What Is a Woman?: And Other Essays - Softcover

Toril Moi is Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University and author of the influential and best-selling Sexual/Textual Politics, (ed) The Kristeva Reader, and (ed) French Feminist Thought. Also Simone de Beauvoir: The making of the Intellectual Woman

"[Moi is] one of the most astute and lucid critics writing today. What she calls her `attempt to work [her] way out from under post-structuralism, and to see what happens when one goes elsewhere'--a move undertaken in good faith as a feminist and with uncommon critical common sense--points a way forward, both for literary critics and other feminists....[This book] could serve as a lucid introduction to recent theoretical debates, and also as a farewell to them....[Moi proceeds] through careful close readings, sensitive to both historical context and textual nuance....She offers the views of even those she disagrees with with refreshing clarity."--Women's Review of Books

"Moi's long-awaited re-entry into the lists of mainstream feminist debate will not be perceived as a reopening of hostilities. Moi shows herself extraordinarily attentive to the work of American feminists....The psychoanalysis of Freud, Lacan and Kristeva has been joined by the sociology of Bordieu, the existentialism of Sartre and Beauvoir and, increasingly, by the ordinary language philosophy of Wittgenstein, Austin and Cavell....A bold rehabilitation of the theoretical importance of Beauvoir's feminism....[Issues] an explicit challenge to American feminist orthodoxy. But it is a challenge issued only at the end of a sustained and immensely careful labor of thought."--Modern Language Notes

"Important....The sheer scope and range of this 500-page book demonstrate the maturity of Moi's thoughts about gender, subjectivity, politics, love, and freedom....Taken together, Moi's essays [are] provocative, insightful, and refreshingly original....In particular, Moi's insights into the importance of Beauvoir's understanding of the body as a situation are invaluable for feminist theoretical work on the relationship between culture and biology, and the renewed focus on lived experience is both welcome and necessary for a feminist theory that take seriously its political goals."--SubStance

"What [Moi] wants is a radical spring-clean of feminist thinking. Let's go back and start again, we have nothing to lose but our mind-forged manacles....[Her] energy is positive and provocative."--The London Review of Books

"Thinking and writing carefully and critically about what women are demand the kind of imaginative intelligence that Beauvoir and Moi bring to the task. Moi's book is an example of feminist writing at its finest; and, like Beauvoir's, it invites and deserves a wide readership of women and men."--Item