ABSTRACT
The recent intensification of feminist attention to the differences among women might be understood as a reaction to the emergence of a body of feminist theory which attempts to represent women as a whole on the basis of little information about the diversity of women’s experiences, to develop universal categories for analyzing women’s oppression, and, on the basis of such analysis, to identify the most important struggles. The aim of this chapter is twofold: to turn to Foucault’s work and method in order to lay out the basic features of a politics of difference; and to show how such a politics might be applied in the feminist debate concerning sexuality. Foucault’s “bottom-up” analysis of power is an attempt to show how power relations at the microlevel of society make possible certain global effects of domination, such as class power and patriarchy.
