Description
Book SynopsisThe 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
Table of Contents
Part 1: Representing Philosophy ; 1. Timothy J. Reiss, Revolution in Bounds: Wollstonecraft, Women and Reason ; 2. Frances Ferguson, Wollstonecraft our Contemporary ; 3. Ellen Messer-Davidow, The Philosophical Bases of Feminist Literary Criticisms ; 4. David R. Shumway, Solidarity or Perspectivity? ; Part 2: The Body Writing/Writing the Body ; 5. Jane Tompkins, Me and My Shadow ; 6. Gerald McLean, Citing the Subject ; 7. Joseph Allen Boone, Me(n) and Feminism: Who(se) is the Sex that Writes? ; 8. Toril Moi, Men Against Patriarchy ; Part 3: Transforming Texts and Subjects ; 9. Patricia Yaegar, Toward a Female Sublime ; 10. Lee Edelman, At Risk in the Sublime: The Politics of Gender and Theory ; 11. Barbara Christian, The Race for Theory ; 12. Michael Awkward, Appropriate Gestures: Theory and Afro-American Literary Criticism
