This essay participates in a feminist postcolonial critical historiography/epistemology by providing a critique of The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. The essay considers Spivak's success in interrogating her own position as a leading postcolonial critic as she engages in dialogues with various people. Spivak's commitment to cross-cultural exchanges is undeniable. However, at times the resurgence of her authoritative subject position deflects productive tensions generated by careful scrutiny of the category postcolonial.

I. Nature as a System of Production and Reproduction 1. Animal Sociology and a Natural Economy of the Body Politic 2. The Past Is the Contested Zone 3. The Biological Enterprise II. Contested Readings: Narrative Natures 4. In the Beginning Was the Word 5. The Contest for Primate Nature 6. Reading Buchi Emecheta III. Differential Politics of Innappropriate/d Others 7. ’Gender’ for a Marxist Dictionary 8. A Cyborg Manifesto 9. Situated Knowledges 10. The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies.

"Next to Sartre's Search for a Method and in direct opposition to it, Foucault's work is the most noteworthy effort at a theory of history in the last 50 years." -- Library Journal.

This book offers a systematic attempt to explore the point of convergance between feminist theory and the work of Michel Foucault.

The use of "theory" in feminist analysis has been said to threaten feminism as a political force. This collection of work by leading feminist scholars engages with the question of the political status of poststructuralism theory within feminism. Against the view that the use of post-structuralism necessarily weakens feminism, 'Feminists Theorize the Political' affirms the contemporary debate over theory as politically rich and consequential. In laying the theoretical groundwork for the volume, Butler and Scott posed a number of questions to (...) prominent legal scholars, literary critics, philosophers, political theorists, historians, and cultural theorists. The essays do not settle the questions but generate new and productive directions for them. The volume as a whole valorizes the unsettling power and politics of theory. The essays in 'Feminists Theorize the Political' speak to the questions that emerge from the convergence of feminism and poststructuralism: What happens to feminist critique when traditional foundations--experience, history, universal norms--are called into question? Can feminist theory problematize the notion of the subject without losing its political effectivity? Which version of the subject is to questioned, and how does that questioning open up possibilities for reformulating agency, power, and sites of political resistance? What are the consequences of a specifically feminist reformulation of difference? What are the uses and limits of a poststructuralist critique of binary logic for the theorization of racial and class differences, the position of the subaltern? This anthology represents a diverse array of theoretical work within feminist theory with strong political stakes. Although not all of the authors subscribe to poststructuralism, (and few would concede post-structuralism is a monolithic enterprise), each offers an innovative feminist analysis that is in some way motivated in and by the poststructuralist challenge. 'Feminists Theorize The Political' addresses a range of feminist concerns, including productive freedom, anti-discrimination law, rape, and formulating power in terms of exclusion, difference and hierarchy. (shrink)

The ways in which knowledge relates to power have been much discussed in radical education theory. New emphasis on the role of gender and the growing debate about subjectivity have deepened the discussion, while making it more complex. In Getting Smart , Patti Lather makes use of her unique integration of feminism and postmodernism into critical education theory to address some of the most vital questions facing education researchers and teachers.

"Foucault: A Critical Introduction offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the work of one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers. Unlike most books on Foucault, this book offers an assessment of all Foucault's work, including his final writings on governmentality and the self. McNay argues that the later work initiates an important shift in his intellectual concerns which alters any retrospective reading of his writings as a whole." "Throughout, McNay is concerned to assess the normative and political implications (...) of Foucault's social criticism. She goes beyond the level of many commentators to look at the values from which Foucault's work springs, and reveals the implicit assumptions underlying his social critique. McNay also discusses Foucault's position in the modernity/postmodernity debate, his own ambivalence toward Enlightenment thought and his place in recent developments in feminist and cultural theory. The result is an invaluable book which clearly outlines the central themes of Foucault's work, while offering a fresh appraisal of his thought."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

A provocative critique of Western attitudes about the Orient, this history examines the ways in which the West has discovered, invented, and sought to control the East from the 1700s to the present.