ABSTRACT
The current moment in feminist thought and scholarship is very much one of reflection and revision, as ideas, beliefs and approaches which were accepted orthodoxies even a few years ago are subjected to critical analysis and discussion. In the past decade or so, the meaning of the term 'feminism' and the need to recognise the existence of many different feminisms have become the subject of intensive discussion within the general field of women's studies. For many contemporary scholars, the central issue in this debate is the need to interrogate or reject any essential idea of 'women' as the basis of feminism. Denise Riley has explored the changing and unstable meanings of the term 'women' within feminism over many decades. The Women's Liberation Movement, and especially its academic wing, which began demanding 'women's studies', criticised the phallocentric nature of existing academic disciplines and their exclusion of women either as subjects or objects of investigation.
