This volume collects many of the major essays of feminist theory of the past forty years. The essays included here are those which have made key contributions to feminist theory during this period and which have generated extensive discussion. The volume organizes these essays historically, so as to provide a sense of the major turning points in feminist theory. Beginning with those essays which have provoked widespread discussion in the early days of the second wave, the volume then presents essays (...) which have been central to major discussions since that time. The essays present the complex relationship between feminism and Marxism, the second wave's "gynocentric turn," the theoretical elaboration of differences among women, and the essentialist debate, as these have occupied the attention of feminist theorists. Through this collection, the reader is able to gain a sense of the diverse directions feminist theory has taken over the past forty years, where feminist theory stands at the moment, and the questions which are just now beginning to emerge. (shrink)

If something is to stay in the memory, it must be burned in: only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory. Friedrich Nietzsche.

A bold and revealing book which looks with fresh vision at feminist political writing. Maria Lauret developes a new definition of the genre and illuminates the profound influence and importance of African-American women's writing.

From 30 contributors--including Kate Millett, Barbara Kruger, and Sharon Olds--a richly diverse collection of essays and poetry exploring female sexuality.

"A fine introduction to the bold, contentious, complicated women who categorically refused to be good little girls, and thereby changed the way our culture defines male-female relations".--Voice Literary Supplement.

This article identifies and analyses the dominant stories that academics tell about the development of Western second wave feminist theory. Through an examination of recent production of interdisciplinary feminist and cultural theory journals, I suggest that despite a rhetorical insistence on multiple feminisms, Western feminist trajectories emerge as startlingly singular. In particular, I am critical of an insistent narrative that sees the development of feminist thought as a relentless march of progress or loss. This dominant approach oversimplifies the complex history (...) of Western feminisms, fixes writers and perspectives within a particular decade, and repeatedly (and erroneously) positions poststructuralist feminists as ‘the first’ to challenge the category ‘woman’ as the subject and object of feminist knowledge. Rather than provide a corrective history of Western feminist theory, the article interrogates the techniques through which this dominant story is secured, despite the fact that we (feminist theorists) know better. My focus, therefore, is on citation patterns, discursive framings and some of their textual, theoretical and political effects. As an alternative, I suggest a realignment of key theorists purported to provide a critical break in feminist theory with their feminist citational traces, to force a concomitant re-imagining of our historical legacy and our place within it. (shrink)

Poor Eliza -- Pax Americana : the case of Show boat -- National brands, national body : Imitation of life -- Uncle Sam needs a wife : citizenship and denegation -- Remembering love, forgetting everything else : Now, voyager -- "It's not the tragedies that kill us, it's the messes" : femininity, formalism, and Dorothy Parker -- The compulsion to repeat femininity : Landscape for a good woman and The life and loves of a she-devil.

Wendy Brown's work commands widespread attention and respect, and there has been considerable interest as to how it would develop after "States of Injury." This book will not disappoint.

Her shape and his hand -- Distractions -- The other door, it's floods of tears with consolation enclosed -- Not only the footprints but the water too and what is down there -- There are crossroads.

Fascinating chapters on the relationship between fiction, the theoretical and political debates among women's and feminist groups, and the questions of sexuality... and race... merit broad readership and prove more culturally illuminating for their emphasis on popular fiction.--In Brief.