Moira Margaret Gatens

1. Introduction

Moira Margaret Gatens is an Australian philosopher whose work has been central to contemporary debates on feminist theory, embodiment, and the social and political philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Writing from the late twentieth century onward, she has contributed to shifting Anglophone philosophy away from abstract models of the subject toward accounts that begin with embodied, sexually differentiated, and socially situated agents.

Her concept of imaginary bodies—the idea that bodies are understood and governed through shared social imaginaries—has become a reference point in feminist theory, political philosophy, and critical legal studies. Gatens argues that apparently neutral concepts such as equality, autonomy, and citizenship generally presuppose a specific, historically masculine and able‑bodied norm, and that political theory must instead take bodily difference and interdependence as fundamental.

A second major strand of her work is a sustained feminist engagement with Spinoza. Together with Genevieve Lloyd and other interlocutors, Gatens has developed what is often called Spinozist feminism, using Spinoza’s metaphysics of body, affect, and power to rethink freedom, imagination, and democratic life. This approach has influenced both feminist philosophy and the wider revival of Spinoza studies.

Situated initially in the largely analytic Australian academy of the 1970s and 1980s, Gatens helped institutionalize feminist philosophy as a rigorous subfield. Her writings are frequently cited in discussions of sexual difference, citizenship and pluralism, and the politics of representation, and they continue to shape debates about how democratic societies might acknowledge deep differences without entrenching domination.

2. Life and Historical Context

Moira Gatens was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1954 (the exact year is sometimes given approximately). She was educated and later employed at the University of Sydney, completing a PhD in philosophy around 1980 and beginning a lectureship there in 1983. Her career unfolded within an Australian university system undergoing rapid expansion and diversification, yet still marked by a strong analytic orientation and limited institutional space for feminist or continental philosophy.

Her formation coincided with second‑wave feminism, the emergence of women’s studies, and growing interest in critical theory. Australian feminism in this period was shaped both by local struggles over labor, reproductive rights, and Indigenous sovereignty, and by transnational influences from European and North American feminist thought. Gatens’s work developed at the intersection of these currents, combining analytic clarity with engagement with continental figures such as Spinoza and Foucault.

The broader intellectual and political climate of the late twentieth century also informed her concerns: debates over formal versus substantive equality, critiques of liberal individualism, and new attention to race, class, and sexuality as intersecting axes of power. Within this context, Gatens’s focus on embodiment and sexual difference responded to what many feminists saw as a persistent abstraction in both political philosophy and legal theory.

Her election as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2004 and appointment as Challis Professor of Philosophy in 2012 mark the consolidation of feminist philosophy within mainstream academic institutions. Historically, commentators often situate Gatens among a generation of Australian philosophers who helped connect local debates to global discussions in feminist and post‑liberal political theory.

3. Intellectual Development

Gatens’s intellectual trajectory is often described in phases, each building on but also revising earlier concerns.

Early Formation and Feminist Critique

In her early work (late 1970s–1980s), Gatens engaged with emerging feminist critiques of liberalism. She examined how canonical notions of equality and rights presuppose a universal subject that, critics argued, historically mirrored male, white, and able‑bodied norms. This period culminated in Feminism and Philosophy: Perspectives on Difference and Equality (1991), where she systematized debates on difference versus equality and began to theorize sexual difference as neither simply biological nor merely symbolic.

Imaginary Bodies and Corporeality

During the early to mid‑1990s, Gatens turned to a more explicit theorization of embodiment and power, drawing on Spinoza, Foucault, and feminist theory. Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality (1996) elaborated the idea that collective imaginaries shape how bodies are perceived and governed. Commentators often view this phase as her most distinctive contribution to theories of corporeality and social imaginaries.

Spinoza and Democratic Pluralism

From the late 1990s onward, Gatens increasingly engaged in historical‑philosophical work on Spinoza, culminating in Spinoza’s Hard Path to Freedom (2010, with Genevieve Lloyd). Here she read Spinoza’s metaphysics and politics through feminist concerns about embodiment, affect, and dependency. This phase deepened her interest in freedom, imagination, and collective power, and informed later essays on citizenship, rights, and pluralism in contemporary democracies.

