Synopses & Reviews
This latest volume in the Oxford Readings in Feminism series presents the results of a multi-disciplinary feminist exploration of the distinction between public and private. Contributors demonstrate the significance of the distinction in feminist theory, its articulation in the modern and late-modern public spheres, and its impact upon identity politics as experienced within feminism in recent years. Feminism, the Public, and the Private offers an essential perspective on feminist theory for students and teachers of women's and gender studies, cultural studies, history, political theory, geography, and sociology.
Review
"Landes has done a great service in bringing these previously published essays together. All are stimulating; many are truly excellent."--Hypatia
About the Author
Joan B. Landes is Professor of Women's Studies and History at Penn State University. She has published articles on a wide range of topics in the social science field, from critiques of Hegel and Habermas to representations of the body, and has worked in depth on many aspects of the French Revolution.
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors
Introduction, Joan B. Landes
I. The Public/Private Distinction in Feminist Theory
1. Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?, Sherry B. Ortner
2. Citizenship with a Feminist Face: The Problem with Maternal Thinking, Mary G. Dietz
3. Models of Public Space: Hannah Arendt, the Liberal Tradition, and Jürgen Habermas, Seyla Benhabib
4. Toward an Agonistic Feminism: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Identity, Bonnie Honig
II. Gender in the Modern Liberal Public Sphere
5. The Public and the Private Sphere: A Feminist Reconsideration, Joan B. Landes
6. Regarding Some `Old Husbands' Tales': Public and Private in Feminist History, Leonore Davidoff
7. Gender and Public Access: Women's Politics in Nineteenth-Century America, Mary P. Ryan
8. The Inviolable Woman: Feminist Conceptions of Citizenship in Australia, 1900-1945, Marilyn Lake
9. The Patriarchal Welfare State, Carole Pateman
III. Gendered Sites in the Late Modern Public Sphere
10. Live Sex Acts (Parental Advisory: Explicit Material), Lauren Berlant
11. Interview with Barbara Kruger, W. J. T. Mitchell
12. Sex, Lies, and the Public Sphere: Reflections on the Confirmation of Clarence Thomas, Nancy Fraser
13. On Being the Object of Property, Patricia J. Williams
14. All Hyped Up and No Place to Go, David Bell, Jon Binnie, Julia Cream, Gill Valentine
15. Celebrity Material: Materialist Feminism and the Culture of Celebrity, Jennifer Wicke
16. Hillary's Husband Re-Elected! The Clinton Marriage of Politics and Power, Erica Jong
IV. Public and Private Identity: Questions for a Feminist Public Sphere
17. Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critiques of Moral and Political Theory, Iris Marion Young
18. Wounded Attachments: Late Modern Oppositional Political Formations, Wendy Brown
19. Dealing with Difference: A Politics of Ideas or a Politics of Presence?, Anne Phillips
Index