In the past "women" have been radically undermined, and newer concerns with "difference", "identity", and "power" have emerged. This text explores these developments in a set of specially commissioned essays by feminist theorists.

List of plates; Preface and acknowledgements; 1. Introduction Mich?le Barrett and Anne Phillips; 2. Universal pretensions in political thought Anne Phillips; 3. Post-post-modernism? theorizing social complexity Sylvia Walby; 4. 'Women's interests' and the post-structuralist state Rosemary Pringle and Sophie Watson; 5. Feminist encounters: locating the politics of experience Chandra Talpade Mohanty; 6. Sexual practice and changing lesbian identities Biddy Martin; 7. Power, bodies and difference Moira Gatens; 8. Painting, feminism, history Griselda Pollock; 9. The politics of translation Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; 10. Words and things: materialism and method in contemporary feminist analysis Mich?le Barrett; Index.