Femininity and 18th Century Culture, 28 Apr 2008
"In a period of major political and economic change, definitions of `women' and `femininity' played a crucial part in a wider redefinition of social categoris and social roles, and the anthology's five sections represent significant areas within this debate about women's nature and status." (8) Jones' fascinating anthology sheds new light on my own research of 18th century play production and should be embraced by everyone even vaguely interested in 18th century literature. When describing Wollstonecraft's writing as "feminist radicalism" (9) she supports the cotroversial view that "Feminism" existed as a movement in the 18th century centuries before it gained its formal name. Jones intelligently shows how 18th century culture seriously valued femininity across both genders and remained clearly acceptable of it. She cites primary source evidence in support of her thesis - the first in this area - which has since been taken up by other scholars. It is very surprising that other fields - especially theatre history - have not embraced Jones's important thesis because the plays most frequently performed during the eighteenth cetury value feminine views, despite the fact that farces like Garrick's hit comedy "Miss in her Teens" create characters like Fribble (played by Garrick himself) for spectator ridicule. Mark Howell-Meri

Femininity and 18th Century Culture, 28 Apr 2008
"In a period of major political and economic change, definitions of `women' and `femininity' played a crucial part in a wider redefinition of social categoris and social roles, and the anthology's five sections represent significant areas within this debate about women's nature and status." (8) Jones' fascinating anthology sheds new light on my own research of 18th century play production and should be embraced by everyone even vaguely interested in 18th century literature. When describing Wollstonecraft's writing as "feminist radicalism" (9) she supports the cotroversial view that "Feminism" existed as a movement in the 18th century centuries before it gained its formal name. Jones intelligently shows how 18th century culture seriously valued femininity across both genders and remained clearly acceptable of it. She cites primary source evidence in support of her thesis - the first in this area - which has since been taken up by other scholars. It is very surprising that other fields - especially theatre history - have not embraced Jones's important thesis because the plays most frequently performed during the eighteenth cetury value feminine views, despite the fact that farces like Garrick's hit comedy "Miss in her Teens" create characters like Fribble (played by Garrick himself) for spectator ridicule. Mark Howell-Meri

Thought-provoking, 16 Mar 1999
This book clarifies much of Foucault was saying in History of Sexuality. Butler is careful, however, to not borrow the models Foucault uses, thereby, avoids some of the mistakes and gaps that occur in his thinking, namely the silence on women. Butler, more than Foucault, is not willing to settle the debate on sexuality merely as the obtaining and disseminating of pleasures and how those bodies perform them. Rather, she takes bodies as always already gender indeterminate and destablilizes their performatives further to show how bodies are marked by gender as well as race, class, sexulaity, etc. and how these categories are also destabilized within the perfomative. I highly recommend this book to feminist and queer theorists and well as anyone who is concerned about creating any sort of opposition to the reactionary right-wing forces that are attempting to further entrench their dominance over the rest of us.

Performativity is not about choice!, 02 Dec 1998
When Judith Butler describes gender as performative, contrary to much of what is mistakenly thought out there, it is not about choice! It is not about choosing to put on a gender--as if it was a performance in the traditional or obvious way. The performativity of gender is meant to suggest--invoke--that gender is constituted by performative acts which repeated come to form, take shape, a "coherent" gender identity. Thus, Butler uses the performative to suggest that this coherency is false and that because of acts that disrupt the strict reads of gender--acts that occur naturally, perhaps daily, perhaps unacknowledged, gender comes to be seen/viewed as that which is only as stable as this performative function's stability is. Or put more simply, gender-as-stable is undermined by Butler by reading it through the performative--becuase it is never "performed" the same exactly. So, it is not that people can choose to perform a certain enumeration of gender, rather it is that noone precisely (actually) fulfills these gender identities that we have!

Femininity and 18th Century Culture, 28 Apr 2008
"In a period of major political and economic change, definitions of `women' and `femininity' played a crucial part in a wider redefinition of social categoris and social roles, and the anthology's five sections represent significant areas within this debate about women's nature and status." (8) Jones' fascinating anthology sheds new light on my own research of 18th century play production and should be embraced by everyone even vaguely interested in 18th century literature. When describing Wollstonecraft's writing as "feminist radicalism" (9) she supports the cotroversial view that "Feminism" existed as a movement in the 18th century centuries before it gained its formal name. Jones intelligently shows how 18th century culture seriously valued femininity across both genders and remained clearly acceptable of it. She cites primary source evidence in support of her thesis - the first in this area - which has since been taken up by other scholars. It is very surprising that other fields - especially theatre history - have not embraced Jones's important thesis because the plays most frequently performed during the eighteenth cetury value feminine views, despite the fact that farces like Garrick's hit comedy "Miss in her Teens" create characters like Fribble (played by Garrick himself) for spectator ridicule. Mark Howell-Meri

Thought-provoking, 16 Mar 1999
This book clarifies much of Foucault was saying in History of Sexuality. Butler is careful, however, to not borrow the models Foucault uses, thereby, avoids some of the mistakes and gaps that occur in his thinking, namely the silence on women. Butler, more than Foucault, is not willing to settle the debate on sexuality merely as the obtaining and disseminating of pleasures and how those bodies perform them. Rather, she takes bodies as always already gender indeterminate and destablilizes their performatives further to show how bodies are marked by gender as well as race, class, sexulaity, etc. and how these categories are also destabilized within the perfomative. I highly recommend this book to feminist and queer theorists and well as anyone who is concerned about creating any sort of opposition to the reactionary right-wing forces that are attempting to further entrench their dominance over the rest of us.

Performativity is not about choice!, 02 Dec 1998
When Judith Butler describes gender as performative, contrary to much of what is mistakenly thought out there, it is not about choice! It is not about choosing to put on a gender--as if it was a performance in the traditional or obvious way. The performativity of gender is meant to suggest--invoke--that gender is constituted by performative acts which repeated come to form, take shape, a "coherent" gender identity. Thus, Butler uses the performative to suggest that this coherency is false and that because of acts that disrupt the strict reads of gender--acts that occur naturally, perhaps daily, perhaps unacknowledged, gender comes to be seen/viewed as that which is only as stable as this performative function's stability is. Or put more simply, gender-as-stable is undermined by Butler by reading it through the performative--becuase it is never "performed" the same exactly. So, it is not that people can choose to perform a certain enumeration of gender, rather it is that noone precisely (actually) fulfills these gender identities that we have!

In a different voice - Carol Gilligan, 03 Jun 2003
This book is truly amazing. For any woman who feels she has lost clarity and fierceness and the ability to tell the truth about how she feels and what is going on in the world of feelings and relationships, the social world which she inhabits, read Gilligan's work (any of it). The book made me remember what it was to learn to be nice and quiet and feminine in order to become a 'woman' when as a girl it had been much more OK to be more forthright, and more myself. Interesting both in terms of looking at the psychology of the world of teenage girls and their lived experience, in terms of engaging with social and psychological research through an engaged methodology of relationship which disturbs the usual authoritarian role of researchers, and in terms of the real and lived effects of gender roles and norms on young girls as they 'become' women, not in theory but in practice. It'll make you long for the freedom of life before you were conforming to the ways of being which are acceptable for 'a woman' and remember the amazing gifts which girls and women have to offer, which end up being hidden away and covered over in order to 'fit in' and which become harder and harder to get in touch with the more they are disavowed and disallowed. Every woman should read it, every girl should read it, every parent should read it, every teacher. Men who find women's lack of assertiveness irritating should read it to find out how women end up that way too... Highly recommended.

