ABSTRACT
When Griselda Pollock started writing Vision and Difference, she felt that approaches to art history needed to drastically change. Linda Nochlin's article stated that inequality was not simply created by law or regulations, but also generated by the very systems and languages that humans have developed in order to interpret the world. The study of art history was a part of this system, and in Nochlin's mind it not only ignored women, it also reinforced inequality. Prior to the publication of Vision and Difference, there were several writers who had explored many of the major themes in Pollock's work, including the concepts of feminist art history and of "vision" or seeing. Pollock had also been inspired by the work and methods of several thinkers outside of feminism and the art world. Sigmund Freud's work on psychoanalysis was important to Pollock, since she felt it was an essential part of understanding why patriarchal* societies develop in the first place.
