What is a Woman?: And Other Essays

Toril Moi

Oxford University Press, 2001 - 517 pàgines

What is a woman? And what does it mean to be a feminist today? In her first full-scale engagement with feminist theory since her internationally renowned Sexual/Textual Politics (1985), Toril Moi challenges the dominant trends in contemporary feminist and cultural thought, arguing for a
feminism of freedom inspired by Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. Written in a clear and engaging style What is a Woman? brings together two brand new book-length theoretical interventions, Moi's work on Freud and Bourdieu, and her studies of desire and knowledge in literature.
In the controversial title-essay, Toril Moi radically rethinks current debates about sex, gender, and the body - challenging the commonly held belief that the sex/gender distinction is fundamental to all feminist theory. Moi rejects every attempt to define masculinity and femininity, including
efforts to define femininity as that which 'cannot be defined.

In the second new book-length essay, 'I am a Woman', Toril Moi reworks the relationship between the personal and the philosophical, pursuing ways to write theory that do not neglect the claims of the personal. Setting up an encounter between contemporary theory and Simone de Beauvoir, Moi
radically rethinks the need, and difficulty, of finding one's own philosophical voice by placing it in new theoretical contexts.
A sustained refusal to lay down theoretical or political requirements for femininity, and a powerful argument for a feminism of freedom, What is a Woman? is a deeply original contribution to feminist theory.

Què en diuen els usuaris

WHAT IS A WOMAN?: and Other Essays

Revisió d'Usuari  - Kirkus

In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of The Second Sex's publication, Moi (Literature and Romance Studies/Duke Univ.; Sexual/Textual Politics, not reviewed, etc.) calls on Simone de Beauvoir's ...

Continguts

• Feminist Theory: 3
• Introduction to Part II: 253
• Bourdieus Sociology of Culture: 264
• Bourdieus: 300
• René Girards Oedipal Rivalries: 312
• Sexuality: 329
• Patriarchal Thought and the Drive for Knowledge: 348
• Is Anatomy Destiny? Freud and Biological: 369
• Introduction to Part III: 397
• She Died Because She Came Too Late: 422
• Rhetoric and Identification: 451
• Works Cited: 477
• Index: 499

Sobre l'autor

Toril Moi is Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University and author of the influential and best-selling Sexual/Textual Politics, (ed) The Kristeva Reader, and (ed) French Feminist Thought. Also Simone de Beauvoir: The making of the Intellectual Woman

Informació bibliogràfica

• Títol: What is a Woman?: And Other Essays
• Autor: Toril Moi
• Edició: il·lustrada, reimpresa
• Editor: Oxford University Press, 2001
• ISBN: 0198186754, 9780198186755
• Nre. de pàgines: 517 pàgines