Abstract

...I must say at once that the grammatical position of "feminist" in the expression "feminist aesthetics" is in even greater danger of generating confusion than the use of "analytic" [n the phrase, "analytic aesthetics"]. I have been utterly unable to discern in the feminist literature any homogeneous philosophical practice, substantive claim, or method of working that could, more or less disjunctively, be called feminist, that compared favorably (in the recognitional sense) with the more convergent literature of analytic aesthetics--except, of course, for feminism's decisive emphasis on emancipatory themes and the uncovering of what I hope I may lump together, without explanation, as evidence of the "patriarchal" or "oppressive" structure of western cultural life.