Am I That Name?: Feminism And The Category Of Women In History

denise riley

A new edition of a classic work on the history of feminism. Writing about changes in the notion of womanhood, Denise Riley examines, in the manner of Foucault, shifting historical constructions of the category of "women" in relation to other categories central to concepts of personhood: the soul, the mind, the body, nature, the social. Feminist movements, Riley argues, have had no choice but to play out this indeterminacy of women. This is made plain in their oscillations, since the 1790s, between concepts of equality and of difference. To fully recognize the ambiguity of the category of "women" is, she contends, a necessary condition for an effective feminist political philosophy.

Genres feminismhistorytheorygenderphilosophynonfictionwomensread for school

134 pages, Paperback

First published October 28,1988

This edition

Format: 134 pages, Paperback
Published: August 12, 2003 by University of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816642694
ASIN: 0816642699
Language: English

About the author

denise riley

Denise Riley (born 1948) is an English poet and philosopher who began to be published in the 1970s.

Her poetry is remarkable for its paradoxical interrogation of selfhood within the lyric mode. Her critical writings on motherhood, women in history, "identity", and philosophy of language, are recognised as an important contribution to feminism and contemporary philosophy. She was Professor of Literature with Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and is currently A.D. White Professor-at-large at Cornell University. She was formerly Writer in Residence at Tate Gallery London, and has held fellowships at Brown University and at Birkbeck, University of London. Among her poetry publications is Penguin Modern Poets 10, with Douglas Oliver and Iain Sinclair (1996). She lives in London.