ABSTRACT

The affinities between the feminist theoretical project, with its interest in liberation and critique, and the free space of the postmodern have often been noted. The subject of feminist political articulation demands a critical examination of the ways in which much recent feminist analysis has embraced postmodernist theories. Explanations of the feminist theoretical positions that emerge on the receptive side of the postmodern debate then can be considered in contrast to the positions of feminist theorists engaged in distancing themselves from these postmodern lures. The term identity politics also merits attention in the feminist-postmodernist debate, especially because, linked to feminism, it leads to further questions of essentialism and epistemology. The discussion of a second Madonna text can assist in setting up the central problematic that comprises the feminist transition from the politics of realism to the politics of the postmodern.