Transfigurations

This volume explores the impact and import of the provocative and challenging work in this generation's most notable French feminists. Despite the growing influence of the French feminists in the humanities (especially in literary criticism, poststructuralism, and psychoanalysis), American religionists have only recently begun to utilize their approaches and theories. The volume introduces the characteristic concerns and themes of the leading French feminists (particularly Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva), assesses their work against the very different orientations and impulses of North American feminism, and gauges the potential of their ideas for both hermeneutical explorations and for feminist theologies. In the process contributors shed important light on such issues as the normativity of women's experience, the character of subjectivity, and structural dimensions of oppression. For those who would join this critical conversation, Transfigurations will be the indispensable entree. Book jacket.