The study of Buffy the Vampire is rich in scholarship that focuses on the philosophical and ethical implications of the show, including its feminist ethics. This work, for instance, in Buffy and the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy, tends to draw on an analytical philosophical tradition that frames ethics as a Platonic consideration of "the good," a Kantian focus on "the just," or a Gilligan approach of "ethics of care v. ethics of justice." My work emerges instead from within a poststructuralist/Continental tradition in which ethics is concerned with the relationship that we have with the self (eg. Michel Foucault) and with the Other (eg. Emmanuel Levinas). French feminist Luce Irigaray argues that for a revolution in ethics to occur, women must first establish themselves as subjects (a self) and then engage in "love of same" (other women) before they can properly engage in "love of the other" and enter into newly mediated relationships with men, the world and the divine.

Buffy follows the journey of a young woman with extraordinary powers, her attempt to come to terms with these powers--to define herself rather than be defined by the powers or by others--and to enter into transformed relationships with women, men, the world, and the "otherworldly/the divine." These concerns nicely parallel the ethical concerns of Irigaray.

My paper will focus on the implications that the establishment of this new female subjectivity has on her relationships with men and whether there is a need for a new male subject, a "New Man" who would be a fitting mate for this "New Woman." The show explores this question through the dramatization of Buffy's three serious relationships with Angel, Riley and Spike. Arwen Spicer's excellent "Love's Bitch but Man Enough to Admit It": Spike's Hybridized Gender" would suggest that Spike is the most likely contender for this position of the "New Man." However, the last episode complicates, yet does not erase this possibility. Significantly, Buffy's pronouncement to Angel in the last episode: " I'm cookie dough. I'm not done baking. I'm not finished becoming whoever the hell it is I'm going to turn out to be," indicates that ironically, at the end of the show, Buffy considers herself to be back at the beginning of this female ethical journey, that is, in the ethical position that Irigaray suggests must take place before "love of other" or even that of "love of same," which is the establishment of a self. This statement, together with the proliferation of slayers, ends the show on a feminist-friendly note on two counts. However, the continuation of the more male-centered spin-off Angel, together with Spike's "survival" on that show, indicates Joss Whedon et al have not abandoned this crucial feminist question-of the necessity for a revolution to occur in both male and female subjects and for the relationship between them to be transformed.