ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the contemporary alliance between feminism and postmodernism. Viewed from within the intellectual and academic culture of western capitalist democracies, feminism and postmodernism have emerged as two leading currents of time, and each is in its own way profoundly critical of the principles and meta-narratives of Western Enlightenment and modernity. The initial answer to any defender of the view of 'situated criticism' is that cultures, societies and traditions are not monolithic, univocal and homogeneous fields of meaning. The first defect of situated criticism is a kind of 'hermeneutic monism of meaning,' the assumption namely that the narratives of our culture are so univocal and uncontroversial that in appealing to them one could simply be exempt from the task of evaluative, ideal-typical reconstruction. The second defect of 'situated criticism' is to assume that the constitutive norms of a given culture, society and tradition will be sufficient to enable one to exercise criticism in the name of a desirable future.
