ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts of the key concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book presents the 'changing emphases' in feminist thought which Mary Maynard identified, the shift to textual analysis under the impetus of post-structuralist arguments; the fragmenting of identity which appeared to render experience obsolete; the criticism of meta-narratives, in particular those which imply a vision of history as linear and progressive; the abandonment of monocausal explanations and monolithic understandings of the operation of power, and the hegemonic emphasis on culture. The debates about the nature of the historical enterprise, given the power of post-structuralist ideas to undermine the confident assertion that historians could provide legitimate knowledge about the past, have taken a good deal of space in the book. Feminism has been inextricably implicated in the retrieval of women in history and in the emergence of gender studies.
