Woman

Woman: History and Critique of a Polemical Concept follows the changes in the concept of woman from the Early modern to the post-colonial age, using the words of women who challenged its patriarchal definition to understand its transformations. Rudan convincingly argues that the concept of woman is doubly polemical. It affirms sexual difference as political difference, while denying the universal character of modern political concepts that emphasize the unity of the political and social order by exposing its fundamental division. At the same time, woman is a concept marked by differencesof race, class, culturethat continually redetermine its content. To trace the history of the concept of woman is thus to affirm a different perspective on history itself, a partial perspective that lays the groundwork for the feminist critique of the present.