Rosalyn Diprose

Rosalyn Diprose
Born
Australia
Education
Alma mater
Philosophical work
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolContinental
Main interestsFeminist philosophy
Critical Phenomenology
Biopolitics
Notable ideasontological concept of 'corporeal generosity' as the basis of ethics

Rosalyn Diprose is Emeritus Professor of philosophy at University of New South Wales.[1] Engagement with her published research in Philosophy (sub categories (Comparative) Literature and Gender Studies) has placed her on Stanford University's "World Top 2% of Scientists" list for the years 2025, 2022, and 2021.[2] Diprose is best known for the interdisciplinary application of her unique concept of "corporeal generosity" developed through engagement with existential phenomenology (particularly Merleau-Ponty and Levinas), the Continental philosophies of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Arendt, and numerous feminist philosophies of embodiment. She has been recognised for her contributions to scholarship on these philosophers.[3] Her concept of "corporeal generosity" is now considered to be seminal in the emerging field of Critical Phenomenology.[4]

Biography and Career [5]

Rosalyn Diprose was raised on a family farm in mid-Western NSW (on "unceded" Wiradjuri country). After graduating with a degree in Biomedical Science from the University of Technology Sydney in 1976, she worked for 2 years in pharmacology research in Sydney and 4 years for Top Deck Travel in London and Sydney in administrative and managerial roles,[6] before undertaking a liberal Arts degree in Philosophy and History at The University of Sydney (1982-1986). She completed a PhD in Philosophy at UNSW Sydney under the supervision of Prof.Genevieve Lloyd (1987-1991). Her dissertation is entitled: "Ethics and the Body of Woman: Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger".[7] Diprose was the first woman appointed as a full-time lecturer in Philosophy at Flinders University of South Australia (1991-1994), before taking up a tenured position in the School of Philosophy at UNSW Sydney in 1994. During her academic career she has also held fully funded visiting professorships at several institutions, including in the Department of Philosophy at Rhodes University, South Africa in 2002, in Human Geography, the Open University UK in 2006;[8] and the Humanities Institute at SUNY Buffalo USA in 2014.[9] She held the posts of Deputy Head of School and Research Coordinator for the School of History and Philosophy at UNSW (2009-2012). Diprose was awarded the "UNSW Vice Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching for Postgraduate Supervision" in 2009 and went on to oversee 20 successful PhD completions as primary supervisor in 15 years 1998-2014.

Development of "Corporeal Generosity" as an Ontological Concept and a Basis for Ethics

In her first book, The Bodies of Women (1994), Diprose, as Alexandra Howson explains, broke new ground by developing a feminist ethics from a combination of two ideas in Continental philosophy: (1) Foucault's approach that takes up the Ancient Greek concept of "ethos" as one's embodied "manner of being" and ethics as a "practice of freedom" or "technique of self", and (2) Irigaray and Derrida's notions of relational and irreducible difference generated within sociality.[10] In that book, Diprose also begins her entry into biopolitical critique by applying her feminist ethics to analyses of the erasure of plurality in biomedical discourses and practices in human reproduction and genetics.[11] At the same time she prefigures the later idea of generosity by positing ontological pre-conscious gift-giving, as opposed to utilitarianism and social contract, as the basis of sociality. Through published scholarship on the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Arendt from the early 2000s, Diprose developed her mature concept of corporeal generosity.[12] Diprose summarises her fully-developed concept of corporeal generosity in the "ontological sense as openness toward, or being-given to, others characteristic of human subjectivity [and] interrelationality", which is imbued with affectivity and is the basis of ethics.[13] Veera Kinnunen explains the ethical and political dimensions of Diprose's concept in a chapter of her book devoted to the topic: "being open to difference is the basis of community" with the human and non-human.[14] Other commentators, such as Marsha Meskimmon, elaborate the reasons why this openness to unknowable and irrepressible difference matters: rather than a moral principle, generosity, so understood, is the basis of corporeal self-hood, inter-subjectivity (affecting and being affected by others), communication, innovation, and agency.[15] Conversely, foreclosing the other's difference (alterity) is the path to injustice and totalitarianism. Diprose makes this point in detail throughout her published research with respect to gender and race relations,[16] most recently in the book Arendt, Natality and Biopolitics (2019).[17] Meskimmon uses the idea of corporeal generosity in her approach to aesthetics to develop her own idea of "cosmopolitan imagination [as the] key to engendering a global sense of ethical and political responsibility" (ibid. p.7). Other theorists use Diprose's concept of corporeal generosity to develop an ethics of generosity applicable to a range of fields including issues in human reproduction (eg. Hird 2007),[18] environmental ethics (eg. Hawkins, 2006[19] and Lorimer, 2015[20]), "geographies of generosity" (eg. Barnett & Land 2007[21], Yusoff 2013[22]), and business and organisation ethics (eg. Kinnunen, 2022; Hancock, 2008;[23] various by A. Pullen eg 2021[24]).

