Destabilizing Theory: Contemporary Feminist Debates - Paperback

by Michèle Barrett (Author), Anne Phillips (Author)

In the past decade the central principles of western feminist theory have been dramatically challenged. many feminists have endorsed post-structuralism's rejection of essentialist theoretical categories, and have added a powerful gender dimension to contemporary critiques of modernity. Earlier 'women' have been radically undermined, and newer concerns with 'difference', 'identity', and 'power' have emerged. Destabilizing Theory explores these developments in a set of specially commissioned essays by feminist theorists. Does this change amount to a real shift within feminist theory, or will feminism's links with an emancipatory modernism reinstate an older political agenda? Can we transcend the common counterposition of equality and difference, or is feminism condemned to argue within the terms of this binary opposition?

Back Jacket

Feminist scholars in the United States should find this volume very exciting, since many of the essays organize and make available a great deal of scholarly work from Europe and Australia. . . . Several pieces provide valuable summations of the strengths and weaknesses characteristic of earlier approaches to feminist theorizing; other pieces suggest new approaches designed to avoid previsou methodological shortcomings. Some of the papers may well be landmarks for the 1990s.--Alison Jaggar, University of Colorado