Femininity and 18th Century Culture, 28 Apr 2008
"In a period of major political and economic change, definitions of `women' and `femininity' played a crucial part in a wider redefinition of social categoris and social roles, and the anthology's five sections represent significant areas within this debate about women's nature and status." (8) Jones' fascinating anthology sheds new light on my own research of 18th century play production and should be embraced by everyone even vaguely interested in 18th century literature. When describing Wollstonecraft's writing as "feminist radicalism" (9) she supports the cotroversial view that "Feminism" existed as a movement in the 18th century centuries before it gained its formal name. Jones intelligently shows how 18th century culture seriously valued femininity across both genders and remained clearly acceptable of it. She cites primary source evidence in support of her thesis - the first in this area - which has since been taken up by other scholars. It is very surprising that other fields - especially theatre history - have not embraced Jones's important thesis because the plays most frequently performed during the eighteenth cetury value feminine views, despite the fact that farces like Garrick's hit comedy "Miss in her Teens" create characters like Fribble (played by Garrick himself) for spectator ridicule. Mark Howell-Meri

Thought-provoking, 16 Mar 1999
This book clarifies much of Foucault was saying in History of Sexuality. Butler is careful, however, to not borrow the models Foucault uses, thereby, avoids some of the mistakes and gaps that occur in his thinking, namely the silence on women. Butler, more than Foucault, is not willing to settle the debate on sexuality merely as the obtaining and disseminating of pleasures and how those bodies perform them. Rather, she takes bodies as always already gender indeterminate and destablilizes their performatives further to show how bodies are marked by gender as well as race, class, sexulaity, etc. and how these categories are also destabilized within the perfomative. I highly recommend this book to feminist and queer theorists and well as anyone who is concerned about creating any sort of opposition to the reactionary right-wing forces that are attempting to further entrench their dominance over the rest of us.

Performativity is not about choice!, 02 Dec 1998
When Judith Butler describes gender as performative, contrary to much of what is mistakenly thought out there, it is not about choice! It is not about choosing to put on a gender--as if it was a performance in the traditional or obvious way. The performativity of gender is meant to suggest--invoke--that gender is constituted by performative acts which repeated come to form, take shape, a "coherent" gender identity. Thus, Butler uses the performative to suggest that this coherency is false and that because of acts that disrupt the strict reads of gender--acts that occur naturally, perhaps daily, perhaps unacknowledged, gender comes to be seen/viewed as that which is only as stable as this performative function's stability is. Or put more simply, gender-as-stable is undermined by Butler by reading it through the performative--becuase it is never "performed" the same exactly. So, it is not that people can choose to perform a certain enumeration of gender, rather it is that noone precisely (actually) fulfills these gender identities that we have!

In a different voice - Carol Gilligan, 03 Jun 2003
This book is truly amazing. For any woman who feels she has lost clarity and fierceness and the ability to tell the truth about how she feels and what is going on in the world of feelings and relationships, the social world which she inhabits, read Gilligan's work (any of it). The book made me remember what it was to learn to be nice and quiet and feminine in order to become a 'woman' when as a girl it had been much more OK to be more forthright, and more myself. Interesting both in terms of looking at the psychology of the world of teenage girls and their lived experience, in terms of engaging with social and psychological research through an engaged methodology of relationship which disturbs the usual authoritarian role of researchers, and in terms of the real and lived effects of gender roles and norms on young girls as they 'become' women, not in theory but in practice. It'll make you long for the freedom of life before you were conforming to the ways of being which are acceptable for 'a woman' and remember the amazing gifts which girls and women have to offer, which end up being hidden away and covered over in order to 'fit in' and which become harder and harder to get in touch with the more they are disavowed and disallowed. Every woman should read it, every girl should read it, every parent should read it, every teacher. Men who find women's lack of assertiveness irritating should read it to find out how women end up that way too... Highly recommended.

pleasing style, 27 Jul 2004
This book mixes the facts with selected quotations from the research which make it informative and pleasurable to read. This is a style that all too often, fails to reach the right balance. Not the case on this occasion

Femininity and 18th Century Culture, 28 Apr 2008
"In a period of major political and economic change, definitions of `women' and `femininity' played a crucial part in a wider redefinition of social categoris and social roles, and the anthology's five sections represent significant areas within this debate about women's nature and status." (8) Jones' fascinating anthology sheds new light on my own research of 18th century play production and should be embraced by everyone even vaguely interested in 18th century literature. When describing Wollstonecraft's writing as "feminist radicalism" (9) she supports the cotroversial view that "Feminism" existed as a movement in the 18th century centuries before it gained its formal name. Jones intelligently shows how 18th century culture seriously valued femininity across both genders and remained clearly acceptable of it. She cites primary source evidence in support of her thesis - the first in this area - which has since been taken up by other scholars. It is very surprising that other fields - especially theatre history - have not embraced Jones's important thesis because the plays most frequently performed during the eighteenth cetury value feminine views, despite the fact that farces like Garrick's hit comedy "Miss in her Teens" create characters like Fribble (played by Garrick himself) for spectator ridicule. Mark Howell-Meri

Thought-provoking, 16 Mar 1999
This book clarifies much of Foucault was saying in History of Sexuality. Butler is careful, however, to not borrow the models Foucault uses, thereby, avoids some of the mistakes and gaps that occur in his thinking, namely the silence on women. Butler, more than Foucault, is not willing to settle the debate on sexuality merely as the obtaining and disseminating of pleasures and how those bodies perform them. Rather, she takes bodies as always already gender indeterminate and destablilizes their performatives further to show how bodies are marked by gender as well as race, class, sexulaity, etc. and how these categories are also destabilized within the perfomative. I highly recommend this book to feminist and queer theorists and well as anyone who is concerned about creating any sort of opposition to the reactionary right-wing forces that are attempting to further entrench their dominance over the rest of us.

Performativity is not about choice!, 02 Dec 1998
When Judith Butler describes gender as performative, contrary to much of what is mistakenly thought out there, it is not about choice! It is not about choosing to put on a gender--as if it was a performance in the traditional or obvious way. The performativity of gender is meant to suggest--invoke--that gender is constituted by performative acts which repeated come to form, take shape, a "coherent" gender identity. Thus, Butler uses the performative to suggest that this coherency is false and that because of acts that disrupt the strict reads of gender--acts that occur naturally, perhaps daily, perhaps unacknowledged, gender comes to be seen/viewed as that which is only as stable as this performative function's stability is. Or put more simply, gender-as-stable is undermined by Butler by reading it through the performative--becuase it is never "performed" the same exactly. So, it is not that people can choose to perform a certain enumeration of gender, rather it is that noone precisely (actually) fulfills these gender identities that we have!

