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Since the publication of Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex", French feminist thought has informed and shaped the on-going debates in the English-speaking world. This book introduces English speakers to the work of a major group of French feminists - those de Beauvoir herself supported

The increasing feminist interest in Michel Foucault's work (eg, see Hurley, R. [Tr], The History of Sexuality, Vol. I: An Introduction, New York: Vintage, 1980) for developing a materialist theory of the subject indicates that Foucault's theory of the social & of discourse deserves further feminist critical attention. While Foucault's critique of humanism & of traditional historiography is useful for feminist theory, his concept of discursive practice, & the social logic of contingency it depends on, are at odds with materialist feminism's emancipatory agenda as it informs recent efforts to reunderstand "woman" as a highly differentiated category. It is argued that a post-Althusserian theory of the social & of ideology (which Foucault's work contests) promotes a systemic mode of analysis that is much more congruent with feminism's political aims, in that it offers a theory of the subject in language that acknowledges the hierarchical social arrangments in which subjectivities are produced & circulate. Understood as ideology rather than as an eclectic gathering from multiple sources, appropriation becomes a process of disarticulation-rearticulation: a crucial component of materialist feminist critical practice. 51 References. AA