Introduction

The theme of this book is women, bodies and ethics and the way in which all of those might be recuperated within postmodernism. The postmodernist perspective is a problematic one for feminism precisely because it seems to undermine not only the hitherto entrenched givens of a male en-gendered epistemology, but also the very ground on which women might seek to position their own project. If the feminist project, is about valorising women, about re-visioning women being in the world, then a feminist-inspired ethic must do more than simply extend the scope of morality. The poststructuralism encompasses a set of theories characterised by rigorous anti-humanism and anti-subjectivity, and by the claim that all knowledge is discursively constructed. In mainstream discourse, that devaluation is even more evident, and the denial more entrenched. Yet, at the same time, as a postmodernist analysis contends, the feminine and the body are each both absent and excessive.