In a different voice - Carol Gilligan, 03 Jun 2003
This book is truly amazing. For any woman who feels she has lost clarity and fierceness and the ability to tell the truth about how she feels and what is going on in the world of feelings and relationships, the social world which she inhabits, read Gilligan's work (any of it). The book made me remember what it was to learn to be nice and quiet and feminine in order to become a 'woman' when as a girl it had been much more OK to be more forthright, and more myself. Interesting both in terms of looking at the psychology of the world of teenage girls and their lived experience, in terms of engaging with social and psychological research through an engaged methodology of relationship which disturbs the usual authoritarian role of researchers, and in terms of the real and lived effects of gender roles and norms on young girls as they 'become' women, not in theory but in practice. It'll make you long for the freedom of life before you were conforming to the ways of being which are acceptable for 'a woman' and remember the amazing gifts which girls and women have to offer, which end up being hidden away and covered over in order to 'fit in' and which become harder and harder to get in touch with the more they are disavowed and disallowed. Every woman should read it, every girl should read it, every parent should read it, every teacher. Men who find women's lack of assertiveness irritating should read it to find out how women end up that way too... Highly recommended.

pleasing style, 27 Jul 2004
This book mixes the facts with selected quotations from the research which make it informative and pleasurable to read. This is a style that all too often, fails to reach the right balance. Not the case on this occasion

Overpowering Foucault, 30 Dec 2005
Sara Mills' text on Michel Foucault is part of a recent series put out by the Routledge Press, designed under the general editorial direction of Robert Eaglestone (Royal Holloway, University of London), to explore the most recent and exciting ideas in intellectual development during the past century or so. To this end, figures such as Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricouer and other influential thinkers in critical thought are highlighted in the series, planned to include more than 21 volumes in all.

Mills' text, following the pattern of the others, includes background information on Foucault and his significance, the key ideas and sources, and Foucault's continuing impact on other thinkers. As the series preface indicates, no critical thinker arises in a vacuum, so the context, influences and broader cultural environment are all important as a part of the study, something with which Foucault would agree.

Why is Foucault included in this series? Foucault is probably second only to Jacques Derrida in influence on thinkers in the field of critical theory and cultural studies, and his impact has gone far beyond narrow intellectual confines to influence psychology, politics, literature, sociology, philosophy, linguistics, history and anthropology. Mills indicates that Foucault's primary focus is on issues of power, knowledge and discourse, with influence in the development of a lot of `posts' - post-modernism, post-colonialism, post-Marxism, post-structualism, etc.

Foucault often concentrated on the ignored, the forgotten or the overlooked in his studies. In looking at the written confession of a murderer from generations ago, or looking at prisoners in present society, Foucault looks not only at the way power operates in practical settings, but what underpins the kind of power relationships. Heavily influenced by the events of 1968, with various forms of war and open rebellion going on across the globe (including Foucault's native French society), he had an inherent distrust for the kinds of power and society relationships considered standard. His work with prisoners and those classified as mentally ill challenged prevailing notions of the intentions of incarceration and even classification - perhaps we can see even more clearly in today's mass-media-saturated society the inconsistencies, not only of application, but of intention in the development of considering who is a criminal (and what their punishment and rehabilitation is likely to be) and who is considered mentally ill - the shift care to confinement and isolation (effective removal) from society gains new meaning from Foucault's analysis.

Foucault looks at power from a very basic position, not that of macroscopic geopolitical entities, but rather interpersonal relationships on a more local level, even exploring the way society uses body and sexuality as a root resource in formulating power relationships. It is worth noting that this issue is over the idea of the `body', and not the `individual', which for Foucault are not strictly synonymous. Looking at the history of sexuality (the freer periods of sexual frankness vis-à-vis the more strict and reserved periods such as the Victorian age) leads to another set of power relations often internalised and often overlooked.

One of the useful features of the text is the side-bar boxes inserted at various points. For example, during the discussion on Foucault's development of Power and Institutions, there are brief discussions, set apart from the primary strand of the text, on the Marxist idea of ideology, developing further this idea should the reader not be familiar with it, or at least not in the way with which Foucault would be working with ideas derived from it. Each section on a key idea spans approximately twenty pages, with a brief summary concluding each, which gives a recap of the ideas (and provides a handy reference). Some of the concluding sections in this volume (unlike other volumes in the series) are not as handy as a recap, but do connect the primary ideas with the next chapter.

The concluding chapter, After Foucault, highlights some key areas of development in relation to other thinkers, as well as points of possible exploration for the reader. Foucault's thought vis-à-vis feminist thought is dramatic and interesting, given Foucault's generally androcentric (and often misogynistic) stance in writing - still the issues of power relations and society are crucial to feminist critique. His post-colonialist ideas, again springing from the reformulation of power relationships in society after a dominant, foreign power is displaced, influenced further thinkers such as Edward Said. Foucault has (perhaps unintentionally) become useful for the anti-psychiatric lobby, as Foucault sees much defined as madness to be social construct rather than actual ailment (Foucault saw talk-therapy as a kind of modernised `confessional').

There was only one point at which I had a serious disagreement with Mills in her analysis of Foucault. At one point in discussing his tendency toward not developing fully thought-out theories, she speculates that his kind of approach could possibly be used `to justify fascism or to deny the existence of the Holocaust'. I would disagree with this assessment, given that this would not in fact discredit systems of power, but merely replace one with another. If fascism or Holocaust-deniers were not a power-in-potential, that might be true. But then, this is a point upon which much discussion could continue!

As do the other volumes in this series, Mills concludes with an annotated bibliography of works by Foucault (primarily those available in authoritative English translation), works on Foucault, and even internet references.

While this series focuses intentionally upon critical literary theory and cultural studies, in fact this is only the starting point. For Foucault (as for others in this series) the expanse is far too broad to be drawn into such narrow guidelines, and the important and impact of the ideas extends out into the whole range of intellectual development. As intellectual endeavours of every sort depend upon language, understanding, and interpretation, the thorough comprehension of how and why we know what we know is crucial.

Femininity and 18th Century Culture, 28 Apr 2008
"In a period of major political and economic change, definitions of `women' and `femininity' played a crucial part in a wider redefinition of social categoris and social roles, and the anthology's five sections represent significant areas within this debate about women's nature and status." (8) Jones' fascinating anthology sheds new light on my own research of 18th century play production and should be embraced by everyone even vaguely interested in 18th century literature. When describing Wollstonecraft's writing as "feminist radicalism" (9) she supports the cotroversial view that "Feminism" existed as a movement in the 18th century centuries before it gained its formal name. Jones intelligently shows how 18th century culture seriously valued femininity across both genders and remained clearly acceptable of it. She cites primary source evidence in support of her thesis - the first in this area - which has since been taken up by other scholars. It is very surprising that other fields - especially theatre history - have not embraced Jones's important thesis because the plays most frequently performed during the eighteenth cetury value feminine views, despite the fact that farces like Garrick's hit comedy "Miss in her Teens" create characters like Fribble (played by Garrick himself) for spectator ridicule. Mark Howell-Meri

Thought-provoking, 16 Mar 1999
This book clarifies much of Foucault was saying in History of Sexuality. Butler is careful, however, to not borrow the models Foucault uses, thereby, avoids some of the mistakes and gaps that occur in his thinking, namely the silence on women. Butler, more than Foucault, is not willing to settle the debate on sexuality merely as the obtaining and disseminating of pleasures and how those bodies perform them. Rather, she takes bodies as always already gender indeterminate and destablilizes their performatives further to show how bodies are marked by gender as well as race, class, sexulaity, etc. and how these categories are also destabilized within the perfomative. I highly recommend this book to feminist and queer theorists and well as anyone who is concerned about creating any sort of opposition to the reactionary right-wing forces that are attempting to further entrench their dominance over the rest of us.

