This book examines the strengths and limitations of the two main strands in feminist criticism, the Anglo-American and the French, paying particular attention to the works of Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva.What are the political implications of a feminist critical practice? How do the problems of the literary text relate to the priorities and perspectives of feminist politics as a whole?Sexual/Textual Politics addresses these fundamental questions and examines the strengths and limitations of the two main strands in feminist criticism, the Anglo-American (...) and the French. It pays particular attention to the works of Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva, and since publication this book has rightly attained the status of a classic. Although written for readers with little knowledge of the subject, Sexual/Textual Politics makes its own intervention into key debates, arguing provocatively for commitedly political and theoretical criticism rather than a textual or apolitical approach.With a new afterword in this edition, Sexual/Textual Politics is a brilliantly accessible must-read for all those interested in feminist literary theory. (shrink)

Rita Felski presents a critical account of current American and European feminist literary theory, and analyzes contemporary fiction by women to show that no theorist can identify a specifically "female" or "feminine" kind of writing without reference to what gender means at a given historical moment. She argues that the idea of a feminist aesthetic is a non-issue needlessly pursued by feminists. She calls for a consideration of the social and cultural context in which these texts were produced and received, (...) and demonstrates her method of an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of literature which can integrate literary and social theory. ISBN 0-674-06894-7: $25.00; ISBN 0-674-06895-5 (pbk.): $9.95. (shrink)

An accessible introduction to French feminist theory and contemporary French women's writing for non-French speakers. The book offers a context to this challenging, controversial body of work by giving clear accounts of the philosophical, post-structural and psychoanalytic debates which have had such an impact on French intellectual life in recent years, and to which French feminist writers offer a response.

This book aims to introduce, situate and contextualize the fictional work by women in the post-war period in France as well as to develop a feminist analysis of the work in French feminist theory. The writers treated include those from an earlier generation, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, Christine Rochefort, Genevieve Serreau and Monique Wittig, as well as Marie Cardinal, Annie Ernaux, Djanet Lachmet, Claire Etcherelli, Michele Perrein and the exponents of ecriture feminine associated with des femmes publishers (...) and the psychanalyse et politique group, such as Chantal Chawaf and Helene Cixous. (shrink)

Margaret Whitford's study provides the ideal introduction to Irigaray's thought, offering a sustained interpretation of her whole corpus, including previously untranslated French texts. Whitford suggests that Irigaray's work should be seen as "philosophy in the feminine," actively opposing the complicity of philosophy with other social practices which exclude or marginalize women.

Marie Cardinal and Multicultural Literacy.Marie Cardinal, raised in Algeria and now living in Montreal, is among France's best-known novelists. Taking the multicultural writings of Cardinal as her central focus, Carolyn Durham interweaves anglophone and francophone texts - critical and fictional, mainstream and feminist - to allow women's writings to engender their own theoretical paradigms. Durham interprets contemporary feminist writing as one particularly significant and complex intersection of modern thought - at once intergenderal, intertextual, interdisciplinary, and intercultural.