starts with interesting personal stories about how the two editors switched from Marxism to postmodernism.
Steve: "I saw the language of postmodernism as resonant with a new queer politics challenging normalization and a routinized politics of respectability." (p. 5)
Linda on Habermas''s Knowledge and Human Interests: "Habermas drew a distinction between the Marx who provided a powerful historical narrative about the development of capitalism and the Marx who saw himself as providing a philosophical theory about the nature and meaning of human history.
Linda: against "Marxism''s tendency to see itself as providing a grand theory of history and social organization constituted around such categories as "production" and "labor" which precluded it from adequately theorizing the situation of women. . . . radical feminism''s tendency to develop grand theories about "patriarchy" and women which precluded it from seeing differences among women which were, amongst other things, differences of class" (7)
main purpose of the book: p. 9
. . . we wish to show that it is possible for postmodern thinkers to focus on institutions as well as texts, to think about the interrelations of social patterns without being essentializing or totalizing, and to create constructive as well as deconstructive analyses of the social. The positive possibilities of postmodern theorizing can be matched, we believe, by constructive ideas about political action.. . .
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