Performativity is not about choice!, 02 Dec 1998
When Judith Butler describes gender as performative, contrary to much of what is mistakenly thought out there, it is not about choice! It is not about choosing to put on a gender--as if it was a performance in the traditional or obvious way. The performativity of gender is meant to suggest--invoke--that gender is constituted by performative acts which repeated come to form, take shape, a "coherent" gender identity. Thus, Butler uses the performative to suggest that this coherency is false and that because of acts that disrupt the strict reads of gender--acts that occur naturally, perhaps daily, perhaps unacknowledged, gender comes to be seen/viewed as that which is only as stable as this performative function's stability is. Or put more simply, gender-as-stable is undermined by Butler by reading it through the performative--becuase it is never "performed" the same exactly. So, it is not that people can choose to perform a certain enumeration of gender, rather it is that noone precisely (actually) fulfills these gender identities that we have!

In a different voice - Carol Gilligan, 03 Jun 2003
This book is truly amazing. For any woman who feels she has lost clarity and fierceness and the ability to tell the truth about how she feels and what is going on in the world of feelings and relationships, the social world which she inhabits, read Gilligan's work (any of it). The book made me remember what it was to learn to be nice and quiet and feminine in order to become a 'woman' when as a girl it had been much more OK to be more forthright, and more myself. Interesting both in terms of looking at the psychology of the world of teenage girls and their lived experience, in terms of engaging with social and psychological research through an engaged methodology of relationship which disturbs the usual authoritarian role of researchers, and in terms of the real and lived effects of gender roles and norms on young girls as they 'become' women, not in theory but in practice. It'll make you long for the freedom of life before you were conforming to the ways of being which are acceptable for 'a woman' and remember the amazing gifts which girls and women have to offer, which end up being hidden away and covered over in order to 'fit in' and which become harder and harder to get in touch with the more they are disavowed and disallowed. Every woman should read it, every girl should read it, every parent should read it, every teacher. Men who find women's lack of assertiveness irritating should read it to find out how women end up that way too... Highly recommended.

pleasing style, 27 Jul 2004
This book mixes the facts with selected quotations from the research which make it informative and pleasurable to read. This is a style that all too often, fails to reach the right balance. Not the case on this occasion

Overpowering Foucault, 30 Dec 2005
Sara Mills' text on Michel Foucault is part of a recent series put out by the Routledge Press, designed under the general editorial direction of Robert Eaglestone (Royal Holloway, University of London), to explore the most recent and exciting ideas in intellectual development during the past century or so. To this end, figures such as Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricouer and other influential thinkers in critical thought are highlighted in the series, planned to include more than 21 volumes in all.

Mills' text, following the pattern of the others, includes background information on Foucault and his significance, the key ideas and sources, and Foucault's continuing impact on other thinkers. As the series preface indicates, no critical thinker arises in a vacuum, so the context, influences and broader cultural environment are all important as a part of the study, something with which Foucault would agree.

Why is Foucault included in this series? Foucault is probably second only to Jacques Derrida in influence on thinkers in the field of critical theory and cultural studies, and his impact has gone far beyond narrow intellectual confines to influence psychology, politics, literature, sociology, philosophy, linguistics, history and anthropology. Mills indicates that Foucault's primary focus is on issues of power, knowledge and discourse, with influence in the development of a lot of `posts' - post-modernism, post-colonialism, post-Marxism, post-structualism, etc.

Foucault often concentrated on the ignored, the forgotten or the overlooked in his studies. In looking at the written confession of a murderer from generations ago, or looking at prisoners in present society, Foucault looks not only at the way power operates in practical settings, but what underpins the kind of power relationships. Heavily influenced by the events of 1968, with various forms of war and open rebellion going on across the globe (including Foucault's native French society), he had an inherent distrust for the kinds of power and society relationships considered standard. His work with prisoners and those classified as mentally ill challenged prevailing notions of the intentions of incarceration and even classification - perhaps we can see even more clearly in today's mass-media-saturated society the inconsistencies, not only of application, but of intention in the development of considering who is a criminal (and what their punishment and rehabilitation is likely to be) and who is considered mentally ill - the shift care to confinement and isolation (effective removal) from society gains new meaning from Foucault's analysis.

Foucault looks at power from a very basic position, not that of macroscopic geopolitical entities, but rather interpersonal relationships on a more local level, even exploring the way society uses body and sexuality as a root resource in formulating power relationships. It is worth noting that this issue is over the idea of the `body', and not the `individual', which for Foucault are not strictly synonymous. Looking at the history of sexuality (the freer periods of sexual frankness vis-à-vis the more strict and reserved periods such as the Victorian age) leads to another set of power relations often internalised and often overlooked.

One of the useful features of the text is the side-bar boxes inserted at various points. For example, during the discussion on Foucault's development of Power and Institutions, there are brief discussions, set apart from the primary strand of the text, on the Marxist idea of ideology, developing further this idea should the reader not be familiar with it, or at least not in the way with which Foucault would be working with ideas derived from it. Each section on a key idea spans approximately twenty pages, with a brief summary concluding each, which gives a recap of the ideas (and provides a handy reference). Some of the concluding sections in this volume (unlike other volumes in the series) are not as handy as a recap, but do connect the primary ideas with the next chapter.

The concluding chapter, After Foucault, highlights some key areas of development in relation to other thinkers, as well as points of possible exploration for the reader. Foucault's thought vis-à-vis feminist thought is dramatic and interesting, given Foucault's generally androcentric (and often misogynistic) stance in writing - still the issues of power relations and society are crucial to feminist critique. His post-colonialist ideas, again springing from the reformulation of power relationships in society after a dominant, foreign power is displaced, influenced further thinkers such as Edward Said. Foucault has (perhaps unintentionally) become useful for the anti-psychiatric lobby, as Foucault sees much defined as madness to be social construct rather than actual ailment (Foucault saw talk-therapy as a kind of modernised `confessional').

There was only one point at which I had a serious disagreement with Mills in her analysis of Foucault. At one point in discussing his tendency toward not developing fully thought-out theories, she speculates that his kind of approach could possibly be used `to justify fascism or to deny the existence of the Holocaust'. I would disagree with this assessment, given that this would not in fact discredit systems of power, but merely replace one with another. If fascism or Holocaust-deniers were not a power-in-potential, that might be true. But then, this is a point upon which much discussion could continue!

As do the other volumes in this series, Mills concludes with an annotated bibliography of works by Foucault (primarily those available in authoritative English translation), works on Foucault, and even internet references.

