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Gathers authors with different backgrounds and methods to advance feminist discussions of the relation between language and women's oppression, suggesting promising new directions for further research.
Presenting new and important scholarship in feminist language theory, this book addresses issues within diverse traditions, bringing together feminist positions, strategies, and styles in an original way. Gathering together authors with different backgrounds and methods, Language and Liberation puts this diverse scholarship into dialogue.
The questions and concerns reflected in these essays are presented within the context of their historical background, provided by the editors' comprehensive Introduction. These questions include: Is there a distinction between "female" and "male" language? What is the relationship of feminine/feminist identity to language? What is the value of metaphor for feminist theory and practice?
"Mary Daly, Adrienne Rich, Cixous, Derrida, Kristeva, Irigaray, Kant, Frege, and Ovid are some of the thinkers discussed, often with good reviews of their work." — Ethics
"This book not only takes on the questions of the political effectiveness of feminist interventions into the use of language, but also presents an eclectic range of approaches which makes the connections and disconnections among these approaches more apparent. It both sharpens the terms of the debate about how and whether the question of language is relevant to a feminist project, and presents evocative points of convergence and divergence on this issue in present feminist theory. These essays are seasoned responses by feminists who clearly know their material and have given this issue a lot of thought. This energy and commitment comes through in their writing." — Tamsin Lorraine, Swarthmore College
"As the editors set out in the Introduction, the question of the relationship between language use and women's status is central both to academic feminism and the feminist movement. The issue receives close and continuing attention in several disciplines besides philosophy, including English and foreign languages, linguistics, women's studies, history, sociology, and anthropology. Each of the essays provides insights and makes contributions of intellectual importance." — Susan C. Jarratt, Miami University
Acknowledgments
Introduction: How to Do (Feminist) Things With Words
Christina Hendricks and Kelly Oliver
Part One: The Power of Words: Changing Meanings, Changing Social Spaces
1. Derogatory Terms: Racism, Sexism, and the Inferential Role Theory of Meaning
Lynne Tirrell
2. Discourse Competence: Or How to Theorize Strong Women Speakers
Sara Mills
3. Surviving to Speak New Language: Mary Daly and Adrienne Rich
Jane Hedley
4. From Revolution to Liberation: Transforming Hysterical Discourse into Analytic Discourse
Georganna Ulary
Part Two: The Power to Speak: Who Is Speaking, from Where?
5. Disarticulated Voices: Feminism and Philomela
Elissa Marder
6. Confessional Feminisms: Rhetorical Dimensions of First-Person Theorizing
Susan David Bernstein
7. The Postcolonial Critic: Shifting Subjects, Changing Paradigms
Sangeeta Ray
Part Three: The Power of Masculinist Metaphors: Words That Keep Women in Place
8. Sublime Impersonation: The Rhetoric of Personificationin Kant
Natalie Alexander
9. Frege's Metaphors
Andrea Nyc
10. Free Gift or Forced Figure? Derrida's Usage of Hymen in "The Double Session"
Roberta Weston
Part Four: The Power of Feminist Metaphors: Words That Open Spaces for Women
11. At the Limits of Discourse: Heterogeneity, Alterity, and the Maternal Body in Kristeva's Thought
Ewa Plonowska Ziarek
12. Writing (into) the Symbolic: The Maternal Metaphor in Hélène Cixous
Lisa Walsh
13. Language and the Space of the Feminine: Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray
Cynthia Baker
About the Contributors
Index