On the feminist philosophy of Gillian Howie : materialism and mortality [Book review]

Abstract

It is easy to write about death. You sit, very much alive, and write. It is a different matter to think about death when you are dying--physically, very truly, dying. And so I can only imagine the courage with which Professor Gillian Howie, from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, talked and wrote on the topic of mortality. "How can you live, right up to death, when you have a life-limiting illness?," she asks in March 2012, during a lecture delivered as part of the Engage@Liverpool Initiative (Howie 2012). As glaringly troublesome as it is, this conundrum (to use a word Howie liked) has only relatively recently been given its due attention in philosophical circles. The idea of this in memoriam collection started to take shape after Howie's passing in March 2013. The people who helped shape this edition include her friends and colleagues at the university, the members of the New Thinking on Living with Dying research network, and the attendees at the "Feminism, Materialism, Critical Theory" symposium in December 2013. It is an essential volume for those who want to read further, and in considerable depth, about issues of feminism, materialism, and mortality, and, at their tripartite base, the philosophy of Gillian Howie.