ABSTRACT
I start with the proposition that the series of seminars (on which this volume is based) is a landmark in the history of feminism within Cambridge. We have mastered the discourse of sexuality, we are on familiar terms with the language of sexual difference. And if we don’t actually enjoy it, at least we can fake it. What I want to give serious attention to today is the institutional politics of this acceptance of feminist psychoanalytical theory—this having made it, if not yet into the curriculum, then at least into well-attended departmental seminars—an acceptance which is not accompanied by any alteration in the power relations between women and men—their relative employment and promotion prospects, their access to the machinery of university government, their access to the means of production of something more material than discourse. And then I want to talk about inevitable appropriation, and what that is going to mean (or perhaps means already).
