Sex, Gender, and the Body - The Student Edition of What Is a Woman?

This affordable, compact edition, designed specially for use in university courses, consists of two of the most celebrated essays from Toril Moi's highly-acclaimed What Is a Woman?What is a woman? Does it make sense to think of a woman as the combination of sex and gender? Is 'I am a woman' the same kind of declaration as 'I am a man'? What does it mean to speak 'as a woman'? In these essays Moi rethinks the contribution of Simone de Beauvoir to feminist theory, and shows that The Second Sex, properly read, offers inspiring solutions to urgent contemporary problems. By suggesting that we think of the body as a situation, the first essay offers a serious challenge to dominant poststructuralist theories of sex and gender. The second essay investigates the place of the personal in theory. What is the status of references to personal experiences, or to one's person (one's race, sex, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality) in theoretical debates? Both essays provide, in vivid and compelling detail, a third way for feminism, beyond the current stalemate between essentialism and constructionism. This is a major and truly original contribution to feminist theory.

Product details

• Authors: Toril Moi, Toril (James B. Duke Professor of Literature Moi, Moi Toril
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 13.01.2005
• EAN: 9780199276226
• ISBN: 978-0-19-927622-6
• No. of pages: 292
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Cultural Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies, LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Feminism & Feminist Theory, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, LITERARY CRITICISM / Feminist, Feminism & feminist theory, Gender studies, gender groups, Literary theory, Feminism and feminist theory, LITERARY CRITICISM / Subjects & Themes / Gender Identity