While this series focuses intentionally upon critical literary theory and cultural studies, in fact this is only the starting point. For Foucault (as for others in this series) the expanse is far too broad to be drawn into such narrow guidelines, and the important and impact of the ideas extends out into the whole range of intellectual development. As intellectual endeavours of every sort depend upon language, understanding, and interpretation, the thorough comprehension of how and why we know what we know is crucial.

awesome, 13 Feb 2007
This is a beautifully written book that makes you look at the world differently. Ahmed offers a meditation on how we get oriented or directed by objects - especially tables - in a way that makes sexual orientation continuous with other forms of spatial orientation. Her readings of phenomenology are quirky and intriguing. She talks about secrecy - what we miss when we view an object from a specific point - in order to think about how genealogy (the question of how objects arrive) might be interwoven with phenomenology. So we cannot 'see' how things arrive, even when we do things with things. She shows how norms become part of the background, affecting how objects are arranged, as well as what does and does not come into view. She interrogates whiteness as well as heterosexuality in these terms. I loved how tables are part of this book (the writing tables that are philosophy's domesticated objects, as well as other kinds of tables, including kitchen tables and dining tables, which she describes as 'kinship objects'). I never thought tables could be so interesting, but once you read this book, you will keep noticing them! And of course, the table becomes queer - it becomes wonky, when it supports queer action, or even simply when we notice the table as something we do something on. This book makes furniture something to think about. Wow!

Femininity and 18th Century Culture, 28 Apr 2008
"In a period of major political and economic change, definitions of `women' and `femininity' played a crucial part in a wider redefinition of social categoris and social roles, and the anthology's five sections represent significant areas within this debate about women's nature and status." (8) Jones' fascinating anthology sheds new light on my own research of 18th century play production and should be embraced by everyone even vaguely interested in 18th century literature. When describing Wollstonecraft's writing as "feminist radicalism" (9) she supports the cotroversial view that "Feminism" existed as a movement in the 18th century centuries before it gained its formal name. Jones intelligently shows how 18th century culture seriously valued femininity across both genders and remained clearly acceptable of it. She cites primary source evidence in support of her thesis - the first in this area - which has since been taken up by other scholars. It is very surprising that other fields - especially theatre history - have not embraced Jones's important thesis because the plays most frequently performed during the eighteenth cetury value feminine views, despite the fact that farces like Garrick's hit comedy "Miss in her Teens" create characters like Fribble (played by Garrick himself) for spectator ridicule. Mark Howell-Meri

Thought-provoking, 16 Mar 1999
This book clarifies much of Foucault was saying in History of Sexuality. Butler is careful, however, to not borrow the models Foucault uses, thereby, avoids some of the mistakes and gaps that occur in his thinking, namely the silence on women. Butler, more than Foucault, is not willing to settle the debate on sexuality merely as the obtaining and disseminating of pleasures and how those bodies perform them. Rather, she takes bodies as always already gender indeterminate and destablilizes their performatives further to show how bodies are marked by gender as well as race, class, sexulaity, etc. and how these categories are also destabilized within the perfomative. I highly recommend this book to feminist and queer theorists and well as anyone who is concerned about creating any sort of opposition to the reactionary right-wing forces that are attempting to further entrench their dominance over the rest of us.

Performativity is not about choice!, 02 Dec 1998
When Judith Butler describes gender as performative, contrary to much of what is mistakenly thought out there, it is not about choice! It is not about choosing to put on a gender--as if it was a performance in the traditional or obvious way. The performativity of gender is meant to suggest--invoke--that gender is constituted by performative acts which repeated come to form, take shape, a "coherent" gender identity. Thus, Butler uses the performative to suggest that this coherency is false and that because of acts that disrupt the strict reads of gender--acts that occur naturally, perhaps daily, perhaps unacknowledged, gender comes to be seen/viewed as that which is only as stable as this performative function's stability is. Or put more simply, gender-as-stable is undermined by Butler by reading it through the performative--becuase it is never "performed" the same exactly. So, it is not that people can choose to perform a certain enumeration of gender, rather it is that noone precisely (actually) fulfills these gender identities that we have!

In a different voice - Carol Gilligan, 03 Jun 2003
This book is truly amazing. For any woman who feels she has lost clarity and fierceness and the ability to tell the truth about how she feels and what is going on in the world of feelings and relationships, the social world which she inhabits, read Gilligan's work (any of it). The book made me remember what it was to learn to be nice and quiet and feminine in order to become a 'woman' when as a girl it had been much more OK to be more forthright, and more myself. Interesting both in terms of looking at the psychology of the world of teenage girls and their lived experience, in terms of engaging with social and psychological research through an engaged methodology of relationship which disturbs the usual authoritarian role of researchers, and in terms of the real and lived effects of gender roles and norms on young girls as they 'become' women, not in theory but in practice. It'll make you long for the freedom of life before you were conforming to the ways of being which are acceptable for 'a woman' and remember the amazing gifts which girls and women have to offer, which end up being hidden away and covered over in order to 'fit in' and which become harder and harder to get in touch with the more they are disavowed and disallowed. Every woman should read it, every girl should read it, every parent should read it, every teacher. Men who find women's lack of assertiveness irritating should read it to find out how women end up that way too... Highly recommended.

pleasing style, 27 Jul 2004
This book mixes the facts with selected quotations from the research which make it informative and pleasurable to read. This is a style that all too often, fails to reach the right balance. Not the case on this occasion

Overpowering Foucault, 30 Dec 2005
Sara Mills' text on Michel Foucault is part of a recent series put out by the Routledge Press, designed under the general editorial direction of Robert Eaglestone (Royal Holloway, University of London), to explore the most recent and exciting ideas in intellectual development during the past century or so. To this end, figures such as Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricouer and other influential thinkers in critical thought are highlighted in the series, planned to include more than 21 volumes in all.

Mills' text, following the pattern of the others, includes background information on Foucault and his significance, the key ideas and sources, and Foucault's continuing impact on other thinkers. As the series preface indicates, no critical thinker arises in a vacuum, so the context, influences and broader cultural environment are all important as a part of the study, something with which Foucault would agree.

Why is Foucault included in this series? Foucault is probably second only to Jacques Derrida in influence on thinkers in the field of critical theory and cultural studies, and his impact has gone far beyond narrow intellectual confines to influence psychology, politics, literature, sociology, philosophy, linguistics, history and anthropology. Mills indicates that Foucault's primary focus is on issues of power, knowledge and discourse, with influence in the development of a lot of `posts' - post-modernism, post-colonialism, post-Marxism, post-structualism, etc.

Foucault often concentrated on the ignored, the forgotten or the overlooked in his studies. In looking at the written confession of a murderer from generations ago, or looking at prisoners in present society, Foucault looks not only at the way power operates in practical settings, but what underpins the kind of power relationships. Heavily influenced by the events of 1968, with various forms of war and open rebellion going on across the globe (including Foucault's native French society), he had an inherent distrust for the kinds of power and society relationships considered standard. His work with prisoners and those classified as mentally ill challenged prevailing notions of the intentions of incarceration and even classification - perhaps we can see even more clearly in today's mass-media-saturated society the inconsistencies, not only of application, but of intention in the development of considering who is a criminal (and what their punishment and rehabilitation is likely to be) and who is considered mentally ill - the shift care to confinement and isolation (effective removal) from society gains new meaning from Foucault's analysis.

Foucault looks at power from a very basic position, not that of macroscopic geopolitical entities, but rather interpersonal relationships on a more local level, even exploring the way society uses body and sexuality as a root resource in formulating power relationships. It is worth noting that this issue is over the idea of the `body', and not the `individual', which for Foucault are not strictly synonymous. Looking at the history of sexuality (the freer periods of sexual frankness vis-à-vis the more strict and reserved periods such as the Victorian age) leads to another set of power relations often internalised and often overlooked.

