ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will express my excitement about the potential of the perspectives of sexual difference as practised by Italian feminist philosophical theorists to change the way we, as archaeologists think. In particular the works of Rosi Braidotti (1991a; 1991b; 1992; 1994a; 1994b), Teresa de Lauretis (1984; 1986; 1988; 1989), and Adriana Cavarero (1993) offer us ways of critiquing existing knowledge which will change what it is considered possible to think. These women apply theories of gender as critical theory in ways which subvert ‘thinking’ as we know it. By problematising the assumptions at the root of masculist philosophy they undermine the structures of knowledge and destabilise the interpretative frameworks which shape the way we understand the world. With the help of the above feminist theorists I hope to show that it is necessary to ask different questions, and to ask them at a fundamental level. By this I mean we must question the notion of ‘thinking’. Rosi Braidotti describes this feminist project as she sees it:
Insofar as it elucidates the material and symbolic structures of this system, feminism is a critical theoretical movement; for, far from limiting themselves to simply enumerating the crimes of oppression and omission committed against women, feminists have taken on the positive task of analysing our culture’s schemes of knowledge.
(Braidotti 1991a: 149)