Review by Choice Review
In chapters provocatively titled " Rights," "Ethics," "Woman," "Subjects," "Authorship," "(Meta)fictions," and "Screens," Ahmed carefully and critically reads key texts in feminist and postmodern theory. Included are Lacan, Derrida, films by David Lynch, and fiction by Coover, among much else. Ahmed seeks an interchange between feminism and postmodernism, not merely (yet another) staged debate between two somewhat disparate intellectual communities, with the goal of solving problems and dilemmas present in each theoretical space. Each chapter contains important insights yet rarely returns to the questions posed, leaving the book incomplete and unsatisfying. For example, Ahmed argues in the introduction for the necessity of feminist epistemology, that is, for development of theory and criteria to assess knowledge claims. Epistemology is central to contemporary feminist theory, and this reviewer had hoped to see some discussion outlining an epistemological program or at least an interrogation of the processes by which justifiable epistemologies and their properties might emerge. Such an interrogation never materialized, and thus, overall, the book is disappointing, although each chapter may be of interest to specialists in feminist theory, literary, legal, and critical race studies. Graduate, faculty. J. L. Croissant University of Arizona
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