One of the useful features of the text is the side-bar boxes inserted at various points. For example, during the discussion on Foucault's development of Power and Institutions, there are brief discussions, set apart from the primary strand of the text, on the Marxist idea of ideology, developing further this idea should the reader not be familiar with it, or at least not in the way with which Foucault would be working with ideas derived from it. Each section on a key idea spans approximately twenty pages, with a brief summary concluding each, which gives a recap of the ideas (and provides a handy reference). Some of the concluding sections in this volume (unlike other volumes in the series) are not as handy as a recap, but do connect the primary ideas with the next chapter.

The concluding chapter, After Foucault, highlights some key areas of development in relation to other thinkers, as well as points of possible exploration for the reader. Foucault's thought vis-à-vis feminist thought is dramatic and interesting, given Foucault's generally androcentric (and often misogynistic) stance in writing - still the issues of power relations and society are crucial to feminist critique. His post-colonialist ideas, again springing from the reformulation of power relationships in society after a dominant, foreign power is displaced, influenced further thinkers such as Edward Said. Foucault has (perhaps unintentionally) become useful for the anti-psychiatric lobby, as Foucault sees much defined as madness to be social construct rather than actual ailment (Foucault saw talk-therapy as a kind of modernised `confessional').

There was only one point at which I had a serious disagreement with Mills in her analysis of Foucault. At one point in discussing his tendency toward not developing fully thought-out theories, she speculates that his kind of approach could possibly be used `to justify fascism or to deny the existence of the Holocaust'. I would disagree with this assessment, given that this would not in fact discredit systems of power, but merely replace one with another. If fascism or Holocaust-deniers were not a power-in-potential, that might be true. But then, this is a point upon which much discussion could continue!

As do the other volumes in this series, Mills concludes with an annotated bibliography of works by Foucault (primarily those available in authoritative English translation), works on Foucault, and even internet references.

While this series focuses intentionally upon critical literary theory and cultural studies, in fact this is only the starting point. For Foucault (as for others in this series) the expanse is far too broad to be drawn into such narrow guidelines, and the important and impact of the ideas extends out into the whole range of intellectual development. As intellectual endeavours of every sort depend upon language, understanding, and interpretation, the thorough comprehension of how and why we know what we know is crucial.

awesome, 13 Feb 2007
This is a beautifully written book that makes you look at the world differently. Ahmed offers a meditation on how we get oriented or directed by objects - especially tables - in a way that makes sexual orientation continuous with other forms of spatial orientation. Her readings of phenomenology are quirky and intriguing. She talks about secrecy - what we miss when we view an object from a specific point - in order to think about how genealogy (the question of how objects arrive) might be interwoven with phenomenology. So we cannot 'see' how things arrive, even when we do things with things. She shows how norms become part of the background, affecting how objects are arranged, as well as what does and does not come into view. She interrogates whiteness as well as heterosexuality in these terms. I loved how tables are part of this book (the writing tables that are philosophy's domesticated objects, as well as other kinds of tables, including kitchen tables and dining tables, which she describes as 'kinship objects'). I never thought tables could be so interesting, but once you read this book, you will keep noticing them! And of course, the table becomes queer - it becomes wonky, when it supports queer action, or even simply when we notice the table as something we do something on. This book makes furniture something to think about. Wow!

conceptual building blocks for a better world, 20 Aug 1997
Iris Young makes us think about justice not as a set of debts we owe other individuals but as a set of relations between social groups. In a just society, no group is oppressed. Her chapter "Five Faces of Oppression" is a classic. She brings new insights to debates about welfare, affirmative action, and disability. This book also offers a thought-provoking discussion of community. Young argues that we have based our idea of community on the rural life of an earlier age and that city life is where we should look for ideas about how community thrives in diversity.

Young tries to write for a general audience as well as for scholars. Sometimes, she succeeds, although the parts of the book that address particular groups and their predicaments or particular social policies are more accessible than the parts in which she critiques other theories. I would recommend this book for second-year students in college and up. It marks a turning point in social and political thought.

Femininity and 18th Century Culture, 28 Apr 2008
"In a period of major political and economic change, definitions of `women' and `femininity' played a crucial part in a wider redefinition of social categoris and social roles, and the anthology's five sections represent significant areas within this debate about women's nature and status." (8) Jones' fascinating anthology sheds new light on my own research of 18th century play production and should be embraced by everyone even vaguely interested in 18th century literature. When describing Wollstonecraft's writing as "feminist radicalism" (9) she supports the cotroversial view that "Feminism" existed as a movement in the 18th century centuries before it gained its formal name. Jones intelligently shows how 18th century culture seriously valued femininity across both genders and remained clearly acceptable of it. She cites primary source evidence in support of her thesis - the first in this area - which has since been taken up by other scholars. It is very surprising that other fields - especially theatre history - have not embraced Jones's important thesis because the plays most frequently performed during the eighteenth cetury value feminine views, despite the fact that farces like Garrick's hit comedy "Miss in her Teens" create characters like Fribble (played by Garrick himself) for spectator ridicule. Mark Howell-Meri

Thought-provoking, 16 Mar 1999
This book clarifies much of Foucault was saying in History of Sexuality. Butler is careful, however, to not borrow the models Foucault uses, thereby, avoids some of the mistakes and gaps that occur in his thinking, namely the silence on women. Butler, more than Foucault, is not willing to settle the debate on sexuality merely as the obtaining and disseminating of pleasures and how those bodies perform them. Rather, she takes bodies as always already gender indeterminate and destablilizes their performatives further to show how bodies are marked by gender as well as race, class, sexulaity, etc. and how these categories are also destabilized within the perfomative. I highly recommend this book to feminist and queer theorists and well as anyone who is concerned about creating any sort of opposition to the reactionary right-wing forces that are attempting to further entrench their dominance over the rest of us.

Performativity is not about choice!, 02 Dec 1998
When Judith Butler describes gender as performative, contrary to much of what is mistakenly thought out there, it is not about choice! It is not about choosing to put on a gender--as if it was a performance in the traditional or obvious way. The performativity of gender is meant to suggest--invoke--that gender is constituted by performative acts which repeated come to form, take shape, a "coherent" gender identity. Thus, Butler uses the performative to suggest that this coherency is false and that because of acts that disrupt the strict reads of gender--acts that occur naturally, perhaps daily, perhaps unacknowledged, gender comes to be seen/viewed as that which is only as stable as this performative function's stability is. Or put more simply, gender-as-stable is undermined by Butler by reading it through the performative--becuase it is never "performed" the same exactly. So, it is not that people can choose to perform a certain enumeration of gender, rather it is that noone precisely (actually) fulfills these gender identities that we have!

