Feminism/Postmodernism asks if postmodern feminist politics are possible? Contributors consider issues such as the nature of personal and social identity, and the consequence of changing work and family relations on women's lives. This book should be of interest to students and teachers of feminist theory, postmodernism, political or social theory, literary theory.

Bartky draws on the experience of daily life to unmask the many disguises by which intimations of inferiority are visited upon women. She critiques both the male bias of current theory and the debilitating dominion held by notions of "proper femininity" over women and their bodies in patriarchal culture.

Feminist Epistemology is a collection of original essays exploring the intersections of gender and knowledge. It focuses on the heart of traditional epistemology - a field of study that until now has proved largely impervious to feminist enquiry. Contributors examine the traditional problems of epistemology - the nature of knowledge, justification and objectivity. However, in probing the difference that gender makes to such questions, the questions themselves are transformed. As traditional assumptions are challenged from the perspective of gender, a new set of problems is revealed. Who is...

Diana Tietjens Meyers examines the political underpinnings of psychoanalytic feminism, analyzing the relation between the nature of the self and the structure of good societies. She argues that impartial reason--the approach to moral reflection which has dominated 20th-century Anglo-American philosophy--is inadequate for addressing real world injustices. Subjection and Subjectivity is central to feminist thought across a wide range of disciplines.

In Moral Dilemmas of Feminism, Laurie Shrage explores the moral premises of a critically self-aware and robust feminist sexual politics. Shrage focuses on the issues of prostitution and abortion - issues which have divided feminists and our larger society - in order to develop an interpretive and pluralist approach to feminist ethics. Seeking to avoid the reductionism and ethnocentrism prevalent in much feminist and American moral philosophy, she also identifies some practical political goals that will benefit women. The book begins with an examination of philosophical debates regarding the...

Published in 1982, Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice proposed a new model of moral reasoning based on care, arguing that it better described the moral life of women. An Ethic of Care is the first volume to bring together key contributions to the extensive debate engaging Gilligan's work. It provides the highlights of the often impassioned discussion of the ethic of care, drawing on the literature of the wide range of disciplines that have entered into the debate.
Contributors: Annette Baier, Diana Baumrind,...

When philosophers claim not to be sure if the floor beneath their feet is real, if they have a body, or if other people have minds, what are they really worrying about?

This text proposes a concept of identity which depends on accepting difference. Through readings of Nancy Chodorow, Judith Rose and Julia Kristeva, the book analyzes the relation of theories of self-identity to theories of women's identity, social identity and feminist solidarity. Drawing particularly on the work of Julia Kristeva, the book argues for a reformulation of self-identity as a capacity to participate in a social world, and sketches a model of a self-identity which depends on a capacity to accept non-identity, difference and connections to others.

An adequate analysis of experiences and situations specific to women, especially mothering, requires consideration of women's difference. A focus on women's difference, however, jeopardizes feminism's claims of women's equal individualist subjectivity, and risks recuperating the inequality and oppression of women, especially the view that all women should be mothers, want to be mothers, and are most happy being mothers. This book considers how thinkers including Simone de Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva, Nancy Choderow and Adrienne Rich struggle to negotiate this dilemma of difference in analyzing...

An adequate analysis of experiences and situations specific to women, especially mothering, requires consideration of women's difference. A focus on women's difference, however, jeopardizes feminism's claims of women's equal individualist subjectivity, and risks recuperating the inequality and oppression of women, especially the view that all women should be mothers, want to be mothers, and are most happy being mothers.