The Feminist Difference : Literature, Psychoanalysis, Race, and Gender

Embattled and belittled, demonized and deemed passe, this text argues that feminism in the late 1990s seems becalmed without being calm. It is as true in literary criticism as elsewhere in the culture - yet it is in literary criticism that these essays locate renewed promises, possibilities, and applications of feminist thought. In readings from an array of texts - legal, literary, cinematic, philosophical and psychonalytical - literary theorist Barbara Johnson demonstrates that the conflicts and uncertainties that beset feminism are signs not of a dead end, but of a creative turning-point.