ABSTRACT
It is striking how many of the issues debated here concern signification and discourse. What began as an exchange about feminism and postmodernism has turned largely into a dispute about how best to interpret the linguistic turn. This development is not surprising. Feminists, like other theorists, work today in a context marked by the problematization of language. This, to my mind, is the most fruitful way of understanding postmodernism: an epochal shift in philosophy and social theory from an epistemological problematic, in which mind is conceived as reflecting or mirroring reality, to a discursive problematic, in which culturally constructed social meanings are accorded density and weight. Such a shift carries with it the condition diagnosed by Jean-Frans;ois Lyotard. Belief in philosophical meta narratives tends to decline with the linguistic turn, since to accord density and weight to signifying processes is also to cast doubt on the possibility of a permanent neutral matrix for inquiry.