See also

Selected Bibliography

In order of most cited and discussed:[25]

  • Diprose, Rosalyn, (BOOK) Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, SUNY, 2002, ISBN 0791453219 Selected by a panel of experts for "book discussion session" at the 42nd annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) in Boston in 2003 (https://www.spep.org/website/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Program2003)
  • Diprose, Rosalyn, (BOOK)The Bodies of Women: Ethics, Embodiment and Sexual Difference, Routledge, London, 1994, ISBN 978-0-415-09783-3
  • Rosalyn Diprose and Jack Reynolds (eds. BOOK), Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts, Acumen, 2008, ISBN 9781844651160
  • Diprose, Rosalyn, "Corporeal Interdependence: From Vulnerability to dwelling in ethical community", SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism, #132, 42(3), 2013, pp.185-204
  • Diprose, Rosalyn, N Stephenson, K Race, C Mills, G Hawkins, "Governing the future: Political Technologies of Risk Management", Security Dialogue, 39(2), 2008, pp.267-288
  • Diprose, Rosalyn & E. Ziarek, (BOOK) Arendt, Natailty and Biopolitics, Edinburgh University Press, 2018 , ISBN 978-1-4744-4434-7 Awarded the "Symposium Book Prize 2019" by the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy[26]
  • Diprose, Rosalyn. "Nietzsche, Ethics & sexual Difference", Radical Philosophy, 52, 1989. pp27-33 (reprinted twice in edited collections of essays on Nietzsche's philosophy, most recently in Richard White (ed), Nietzsche, 2002 ISBN 978-1-138-74188-1
  • Diprose, Rosalyn. "Biopolitical technologies of prevention", Health Sociology Review, 17(2), 2008, pp 141-150

