For such a vexing topic as gender identity, this dissertation asks a rather straightforward question: If gender identity is—as Judith Butler has asserted—socially constructed and discursively mediated, then why does transgender hormone therapy (THT) work? This is the question concerning endocrinology that I ask Butler, and their answer is, if requiring of delicate assessment and interpretation, clear: it doesn't. Butler's work reveals an admonishing view that the efficacity of THT is due to placebo effect, in turn brought on by the bewitchment of the trans* who seeks medical transition. In a logic similar to sin and salvation, if only the trans* had not believed in gender dysphoria, then there would be no (putative) efficacity to THT whatsoever. With our answer, we begin a perilous adventure of discovering just why such a preeminent gender theorist (and trans* themselves) with no experience of gender dysphoria, and no desire to medically transition, would say this. We examine Butler's gender theory, their concept of desire, their views on the self, on transsexuality, their rarely discussed philosophies of science and nature, and their dearth of citations of transsexual voices. Due to this lack, I lend my own, relying upon my experience with gender dysphoria, THT, …

This dissertation offers a philosophical analysis of the ecological crisis through the lens of Hannah Arendt. It frames the ecological crisis as a struggle for situated cohabitation. By analyzing the work of Arendt, this dissertation shows the ways in which the ecological crisis is entwined with the political crisis of plurality. I suggest that these two issues are interconnected and that we need to address both for situated cohabitation. This dissertation is an interdisciplinary work, drawing from environmental philosophy, feminist philosophy, and educational practice. The work is intended to provide novel insight into the current ecological crisis in three ways. First, it grounds its theory in the work of Arendt, a thinker not usually situated in the prevue of environmental scholarship. Second, by synthesizing Arendt's account of plurality with the work of Judith Butler and Ricardo Rozzi, this dissertation explores a politics of plurality that can take account of social and ecological conditions of plurality. Third and finally, the dissertation merges theory with praxis by offering a practical program for doing environmental philosophy with children, a program derived from my sustained experiences working as a facilitator of a philosophy for children (P4C) program. This dissertation does not seek just a …

Riverine avulsion is a radical divergence of a riverbed. In this dissertation, I take this movement as a paradigm for understanding the features of radical change. I develop a model for understanding the essential features of radical change. I argue that the main features involved in avulsion are tension, abandonment, and material freedom. In my analysis, tension provides the catalyst for change, such that it pressurizes complex systems of organization to the point of collapse. I use Catherine Malabou's work on denegation to understand the collapse of a system as an accident; the rupture of a system entails that it is no longer affirmed nor negated, it is abandoned by the process of becoming. Utilizing the work of Deleuze, I present the moment of rupture itself as the moment where materiality breaks free from the restrictions of an organizing system to becoming consolidated into countless new forms of organization. In my analysis of the ontology of avulsion, I employ a new materialist process of becoming to capture the complex networks of relations involved in the moment of creation. I challenge these Deleuzean and new materialist fields of philosophy over their affinity for affirmation by integrating accidental abandonment. Finally, I propose …

The bedrock of this dissertation is the idea that our patterns of thought, speech, and action can be distilled into two distinct approaches defined by (1) the use of things on one hand and (2) the relation to persons on the other. That first approach is represented in our life with technology and has expanded to the point of omnipresence. Being so ubiquitous, technology largely goes unexamined in the way it functions, the effect it has on us, and the effect it has on our neighbor. In this manner, the technological approach is an over-extension of the manipulation of things to the negation of the relation to persons. As a result, our capacity to relate to persons outside a narrow scope had been atrophied. This work is an attempt at renewing the relational approach within contexts shaped by and shaped for the manipulation of things, i.e., technically minded society. To that end, it is necessary to first explore the work of thinkers who have written on relationality in ways which address the over-extension of the technological approach. The thinkers I have chosen in this endeavor are Martin Buber, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, and Ivan Illich, each of whom wrote thoughtfully …