In a different voice - Carol Gilligan, 03 Jun 2003
This book is truly amazing. For any woman who feels she has lost clarity and fierceness and the ability to tell the truth about how she feels and what is going on in the world of feelings and relationships, the social world which she inhabits, read Gilligan's work (any of it). The book made me remember what it was to learn to be nice and quiet and feminine in order to become a 'woman' when as a girl it had been much more OK to be more forthright, and more myself. Interesting both in terms of looking at the psychology of the world of teenage girls and their lived experience, in terms of engaging with social and psychological research through an engaged methodology of relationship which disturbs the usual authoritarian role of researchers, and in terms of the real and lived effects of gender roles and norms on young girls as they 'become' women, not in theory but in practice. It'll make you long for the freedom of life before you were conforming to the ways of being which are acceptable for 'a woman' and remember the amazing gifts which girls and women have to offer, which end up being hidden away and covered over in order to 'fit in' and which become harder and harder to get in touch with the more they are disavowed and disallowed. Every woman should read it, every girl should read it, every parent should read it, every teacher. Men who find women's lack of assertiveness irritating should read it to find out how women end up that way too... Highly recommended.

pleasing style, 27 Jul 2004
This book mixes the facts with selected quotations from the research which make it informative and pleasurable to read. This is a style that all too often, fails to reach the right balance. Not the case on this occasion

Overpowering Foucault, 30 Dec 2005
Sara Mills' text on Michel Foucault is part of a recent series put out by the Routledge Press, designed under the general editorial direction of Robert Eaglestone (Royal Holloway, University of London), to explore the most recent and exciting ideas in intellectual development during the past century or so. To this end, figures such as Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricouer and other influential thinkers in critical thought are highlighted in the series, planned to include more than 21 volumes in all.

Mills' text, following the pattern of the others, includes background information on Foucault and his significance, the key ideas and sources, and Foucault's continuing impact on other thinkers. As the series preface indicates, no critical thinker arises in a vacuum, so the context, influences and broader cultural environment are all important as a part of the study, something with which Foucault would agree.

Why is Foucault included in this series? Foucault is probably second only to Jacques Derrida in influence on thinkers in the field of critical theory and cultural studies, and his impact has gone far beyond narrow intellectual confines to influence psychology, politics, literature, sociology, philosophy, linguistics, history and anthropology. Mills indicates that Foucault's primary focus is on issues of power, knowledge and discourse, with influence in the development of a lot of `posts' - post-modernism, post-colonialism, post-Marxism, post-structualism, etc.

Foucault often concentrated on the ignored, the forgotten or the overlooked in his studies. In looking at the written confession of a murderer from generations ago, or looking at prisoners in present society, Foucault looks not only at the way power operates in practical settings, but what underpins the kind of power relationships. Heavily influenced by the events of 1968, with various forms of war and open rebellion going on across the globe (including Foucault's native French society), he had an inherent distrust for the kinds of power and society relationships considered standard. His work with prisoners and those classified as mentally ill challenged prevailing notions of the intentions of incarceration and even classification - perhaps we can see even more clearly in today's mass-media-saturated society the inconsistencies, not only of application, but of intention in the development of considering who is a criminal (and what their punishment and rehabilitation is likely to be) and who is considered mentally ill - the shift care to confinement and isolation (effective removal) from society gains new meaning from Foucault's analysis.

Foucault looks at power from a very basic position, not that of macroscopic geopolitical entities, but rather interpersonal relationships on a more local level, even exploring the way society uses body and sexuality as a root resource in formulating power relationships. It is worth noting that this issue is over the idea of the `body', and not the `individual', which for Foucault are not strictly synonymous. Looking at the history of sexuality (the freer periods of sexual frankness vis-à-vis the more strict and reserved periods such as the Victorian age) leads to another set of power relations often internalised and often overlooked.

One of the useful features of the text is the side-bar boxes inserted at various points. For example, during the discussion on Foucault's development of Power and Institutions, there are brief discussions, set apart from the primary strand of the text, on the Marxist idea of ideology, developing further this idea should the reader not be familiar with it, or at least not in the way with which Foucault would be working with ideas derived from it. Each section on a key idea spans approximately twenty pages, with a brief summary concluding each, which gives a recap of the ideas (and provides a handy reference). Some of the concluding sections in this volume (unlike other volumes in the series) are not as handy as a recap, but do connect the primary ideas with the next chapter.

The concluding chapter, After Foucault, highlights some key areas of development in relation to other thinkers, as well as points of possible exploration for the reader. Foucault's thought vis-à-vis feminist thought is dramatic and interesting, given Foucault's generally androcentric (and often misogynistic) stance in writing - still the issues of power relations and society are crucial to feminist critique. His post-colonialist ideas, again springing from the reformulation of power relationships in society after a dominant, foreign power is displaced, influenced further thinkers such as Edward Said. Foucault has (perhaps unintentionally) become useful for the anti-psychiatric lobby, as Foucault sees much defined as madness to be social construct rather than actual ailment (Foucault saw talk-therapy as a kind of modernised `confessional').

There was only one point at which I had a serious disagreement with Mills in her analysis of Foucault. At one point in discussing his tendency toward not developing fully thought-out theories, she speculates that his kind of approach could possibly be used `to justify fascism or to deny the existence of the Holocaust'. I would disagree with this assessment, given that this would not in fact discredit systems of power, but merely replace one with another. If fascism or Holocaust-deniers were not a power-in-potential, that might be true. But then, this is a point upon which much discussion could continue!

As do the other volumes in this series, Mills concludes with an annotated bibliography of works by Foucault (primarily those available in authoritative English translation), works on Foucault, and even internet references.

While this series focuses intentionally upon critical literary theory and cultural studies, in fact this is only the starting point. For Foucault (as for others in this series) the expanse is far too broad to be drawn into such narrow guidelines, and the important and impact of the ideas extends out into the whole range of intellectual development. As intellectual endeavours of every sort depend upon language, understanding, and interpretation, the thorough comprehension of how and why we know what we know is crucial.

awesome, 13 Feb 2007
This is a beautifully written book that makes you look at the world differently. Ahmed offers a meditation on how we get oriented or directed by objects - especially tables - in a way that makes sexual orientation continuous with other forms of spatial orientation. Her readings of phenomenology are quirky and intriguing. She talks about secrecy - what we miss when we view an object from a specific point - in order to think about how genealogy (the question of how objects arrive) might be interwoven with phenomenology. So we cannot 'see' how things arrive, even when we do things with things. She shows how norms become part of the background, affecting how objects are arranged, as well as what does and does not come into view. She interrogates whiteness as well as heterosexuality in these terms. I loved how tables are part of this book (the writing tables that are philosophy's domesticated objects, as well as other kinds of tables, including kitchen tables and dining tables, which she describes as 'kinship objects'). I never thought tables could be so interesting, but once you read this book, you will keep noticing them! And of course, the table becomes queer - it becomes wonky, when it supports queer action, or even simply when we notice the table as something we do something on. This book makes furniture something to think about. Wow!

conceptual building blocks for a better world, 20 Aug 1997
Iris Young makes us think about justice not as a set of debts we owe other individuals but as a set of relations between social groups. In a just society, no group is oppressed. Her chapter "Five Faces of Oppression" is a classic. She brings new insights to debates about welfare, affirmative action, and disability. This book also offers a thought-provoking discussion of community. Young argues that we have based our idea of community on the rural life of an earlier age and that city life is where we should look for ideas about how community thrives in diversity.

Young tries to write for a general audience as well as for scholars. Sometimes, she succeeds, although the parts of the book that address particular groups and their predicaments or particular social policies are more accessible than the parts in which she critiques other theories. I would recommend this book for second-year students in college and up. It marks a turning point in social and political thought.

