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Gender and Theory
Dialogues on Feminist Criticism

Linda Kauffman (Edited by), L Kauffman (Author)

9780631163565, Wiley

Paperback / softback, published 9 February 1989

272 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.5 cm, 0.397 kg

The political force of feminism cannot be separated from the theories which give it that force. an effective feminist literary criticism must negotiate its relationship to the dominant male voice of traditional practices. Can it change that voice for new ends, or is it robbed of purpose by the inevitably partiarchal nature of traditional discourse?

The essays in this book address this question in a complex set of exploratory dialogues between men and women. They open with interchanges on the philosophical foundations of feminist criticisms and questions about the mechanisms of representation. A second group of essays focus on the gendered body in the act of writing and on individual identity and experience in critical theory. Does theory elide questions of gender, race and class? Or does it help illuminate those differences by historicizing and politicizing the body? The further dialogues initiated here probe the network of relations between author, reader, critic and society in discussing the feminization of genres and the problematic of race.

Rather than striving for pluralistic consensus as they interrogate the relations of feminism and theory, the many voices presented here employ a dialogic model to create a productive and enlivening debate.

Acknowledgements vii

Notes on Contributors viii

Introduction
Linda Kauffman 1

PART I REPRESENTING PHILOSOPHY 9

1 Revolution in Bounds: Wollstonecraft, Women, and Reason
Timothy J. Reiss 11

2 Wollstonecraft Our Contemporary
Frances Ferguson 51

3 The Philosophical Bases of Feminist Literary Criticisms
Ellen Messer-Davidow 63

4 Solidarity or Perspectivity?
David R. Shumway 107

PART II THE BODY WRITING/WRITING THE BODY 119

5 Me and My Shadow
Jane Tompkins 121

6 Citing the Subject
Gerald M. MacLean 140

7 Of Me(n) and Feminism: Who(se) is the Sex that Writes?
Joseph Allen Boone 158

8 Men Against Patriarchy
Toril Moi 181

PART III TRANSFORMING TEXTS AND SUBJECTS 189

9 Toward a Female Sublime
Patricia Yaeger 191

10 At Risk in The Sublime: The Politics of Gender and Theory
Lee Edelman 213

11 The Race for Theory Barbara Christian 225

12 Appropriative Gestures: Theory and Afro-American Literary Criticism
Michael Awkward 238

Index 247

Subject Areas: Literature: history & criticism [DS]

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