Recent Work on Citizenship and Social Imaginaries

More recent writings extend her earlier analyses to multicultural and post‑colonial contexts, examining how imaginaries of the “proper” citizen body structure inclusion and exclusion. While maintaining continuity with her long‑standing emphasis on embodiment, Gatens’s later work places greater weight on legal and institutional frameworks and on the possibility of transforming imaginaries through democratic practice.

4. Major Works

This section outlines major works widely associated with Gatens’s philosophical contributions.

Feminism and Philosophy: Perspectives on Difference and Equality (1991)

This book addresses debates within feminism over whether political struggle should prioritize equality (emphasizing sameness with men) or difference (emphasizing women’s specific experiences and capacities). Gatens analyzes canonical philosophical conceptions of the subject and argues that many egalitarian frameworks rely on an implicitly male norm. The work is frequently cited for its nuanced discussion of sexual difference and its critique of abstract accounts of rights.

Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality (1996)

Imaginary Bodies develops Gatens’s influential concept of imaginary bodies, arguing that collective social imaginaries shape how bodies are valued, regulated, and experienced. Drawing on Spinoza and Foucault, the book links corporeality, power, and ethics, contending that law and institutions materialize imaginaries on specific kinds of bodies. It is often considered her most systematic statement on embodiment.

Spinoza’s Hard Path to Freedom (2010, with Genevieve Lloyd)

Co‑authored with Genevieve Lloyd, this work offers a reinterpretation of Spinoza’s political and ethical philosophy. It explores freedom as a difficult, ongoing practice of transforming one’s affects and relations, rather than as mere non‑interference. The book has been influential in both Spinoza studies and feminist political theory, as it foregrounds embodiment, imagination, and collective life.

Other Contributions

Gatens has also contributed chapters and essays to collections such as Key Concepts in Feminist Theory and Research and numerous articles on Spinoza, feminist political theory, and citizenship. These shorter works often refine or apply ideas first articulated in her major monographs.

5. Core Ideas: Imaginary Bodies and Embodiment

Gatens’s concept of imaginary bodies is central to her philosophy of embodiment. She argues that bodies are never simply biological entities; they are always interpreted and organized through a social imaginary—shared images, narratives, and assumptions that make some bodily forms appear normal, valuable, or dangerous.

Imaginary Bodies

In Imaginary Bodies, Gatens proposes that imaginaries of gender, race, and ability are sedimented in institutions, law, and everyday practices. These imaginaries do not merely reflect pre‑given bodies; they actively shape what bodies can do and how they are treated. Proponents of this reading emphasize how Gatens links symbolic representation with material effects, avoiding a strict divide between discourse and physiology.

Critics sometimes suggest that the notion of imaginary bodies risks underplaying biological constraints or overemphasizing the coherence of a “social imaginary.” Supporters respond that Gatens’s Spinozist background provides a model in which biological capacities and social meanings are intertwined rather than opposed.

Embodied Subjectivity

Gatens maintains that subjectivity and agency are necessarily embodied. She questions philosophical traditions that prioritize disembodied reason or abstract personhood. Instead, she argues that capacities for thought, emotion, and action depend on bodily powers and vulnerabilities, which are differently configured across sexed and other marked bodies.

An important corollary is her insistence that ethical and political concepts—such as autonomy, responsibility, and rights—must be re‑thought in light of interdependence, vulnerability, and sexual difference. Some commentators see this as aligning Gatens with broader currents in care ethics and materialist feminism, while others emphasize her distinctive use of Spinoza to theorize embodiment without resorting to essentialist claims about “women’s nature.”

6. Spinoza, Freedom, and Feminist Theory

Gatens is widely associated with a Spinozist approach to feminist theory. She reads Spinoza’s metaphysics of body and affect as offering resources for rethinking freedom, power, and embodiment.

