Public Man/Private Woman in Context

In: Politics & gender, Band 11, Heft 3, S. 561-569

Abstract

Jean Elshtain, in an essay published in Signs in 1982 and entitled "Feminist Discourse and Its Discontents: Language, Power, and Meaning," addressed one of the many issues with which feminist theorists were then grappling: the oppressive power of language as a tool of control over those who had been silenced throughout history, leaving those wanting to resist that control with the task of discovering new modes of communication. Acknowledging that language has the potential to oppress, Elshtain was, however, not ready to abandon the past, to urge her readers to imagine a world where one could escape the languages and discourses that were bequeathed to us over the generations.