Essential Difference

<p>What is essentialism? What is anti-essentialism? The Essential Difference attempts to answer questions at the heart of current feminist theory and cultural study. The book deals with origins and contexts of the debate; relationships between essentialism anti-essentialism and the power of language; reasons for the demonization of essentialism within the academy; the relationship between essentialism and Third World studies. <br /><br />The essays also speculate about whether there can be an anti-essentialist feminism whether there can in fact be a feminist politics that dispenses with the notion of Woman. This long-awaited volume questions the bases of feminism itself. <br /><br />The contributors are Teresa de Lauretis Diana Fuss Elizabeth Grosz Luce Irigaray Leslie Wahl Rabine Ellen Rooney Robert Scholes Naomi Schor and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.</p>