship for Graduate Studies, the Pembroke Fellowship, Brown University's Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching, an Honorary Graduate Fellowship at the Cogut Center for the Humanities, and an American Fellowship from the American Association of University Women. Since 2013, she has also served on the Advisory Council of the Department of Religion at Princeton. In addition to her academic pursuits, Bialek has worked as an advocate for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse since 2011. Prior to becoming a victims’ advocate, she worked as a sexual health educator and counselor from 2003-2009. iv Acknowledgements To say that someone has taught you something about vulnerability isn’t always a compliment, but I have the great fortune to be able to mean it as such. This project is a product of an extraordinary community of teachers, mentors, friends, and family who have been willing to render themselves vulnerable with me toward an indeterminate future, and without whom its determination here would be much less in many ways. I owe its merits to them, with my deep thanks. I am very grateful to the members of my committee for their guidance of this project. Mark Cladis has been an advisor, teacher, mentor, and friend of the highest order. His direction of the project honored even its most nascent formulations with generous and critical engagement, as his capacious conception of its possibilities allowed me to pursue unusual lines of inquiry that have been deeply productive for my understanding at many turns. Tal Lewis has been a patient and insightful guide to the practices of thinking and writing, and a great source of intellectual inspiration and direction as I developed scattered interests in religious ethics, feminist thought, and Christian theology into a research program. Steve Bush is the most incisive reader and thinker I have ever met, and this project has benefitted since its earliest versions from his critical eye and ear, as well as his constructive voice. Bonnie Honig’s contributions to my thinking appear on nearly every page of this text, and her advising and example as I find my footing in feminist thought has been an indispensible privilege. Kevin Hector v was my first teacher in religion, and I have been learning from him ever since. I am very thankful for his willingness to serve on my committee, and for his engagement of the project from its early stages. My deep thanks go to the other outstanding teachers and colleagues who have guided my studies and the development of this project. At Brown, Susan Harvey, Nancy Khalek, Nicola Denzey-Lewis, Paul Nahme, Andre Willis, Sharon Krause, Ariella Azoulay, Tim Bewes, Dave Estlund, and Michael Steinberg have provided me with great inspiration, insight, and intellectual community. Beyond Brown, conversations with Leora Batnitzky, John Bowlin, Beth Eddy, Eric Gregory, Jennifer Herdt, Paul Jones, Chuck Mathewes, Levi McLaughlin, Jim Wetzel, and Joe Winters have all marked turning points in my thinking about the topic, and I am grateful for their engagement with the work. I continue to owe a debt of the deepest gratitude to my undergraduate advisor, Jeff Stout. None of my work would be possible without his teaching, and I seem only to accrue further debts as the years go on. This research was generously supported by fellowships from the American Association of University Women and the Cogut Center for the Humanities. Portions of this project were presented at sessions of Princeton University’s Gender, Sexuality, and Religion Working Group; the Pembroke Seminar; the Brown-Yale-Princeton-Princeton Theological Seminary Ethics Colloquium; and the Cogut Center Fellows’ Seminar at Brown. It benefitted greatly from their participants’ engagement and comments, and I am grateful to the organizers of each for the opportunity. My many thanks also to the administrators of the AAUW, the Pembroke Center, the Cogut Center, and the Religious Studies Department at Brown, who make these occasions—and everything else— vi possible. Nicole Vadnais and Tina Creamer in Religious Studies require additional thanks for their unflagging support and good humor. I have had the great pleasure to write this dissertation in the company of many wonderful fellow students. My deep thanks go to the members of the Religion and Critical Thought program at Brown, past and present—Niki Clements, Jon Sozek, David Lê, Megan McBride, Caroline Kory, and Alexis Glenn—as well as dear colleagues beyond it—Alda Balthrop-Lewis, Michal Ben Noah, Shira Billet, Nic Bommarito, Karida Brown, Emily Dumler, Molly Farneth, Clifton Granby, Rachel Gross, Jonathan Gribetz, Paul Gutierrez, Sarit Kattan-Gribetz, Alex King, Elizabeth Jemison, Michael Lamb, Isabelle Laurenzi, Ferris Lupino, Daniel May, Gustavo Maya, David Newheiser, Daniel Picus, Noga Rotem, Eli Sacks, Michael Sawyer, Kerry Sonia, Yana Stainova, Andrew Starner, and Kevin Wolfe. Their fellowship, criticism, and friendship is a great gift. My special thanks to Molly Farneth for her comments on drafts and many years of conversation on the topic. My deep thanks go also to Chloe Angyal, Molly Borowitz, Molly Ephraim, Rebecca Foresman, Richa Gawande, Elizabeth Kassler-Taub, Jordan Kisner, Callie Lefevre, Zack Mezera, Jocelyn Parr, Josh Schenkkan, and Jonathan Weed for their extraordinary friendship and exceptional support through this project and all else. I love and admire each of you immensely, and am perpetually astounded by the continuation of our relationships into ever more promising determinations. Thank you especially for your late-stage editing, proofreading, and good cheer. My deepest thanks go to my family, whose love, care, and friendship give me more reason to hope for the promise of vulnerability than anything else. These gifts have been vii multiplied by their extraordinary intellectual companionship, which marks the pages of this project and all others I write. While I was reading deeper into gender theory and Christian theology, my brother Max became one of the best analytic philosophers I know, as great a source of technical advice in this vein as dry humor (and sometimes technical advice about the nature of humor). My thanks to him also for finding me a wonderful sister, Brittany. My mother, Charlotte, taught me all of the best lessons I have learned about care, and I am grateful for her decades of practical instruction and years of rich discussion on the theme. I hope that this project allows me to share some of what she has taught. It was also made possible by her careful editing and comments on earlier drafts, for which I owe her special thanks. My father, William, has long exemplified the life of deep thinking and critical inquiry I have hoped to lead. As I have pursued it, he has become my closest companion in its joys and guide to its challenges. I am more grateful for this, and much else, than I can say. Shortly after I began working on vulnerability, mourning, and care, I lost my two biological grandfathers, Jacques Bialek and Tjeerd van Andel, within the space of one month. In the intervening years, I have lost my stepgrandfather, Keith Brueckner, and my stepgrandmother, Marjorie van Andel, as well. With Rose Bialek and my two living grandparents, Elsa Dekking and Kate Pretty, their lives, love, and wisdom have inspired me deeply, and my considerations of vulnerability particularly. This dissertation is dedicated to them. viii Contents Acknowledgements ……… v Introduction ……… 1 1. Resisting Individualism “In a Different