ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author interrogates the function of the categories of experience and (especially) identity in stabilizing post-modern cultural studies. He addresses these questions through an engagement with some of the most provoking and problematic questions raised by some contemporary feminisms, in particular those whose problematic is determined by postmodern theory. The author argues that contemporary feminist theorists whose work is informed by postmodern theory have distanced the predominant forms of academic feminism from the more radical political positions of an earlier generation of radical and socialist feminists. He also argues that the discourses of postmodernism, cultural studies, and feminism are also related in that they are produced by the contradictions between the categories of private and public that are introduced by the publicly organized reproduction of collective labor power characteristic of late capitalism. The author describes the contestations over the categories of identity.