Spinoza’s Metaphysics and the Feminist Subject

Drawing on Spinoza’s monism and his account of mind–body parallelism, Gatens argues that subjects are modes of a single substance, constituted through networks of relations and affects. This framework, proponents claim, enables a conception of the subject that is neither an isolated individual nor a mere construct of discourse. It provides a way to understand embodied, relational subjects whose capacities depend on their concrete situations.

Some feminist theorists see this as a valuable alternative to both liberal individualism and purely social‑constructivist accounts of identity. Others question whether Spinoza’s seventeenth‑century framework can fully address contemporary concerns about gender, race, and colonialism, noting that his own texts contain few explicit resources on these issues. Gatens and collaborators respond by emphasizing creative reinterpretation rather than historical fidelity.

Freedom, Power, and Imagination

In Spinoza’s Hard Path to Freedom, Gatens and Lloyd interpret Spinoza’s freedom as an arduous process of transforming one’s affects and increasing one’s power to act. Freedom, on this view, is not the absence of constraint but participation in relations that enhance collective capacities. This has implications for feminist theory: rather than understanding liberation as simple independence from others, it redefines emancipation in terms of transforming relations of dependency and power.

Gatens also emphasizes Spinoza’s account of imagination as central to both oppression and emancipation. Social imaginaries, she suggests, operate through imaginative habits that can entrench stereotypes or open new possibilities. Commentators have drawn connections between this reading and her earlier work on imaginary bodies, arguing that Spinoza provides the metaphysical underpinnings for her account of embodied political life.

7. Key Contributions to Political and Social Philosophy

Gatens’s political and social philosophy centers on how embodied subjects participate in and are shaped by institutions, rights regimes, and imaginaries of citizenship.

Rethinking Equality, Rights, and Citizenship

In Feminism and Philosophy, Gatens interrogates liberal notions of formal equality, arguing that they often presuppose a disembodied, implicitly masculine subject. She contends that genuine equality requires attention to bodily difference and material conditions, a view that has influenced debates over affirmative action, reproductive rights, and disability.

Her later work extends this critique to citizenship. Gatens analyzes how imaginaries of the “proper citizen body” regulate inclusion and exclusion, particularly in multicultural societies. Proponents see her account as contributing to democratic pluralism, in which political community is understood as an ongoing negotiation among differently embodied and positioned subjects.

Power, Institutions, and the Social Imaginary

Gatens integrates insights from Foucault and Spinoza to theorize power as both constraining and enabling. Institutions—legal, educational, medical—are seen as sites where imaginary bodies are produced and enforced. This perspective has been used in critical legal studies and social theory to analyze how laws governing sexuality, reproduction, and migration inscribe specific imaginaries on certain bodies.

Critics occasionally contend that her emphasis on imaginaries and embodiment may underplay economic structures or class relations. Others argue that her framework can be combined with Marxist or materialist analyses, pointing to her insistence that imaginaries are materialized through concrete practices and institutional arrangements.

Democratic Pluralism and Interdependence

Gatens contributes to democratic theory by emphasizing interdependence and vulnerability as fundamental political facts. Rather than imagining citizens as independent choosers, she presents them as mutually affecting bodies whose flourishing depends on the quality of their relations. This has informed discussions of care, social welfare, and the politics of recognition.

Her approach is often compared with other post‑liberal or agonistic models of democracy. While some commentators situate her within a broader move toward relational and affective accounts of politics, others highlight her distinctively Spinozist grounding of these ideas in metaphysics and embodiment.

8. Methodology and Interdisciplinary Reach

Gatens’s methodology combines historical exegesis, conceptual analysis, and critical feminist theory. She often reads canonical texts—especially Spinoza—through contemporary concerns about gender and embodiment, while also using those texts to question current assumptions.

