ABSTRACT
MORE THAN ANY OTHER TYPE OF FEMINIST thought-liberal, Marxist, radical, psychoanalytic, socialist, and existentialist-postmodern feminism has an uneasy relationship to feminism. Postmodern feminists worry that because feminism purports to be an explanatory theory, it, too, is in danger of trying to provide the explanation for why woman is oppressed or the ten steps all women must take in order to achieve true liberation. Because postmodern feminists reject traditional assumptions about truth and reality, they wish to avoid in their writings any and all reinstantiations of phallologocentric thought, which is thought ordered around an absolute word (logos) that is "male" in style (hence, the phallus). Helene Cixous has publicly stated that terms such as feminist and lesbian are parasitic upon phallologocentric thought because they connote "deviation from a norm instead of a free sexual option or a place of solidarity with women."l Better for women seeking liberation to avoid such terms, which suggest a unity that blocks difference.
