Abstract

_Disputed Subjects_ analyzes some of the assumptions behind the contemporary attraction to rationalistic notions of justice and knowledge and discusses why modernity cannot be emancipatory. The effects of gender relations in constituting modern political ideas and theories of knowledge are explored, while at the same time the author identifies problematic aspects of discourses such as psychoanalysis, postmodernism and feminist theorizing. Flax pays special attention to recurrent difficulties concerning maternity, sexuality and race within feminist theorizing, and she addresses the inadequacies of postmodernist accounts of subjectivity and gender. She analyzes psychoanalysis as a discursive formation to identify its particular organization of knowledge and power