The chapters in this section introduce what might be termed a ‘paradigm shift’ in feminist literary criticism. This is a period in which the meaning of ‘woman’ as a signifying term is subject to its most radical destabilisations – and hence what it means to be a feminist or to practice feminist literary criticism undergoes significant change. In Part II of the book, ‘woman’ as a situated, socio-cultural entity was problematised. As the essays demonstrated, there was a movement outwards from white, middle-class feminism to an acknowledgement of the diversity of women's lives, experiences and creativity. To think about women was also to think about gender: masculinity as much as femininity became available for interrogation and reinscription. Feminism began to ask fundamental questions regarding language and human subjectivity, and these questions were, simultaneously, the subject of intense debate in a range of complementary theoretical discourses, from linguistics to psychoanalysis. While poststructuralism was examining the role played by language in individual and social formation, psychoanalysis was analysing the construction of gendered identity in the embryonic adult, and postcolonialism was focusing attention on the socio-economic reality of the subaltern ‘other’. From diverse directions new hybrid forms of feminist literary criticism emerged that, while continuing to examine the complexity of gendered identities in contemporary society, also brought renewed energy to ongoing debates questioning the status of the term ‘woman’ as a coherent theoretical point of origin.