ABSTRACT
Feminist appropriations of Foucault have resulted in path-breaking and provocative social and cultural criticism. Original analyses of anorexia nervosa, the social construction of femininity, female sexual desire, sexual liberation, the politics of needs and the politics of differences have changed the landscape of feminist theory. Analyzing the power relations governing the production and dissemination of discourses was, of course, one of Foucault’s principal projects. His preoccupation with thinking against oneself, his reluctance to speak for others and to make political judgments were rooted in an aversion to authority and in his belief that intellectuals often over-extend the limits of whatever authority they do possess. Foucault’s account of subjectivity does not introduce any obstacles to feminist praxis that were not already there. Feminist praxis is continually caught between appeals to a free subject and an awareness of victimization.
