ABSTRACT
Contemporary interest in gender theory and its currently privileged position in the field of cultural studies has two key sources: feminism and lesbian/gay politics. As such, we might be forgiven for supposing that debates around gender would be a liberating force in the struggle for meaning in postmodemity. Not so. Manifestations of gender interest in popular culture seem principally concerned with masculinity in crisis, 1 and in the academy the postmodernist theoretical preoccupation with gender is functioning to replace (if not efface) feminism, (see Fuss 1989; Graham 1991).