Fantastic Book Highlighting The Very Real Danger Happening Now, 05 Sep 2008
What a great book! I write from personal experience too.

I have had to drop out of university and leave two jobs as a result of oppression by women, not men - I was bullied. I now find myself having to leave another university having been given uncharacteristically low grades by a tutor who was the type of new feminist Hoff Sommers describes. From being an A grade student at previous university in the subject I was given D's and a bare pass because I dared to write my work from an objective academic perspective and see mens issues in literature in equal balance with womens. My tutors comments were continually personal, academically irrelevant, rigid and bigoted.
Hoff Sommer's book has shed light on why I may have had so much trouble with other women and why this tutor was behaving in this way. The oppression is likely physical as well as intellectual - I wear make up and am an attractive woman with large breasts so perhaps this too has contributed to the hostility from hidden feminists who believe I am somehow letting the side down! I'm wondering....!!

The problem is that a new destructive gender pedagogy is taking over our education institutions and society in general. Suddenly HE courses are over tinged with 'Womens issues" and suddenly you find yourself on an arts or science course that has secretly been a Women's Studies course all along! For example, you thought you were going to learn about 18th Century France? Sure! 18th Century women in France.... You wanted to find out about music in the 12th Century? Of course - women's music.....or how badly treated they were by male musicians....That is the gist of how our HE courses are going. They are no longer objective and academic but highly strung, emotional healing circles for the most neurotic, subjective and frankly dangerous women in todays society.

You are expected to write your essays from a feminist perspective - if you dare to take a balanced academic view or stand up for men in any way you are instantly marginalized and given low low grades as I was!

I myself am a woman and I am a feminist but like Hoff Sommers and the old feminists I beleive in equality and not treating men as the enemy but as equal co-partners in making this world as great as we can make it.

Christina's anecdotes are both funny and shocking - I don't know whether to laugh hysterically or to feel scared when I read some of her tales from womens conferences she has attended. Honestly - I'm not kidding, it's scary stuff. One woman who was an 'antibias' facilitator at a conference the author attended had two puppets, a dog and a teddy. As it was time for the women to return to the conference hall after a break or something this woman moved her puppet and said "Teddy and his friend wants everyone to return now" No woman at the conference batted an eyelid at this clearly deranged behaviour! WTF?!!!!!!

Unlike the women the author talks about and the women I have been oppressed by I am objective in my views and I speak from personal experience - everything Christina says I can pretty much relate to which is why I am writing this review with such passion. I am an objective academic and an excellent one at that and I have suffered far more at the hands of other women than I ever have with men. My personal and professional oppression has not come from men and 'the patriarchy' but from women! I have been bullied, backstabbed, ostracised, unsupported, put down - by women. I don't feel at all oppressed by patriarchy right now - matriarchy however.....

Women are too easily drunk on emotion, it takes work for us women to learn to control that aspect of oureselves just as it takes work for a young man to control his instinctively aggressive side. It is necessary for all of us to learn that masculine and feminine characteristics are compliments of each other and in life there is a time and place for them all whether you are a man or a woman. Subjective feminine style emotion bordering on hysteria does not belong in academic circles, places of learning and debate - masculine objectivity and reason does. Likewise masculine agression would not do when caring for somebody who is ill - the more feminine traits of empathy and compassion would be best here.

Thus, man or woman - save the masculine and feminine qualities for the most appropriate places to express them, for when they are expressed in the wrong places they can cause absolute havoc, imbalance and the eventual decline of society.

Christina is talking sense - I know because I have experienced first hand what she is describing went on in 90s America. 15 years on in the UK and I am the next generation (age 29) experiencing exactly the same thing.

Sorry super duper feminists - men are not the enemy, women are not superior just because we have a womb (get over yourselves please!) Stop oppressing your most brilliantly intelligent 'sisters' like myself because we are objective and emotionally balanced enough to refuse to agree with your blind bigotry. Men and women are equal partners in this world and I feel really sorry for them sometimes, being openly insulted in HE circles by women tutors and students alike.

The madness has got to stop and I am right behind Christina Hoff Sommers in striving to do just that.

Despite what you hear, it's not anti-feminist, 11 Feb 2008
This occupies similar territory to Janet Radcliffe Richards ground breaking early eighties tome, "The Sceptical Feminist". However, where Richards adopts the style and tone of a philosophical treatise, Somers is punchier and wittier. There's no argument with gender justice or the demands of the Wolstonecraft classsical feminists, but in turning her attention to the crazy antics of campus femocrats in the 80s/90s she uncovers sloppy research and in some instances downright lies deployed to bolster gender feminism. I loved the anecdote about an organisation called Future Housewives of America breaking into campus women's centres and tidying them up!

Another "must read" book, 20 Jul 2006
The term "feminazi" was found after searching for something totally unrelated on Google. Not knowing what the term meant, I searched for more information and a reference was made to this book. I read the reviews, and thought it would make good reading.
A truly excellent read, and as one of the cover review states, Miss Sommers simply rams home the truth, through all the false statistics and lies that have permeated the subject matter. Example follows example of selective statistical analysis, and more worrying, the hijacking of US academia by this mindset. This mindset is alive and well, and growing nicely in the UK.
If anyone argues against the points made in this book, then please do it with real case facts and figures, not just opinion and ideology.
Some of the examples given had me laughing out loud - they are that good.


Who Stole Liberalism?, 03 Dec 2004
This book documents the transformation of feminism from a liberal philosophy to an anti-liberal dogma. Although the book focuses on women, it could almost have been titled "Who Stole Liberalism?" (Incidentally, the book quotes denunciations of this movement by eminent women such as Iris Murdock, Doris Lessing, etc.) But more than a change of beliefs is involved here. The Transformers have protected themselves from criticism by persuading their students to reject notions such as proof, reason, evidence and the like. If you want details, see The Rape of Alma Mater. The bad news is that the same thing appears to be happening in the U.K.

An courageous and admirable book, 02 Mar 2004
A courageous and admirable book. Until recently few men have dared to challenge even the most outrageous claims and behaviour of Salem-style feminists. Of the only 2 men that I know of who have written books that were critical of feminism in this country, both have had a tough time of it, and one has since been bankrupted and his life very severely affected as a result. American males who have challenged feminism have also fared badly. Sommers is female, and a feminist herself. Her book is a clearly argued and well-researched exposure of some of the worst examples of feminist zealotry. It is important and long overdue. I doubt if being female will prevent her from being vilified, however. In fact, as a female she will probably be even more abused as a traitor to the 'cause'. And yet feminists can never be considered worthy of real respect until they show themselves to be open to criticism, and to be prepared to wash their dirty linen in public. And, as Sommers book clearly shows, there is a lot of very dirty linen to wash.

Femininity and 18th Century Culture, 28 Apr 2008
"In a period of major political and economic change, definitions of `women' and `femininity' played a crucial part in a wider redefinition of social categoris and social roles, and the anthology's five sections represent significant areas within this debate about women's nature and status." (8) Jones' fascinating anthology sheds new light on my own research of 18th century play production and should be embraced by everyone even vaguely interested in 18th century literature. When describing Wollston