Table Of ContentDESTABILIZING THEORY
CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST DEBATES
EDITED BY MICHELE BARRETT & ANNE PHILLIPS
Destabilizing Theory
Destabilizing Theory
Contemporary Feminist Debates
Edited by
Michele Barrett and Anne Phillips
/■
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
1992
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
This collection and Introduction
© 1992 Michele Barrett and Anne Phillips,
each chapter copyright the author
Originating publisher: Polity Press, Cambridge
in association with Blackwell Publishers, Oxford
First published in the U.S.A. by
Stanford University Press, 1992
Printed in Great Britain
Cloth ISBN 0-8047-2030-4
Paper ISBN 0-8047-2031-2
LC 91-67234
This book is printed on acid-free paper
Contents
List of Plates vi
List of Contributors vii
Preface and Acknowledgements ix
t
1 Introduction 1
Michele Barrett and Anne Phillips
2 Universal Pretensions in Political Thought 10
Anne Phillips
3 Post-Post-Modernism? Theorizing Social Complexity 31
Sylvia Walby
4 ‘Women’s Interests’ and the Post-Structuralist State 53
Rosemary Pringle and Sophie Watson
5 Feminist Encounters: Locating the Politics of Experience 74
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
6 Sexual Practice and Changing Lesbian Identities 93
Biddy Martin
7 Power, Bodies and Difference 120
Moira Gatens
8 Painting, Feminism, History 138
Griselda Pollock
9 The Politics of Translation 177
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
10 Words and Things: Materialism and Method in
Contemporary Feminist Analysis 201
Michele Barrett
Index 220
List of Plates
Plate 1. Henri Matisse (1869-1954), The Painter and his Model, 1917.
Paris, Musee National d’Art Moderne.
Plate 2. Brassai, Henri Matisse in his Studio. Photograph London,
Victoria and Albert Museum.
Plate 3. Hans Namuth,/<zc&5orz Pollock at Work, 1950. Photograph New
York, Studio Hans Namuth.
Plate 4. Ernst Haas, Helen Frankenthaler at Work, 1969. Photograph
New York, Studio Ernst Haas.
Plate 5. Martin Charles, Gillian Ayres in her Studio, 1988. Photograph
Isleworth, Studio Martin Charles.
List of Contributors
Michele Barrett is Professor of Sociology at City University, London.
She is the author of The Politics of Truth: From Marx to Foucault
(Polity and Stanford University Press 1991). Women’s Oppression Today
(Verso, 1980 and 1988), co-author with Mary McIntosh of The Anti¬
social Family (Verso, 1982 and 1991), and has written and edited other
books and papers. At City University she is Head of the Sociology
Division in the Department of Social Sciences and Director of the
Centre for Research on Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change.
Moira Gatens lectures in philosophy at the Australian National Uni¬
versity. She is the author of Feminism and Philosophy: Perspectives on
Difference and Equality (Polity Press and Indiana University Press,
1991). A collection of her essays on gender, corporeality and desire will
be published by Routledge in 1993. Her current research concerns
philosophies of the body (Spinoza, Nietzsche and Freud) and their
relations to theories of ethics.
Biddy Martin is Associate Professor of German Studies and Women’s
Studies at Cornell University. She is the author of Woman and Mod¬
ernity: The (Life) Styles of Lou Andreas-Salome (Cornell University
Press, 1991) and has published numerous articles on feminist theory.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty teaches Women’s Studies and the Sociology
of Education at Oberlin College, and for 1991-92 is the Jane Watson
Irwin Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at Hamilton College. She
has recently co-edited Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism
(Indiana University Press, 1991), and is co-editor of a forthcoming
reader on Third World Feminisms (Basil Blackwell). She is currently
working on a manuscript on feminist theory and the politics of cross
cultural analysis.
Contributors
Vlll
Anne Phillips is Professor of Politics at City of London Polytechnic.
She is author of Engendering Democracy (Polity Press and Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1991), and editor of Feminism and Equality
(Basil Blackwell and New York University Press, 1987). She is currently
working on democracy, citizenship, and the representation of group
difference.
Griselda Pollock is Professor of the Social and Critical Histories of Art
and Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of
Leeds. She is co-author with Roszika Parker of Old Mistresses Women,
Art & Ideology (Pandora 1981) and Framing Feminism Art & the
Women’s Movement (Pandora 1987). She is author of many books and
articles on nineteenth and twentieth century culture, cinema and photo¬
graphy, including Vision and Difference Feminism Femininity and the
Histories of Art (Routledge 1988). Forthcoming publications include
Sexuality and Surveillance Bourgeois Men and Working Women Rout-
ledge 1992). She has two children.
Rosemary Pringle is Associate Professor of Sociology at Macquarie
University. She is author of Secretaries Talk: Sexuality, Power and Work
(Verso, 1989). She is currently working on gender and masquerades,
using case studies from the professions.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is Professor of English and Comparative
Literature at Columbia University. She is author of In Other Worlds
(Routledge, 1987) and translator of Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology
(Johns Hopkins, 1976). She is currently working on feminism and
decolonization.
Sylvia Walby is Reader in Sociology at the London School of Econo¬
mics. Books she has authored include Patriarchy at Work (Polity
Press, 1986) and Theorizing Patriarchy (Blackwell, 1990), while she was
recently co-editor of Out of the Margins: Women’s Studies into the
Nineties (Falmer Press, 1991). She is currently working on a book on
the history of feminist thought.
Sophie Watson is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Sydney
University. She is author of Accommodating Inequality: Gender and
Housing (Allen and Unwin, 1988). She is currently co-writing a book
Rethinking Social Policy: Sex, Power and Knowledge, and continuing
her feminist research in urban studies.
