Ebook: The sounds of feminist theory

In The Sounds of Feminist Theory, Ruth Salvaggio follows a distinctive turn
toward the oral and evocative qualities of language in feminist theory. Questioning paradigms
of female voice and varied feminist claims to language, she suggests that feminism
theorists listen to the ways in which words mean more than they ostensibly signify, the
ways in which language and epistemology- like sound-are mobile. She calls this theoretical
project "Hearing the O," a process of listening for and seizing those wavering
qualities of language that invite changes, often remarkable alterations, in how we think.
A range of contemporary feminist critical writers are discussed: Gloria
Anzaldua, Judith Butler, Helene Cixous, Raebel Blau DuPlessis, Jane Flax, Susan
Griffin, Donna Haraway, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Elaine Pagels, Adrienne Rich,
Eve Sedgwick, Joan Scott, Jane Tompkins, Trinh Minh-ha, and Patricia Williams. Their
investment in the oral modulations of words marks not only a provocative engagement
with the incornmensurability of contemporary theory, but also a turn to the ambiguous
and tangled qualities of language--"poetic literacy"-that generate an evocative epistemology.