Aims to bring clarity to the essentialism/anti-essentialism debate at the center of feminist theory and feminist cultural studies. This book deals with origins and contexts of the debate; relationships between essentialism, anti-essentialism, and the power of language; and the reasons for the demonization of essentialism within the academy.
NAOMI SCHOR is William H. Wannamaker Professor of Romance Studies and Professor of Literature at Duke University. Her books include Breaking the Chain: Women, Theory, and French Realist Fiction, Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine, and George Sand and Idealism. With Elizabeth Weed she is founding co-editor of differences. ELIZABETH WEED is Associate Director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University. She is the editor of Coming to Terms: Feminism―Theory―Politics.