References

  1. ^ "Emeritus Professor Rosalyn Diprose". UNSW Research. Retrieved 16 February 2026.
  2. ^ "Diprose, Rosalyn". topresearcherslist.com. Retrieved 16 February 2026.
  3. ^ Diprose has delivered fully-funded keynote addresses at the 32nd and 42nd International Merleau-Ponty Circle Conferences at U Memphis (2007) and U New Mexico (2017), and was the only Australian to do so as of 2021. The latter is published as "Merleau-Ponty's Ontology of Sound" in Philosophy Today, 63(1), 2019 doi:10.5840/philtoday2019610256. She also has published research in peer-reviewed collections of essays on Levinas' and Nietzsche's philosophies, eg., R. Diprose, "Nietzsche and Levinas on the Meaning of Responsibility' in J Stauffer and B Bergo (eds), Nietzsche and Levinas: After the Death of a Certain God, Columbia University Press, pp.116-133 ISBN 978-0-231-14405-6
  4. ^ Concept 12 in the book 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology, G. Weiss, AV. Murphy, G Salamon (eds), Nortwestern U P, 2020, ISBN 978-0810141148, pp.83–91
  5. ^ "Emeritus Professor Rosalyn Diprose". School of Humanities & Languages; UNSW Arts and Social Sciences. UNSW Sydney. Retrieved 16 June 2017.
  6. ^ Bill James, Top Deck Daze, p.434, Kokoda Press
  7. ^ Diprose, Rosalyn (1991). Ethics and the Body of Woman: Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger (PhD Thesis thesis). University of New South Wales (Australia).
  8. ^ see "Acknowledgements" Paragraph 32(1) 2009, special issue on "Extending Hospitality", p.13 (containing papers from a workshop held in conjunction with Diprose's visit and prompted by her book "Corporeal Generosity"
  9. ^ Diprose named first WBFO-Silvers Visiting Professor
  10. ^ For Howson's full account see "Ethical Bodies: Rosalyn Diprose" in Embodying Gender, Sage Publications, 2005, pp.81-86 ISBN 0761959955. For Diprose's explanation see The Bodies of Women, chapter 2.
  11. ^ see also Rosalyn Diprose, "A Genethics that Makes Sense" in Diprose and R. Ferrell (eds), Cartographies: Poststructuralism and the Mapping of Bodies and Spaces, Allen & Unwin, 1991, ISBN 978-0-04-442291-4. Reprinted in V. Shiver and I. Moser (eds), Biopolitics: A Feminist and Ecological Reader on Biotechnology, Zed Books, 1995. ISBN 978-1-85649-336-9
  12. ^ For example, Diprose, "Bearing Witness to Cultural Difference with Apology, to Levinas" in Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, 6(2), 2001, doi: 10.1080/09697250120076457 ; Diprose, "Arendt and Nietzsche on Responsibility and Futurity" in Philosophy and Social Criticism, 34(6), 2008, DOI: 10.1177/0191453708090331; Diprose, "The Art of Dreaming: Merleau-Ponty and Petyarre on Flesh Expressing a World" in Cultural Studies Review, 34(6), 2006, 32-43
  13. ^ 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology p.81
  14. ^ Veera Kinnunen, "Corporeal Ethics in the More-Than-Human World (Rosalyn Diprose)" in Affect in Organization and Management, Routledge, 2022 pp94-108, ISBN 978-1-032-02320-5
  15. ^ Marsha Meskimmon, Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination, Routledge, 2011, pp. 8 & 18-19, ISBN 978-0-415-46920-3
  16. ^ Diprose, Rosalyn (1 December 2008). ""Where' Your People From, Girl?": Belonging to Race, Gender, and PlaceBeneath Clouds". differences. 19 (3): 28–58. doi:10.1215/10407391-2008-009.
  17. ^ Diprose, Rosalyn; Ziarek, Ewa Plonowska (20 January 2019). Arendt, Natality and Biopolitics. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-4744-4436-1.
  18. ^ Hird, Myra J. "The Corporeal Generosity of Maternity". Body & Society. 13 (1): 1–20. doi:10.1177/1357034x07074760.
  19. ^ Hawkins, Gay (2006). The Ethics of Waste. Roman & Littlefield. ISBN 0868409391.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  20. ^ Lorimer, Jamie (2015). Wildlife in the Anthropocene. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9780816681082.
  21. ^ Barnett, Clive; Land, David (2007). "Geographies of generosity: Beyond the 'moral turn'". Geoforum. 38 (6): 1065–1075.
  22. ^ Yusoff, K (2013). "Geologic Life: Prehistory, Climate, Futures in the Anthropocene". Environmental and Planning D; Society and Space. 31 (5).
  23. ^ Hancock, Philip. "Embodied Generosity and an Ethics of Organization". Organization Studies. 29 (10): 1357–1373. doi:10.1177/0170840608093545.
  24. ^ Pullen, Alison; Vachhani, Sheena J. (12 May 2020). "Feminist Ethics and Women Leaders: From Difference to Intercorporeality". Journal of Business Ethics. 173 (2): 233–243. doi:10.1007/s10551-020-04526-0.
  25. ^ [1]
  26. ^ "Book Award | CSCP / SCPC". c-scp.org. Retrieved 25 February 2026.


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