Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism.
By Janet Halley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 418p.
$29.95.
Simone de Beauvoir's Political Thinking. Edited by Lori
Jo Marso and Patricia Moynagh. Champaign: University of Illinois Press,
2006. 136p. $50.00 cloth, $18.00 paper.
Dispelling the myth of the given, probing the tacit presuppositions of
dominant discourses, challenging the naturalization of oppressive
relations, investigating processes that produce invisibility,
demonstrating the deficiencies of reductive arguments, and engaging
difference and plurality have been hallmarks of feminist scholarship in
general and of feminist theory in particular. Through sustained engagement
with canonical texts, disciplinary discourses, and historical and
contemporary events, feminist theorists have enabled new ways of seeing
and thinking. Has feminist theory exhausted its potential, or worse,
become an impediment to emancipatory projects? These two works provide
markedly different responses to these questions.