Philosophical Method

Her work typically involves:

• Close reading of historical sources, attentive to context yet open to constructive reinterpretation.
• Analysis of key concepts (e.g., equality, freedom, citizenship) to uncover their often embodied presuppositions.
• Engagement with empirical and social‑theoretical research, without reducing philosophy to social science.

This approach has been praised for bridging analytic and continental styles: Gatens employs clear argumentation while drawing on a wide range of theoretical resources. Some historians of philosophy, however, raise questions about anachronism in feminist readings of early modern thinkers; others defend such readings as productive forms of “philosophical genealogy.”

Interdisciplinary Influence

Gatens’s ideas have been taken up in multiple fields:

Researchers in sociology, anthropology, and education have drawn on imaginary bodies to analyze how norms of gender, race, and ability are reproduced in everyday practices. This interdisciplinary reach reflects Gatens’s commitment to understanding philosophy as engaged with concrete social realities, while still maintaining distinctively philosophical questions about subjectivity, power, and freedom.

9. Impact on Feminist Thought and Spinoza Studies

Gatens’s work has had significant influence in both feminist theory and the specialized field of Spinoza studies.

Feminist Thought

In feminist philosophy, Gatens is often cited for helping to move debates beyond the binary of equality versus difference by foregrounding embodiment and social imaginaries. Her analysis of the abstract liberal subject has informed critiques of mainstream legal and political theory, while her notion of imaginary bodies has been adopted and adapted by scholars working on race, disability, and sexuality.

Some feminists draw on her work to argue for materialist accounts of gender that avoid both biological essentialism and purely discursive models. Others integrate her ideas with intersectional frameworks, extending her focus on sexual difference to consider how multiple axes of oppression shape embodied experience. Critiques sometimes note that her early work concentrates more on gender than on race or coloniality, though later commentators highlight the applicability of her framework to these issues.

Spinoza Studies

Within Spinoza scholarship, Gatens—often in collaboration with Genevieve Lloyd—is recognized for articulating a non‑liberal reading of Spinoza’s political philosophy that emphasizes freedom as empowerment, affect, and collective life. This has contributed to a broader trend that views Spinoza as a resource for contemporary democratic and radical politics.

Her work is also part of a wider effort to bring feminist perspectives into the history of philosophy. Some historians praise her for demonstrating how Spinoza’s metaphysics can be mobilized to address questions of embodiment and gender, while others caution that such readings may understate tensions between Spinoza’s texts and feminist commitments. Nonetheless, her interpretations have been widely discussed in conferences, edited volumes, and specialized journals.

Overall, Gatens is frequently cited as a figure who has helped bridge feminist theory and early modern philosophy, encouraging reciprocal illumination between historical scholarship and contemporary political concerns.

10. Legacy and Historical Significance

Gatens’s legacy is often assessed along two intertwined axes: her role in reshaping philosophical understandings of embodiment and sexual difference, and her contribution to the institutional and intellectual prominence of feminist philosophy, especially in Australia.

Historically, commentators place her among a generation of scholars who consolidated feminist theory as a central component of academic philosophy, rather than an external critique. Her appointment as Challis Professor of Philosophy and election as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities are taken as markers of this shift. Within the Australian context, she is viewed as an important figure in connecting local debates to international discussions in feminist and continental philosophy.

In terms of ideas, her concept of imaginary bodies and her Spinozist account of freedom and embodiment have become enduring reference points. Subsequent work in feminist political theory, democratic theory, and critical legal studies often engages her arguments—sometimes extending them to new domains (such as digital media or environmental politics), sometimes challenging their adequacy for addressing race, colonialism, or global capitalism. This ongoing engagement suggests a legacy characterized less by a closed “system” than by a set of conceptual tools for analyzing embodied power.

From a longer historical perspective, Gatens is frequently cited as part of the broader re‑evaluation of early modern philosophy through feminist and post‑liberal lenses, helping to reposition Spinoza in contemporary debates about subjectivity and democracy. Her work thus occupies a place in the history of philosophy where questions of gender, body, and power become integral to, rather than peripheral within, mainstream theoretical concerns.