² Haraway, Donna ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’ in Nicholson, Linda J., ed. Feminism/Postmodernism (London and New York: Routledge, 1990) pp. 202–3Google Scholar. First published in 1985 in Socialist Review, no 8.

³ For divergence in feminist epistemology, see (among many others) Lennon, Kathleen and Whitford, Margaret, ed. Knowing the Difference: Feminist Perspectives in Epistemology (London and New York: Routledge, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Alcoff, Linda and Potter, Elizabeth, ed. Feminist Epistemologies (London and New York: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar. The variations and sometimes sharp disagreements in feminists' attitudes toward postmodern theory are illustrated in Benhabib, Seyla, Butler, Judith, Cornell, Drucilla, and Fraser, NancyFeminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange (London and New York: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar and Nicholson, Linda J., ed. Feminism/Postmodernism (London and New York: Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar. For variations and divergences among thinkers loosely lumped together as ‘postmodern’ or ‘poststructuralist’ see (again among many others) Bernstein, Richard J.A New Constellation: The Ethical–Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991)Google Scholar and Descombes, VincentModern French Philosophy (Cambridge: University Press, 1980)Google Scholar. All these variations notwithstanding, the categories of ‘difference’ and ‘gender’ and the connections between them are central to all these writers.

⁴ Lyotard, Jean FrançoisThe Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Bennington, G. and Maaumi, Brian (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1984)Google Scholar. But anyone who reads this text will at once see vast differences between Lyotard and, say, Foucault or Derrida who are also often labelled ‘postmodern’ thinkers. See especially Foucault, MichelThe Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. Smith, A. M. Sheridan (Pantheon, New York, 1972)Google Scholar and The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (Vintage, Random House, New York, 1973)Google Scholar; Derrida, JacquesWriting and Difference, trans. Bass, Alan (Routledge, London, 1978)Google Scholar.

⁵ For example, Julia Kristeva denounces postmodernism in her Black Sun: Depression and Melancholy, trans. Leon S. Rudiez (Columbia University Press, New York, 1989) pp. 258–259;Google Scholar and Michel Foucault, when asked about it, riposted, ‘What is postmodernism? I'm not up to date,’ in Raulet, Gerard ‘Structuralism and Post-Structuralism: An Interview with Michel Foucault’ trans. Harding, JeremyTelos: A Quarterly Journal of Critical Thought, no. 55 (Spring 1983), pp. 195–211.Google Scholar

⁶ Judith Butler, ‘Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of “Postmodernism”’ in Feminist Contentions.

⁷ Gellner, Ernest, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (London and New York: Routledge, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ On the ‘realist’ side, see among others Swinburne, RichardThe Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979)Google Scholar and Plantinga, AlvinGod, Freedom, and Evil (Michigan: Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1977)Google Scholar; among so-called ‘anti-realists’ see Phillips', D. Z. many writings, starting with The Concept of Prayer (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966)Google Scholar and Cupitt, DonLife Lines (London: SCM Press, 1986)Google Scholar and The Last Philosophy (SCM Press, London, 1995)Google Scholar. There are also thinkers who hold to sophisticated accounts of the transcendent reality of God but in ways which place them in some respects nearer to anti-realists: cf. Pailin, DavidGroundwork of Philosophy of Religion (London: Epworth Press, 1985).Google Scholar

⁹ Swinburne, RichardResponsibility and Atonement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Quinn, Philip L. ‘Swinburne on Guilt, Atonement, and Christian Redemption’, in Reason and the Christian Religion: Essays in Honour of Richard Swinburne, ed. Padgett, Alan G. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).Google Scholar

¹¹ Richard Swinburne The Existence of God.

¹² Plantinga, Alvin ‘On Taking Belief in God as Basic’ in Runzo, Joseph and Ihara, Craig K., eds., Religious Experience and Religious Belief (New York: University Press of America, 1986).Google Scholar

¹³ Alston, WilliamPerceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

¹⁴ E.g. Swinburne, RichardThe Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977)Google Scholar; Kenny, AnthonyThe God of the Philosophers (Oxford: University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

¹⁵ One of the best recent books on this subject is Soskice, Janet MartinMetaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ See for example Phillips, D. Z., Faith and Philosophical Enquiry (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971)Google Scholar and Belief, Change, and Forms of Life (London: Macmillan, 1986)Google Scholar. For an account of the relationship between Wittgenstein's later philosophy and the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure, see Harris, Roy, Language, Saussure and Wittgenstein: How to Play Games with Words (London: Routledge, 1988)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr Brian Clack for this reference.

¹⁷ Hick, John, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (London: Macmillan, 1989) chapter 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ See for example Irigaray, Lucie, Speculum of the Other Woman (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1985)Google Scholar for a sustained critique of Freud; and Derrida, Jacques, Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Kamuf, Peggy (London: Routledge, 1994)Google Scholar for reflections on Marxist thought in the aftermath of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.

¹⁹ See especially Freud, Sigmund, New Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis, trans. Strachey, James (Penguin, London: Penguin Freud Library Volume 2, 1991)Google Scholar, and Lacan, JacquesÉcrits: A Selection, trans. Sheridan, Alan (London: Tavistock Press, 1977).Google Scholar

²⁰ For a helpful exposition of this, see Grosz, Elizabeth, Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction (London: Routledge, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²¹ This is put most forcefully by Lacan in his ‘God and the Jouissance of The Woman’ in Mitchell, Juliet and Rose, Jacqueline, eds. Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the Ecole Freudienne (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is largely accepted by, among others, Julia Kristeva, who holds that unless women accept their place as defined by the phallus, they become psychotic. See her Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Roudiez, Leon S. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982)Google Scholar. Elsewhere, however, Kristeva seeks a new starting point for female speech in what she calls the ‘semiotic’, which in her use of the term is grounded in the bodiliness of the mother. See her Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Roudiez, Leon S. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, and ‘Stabat Mater’ in Moí, Toril, ed., The Kristeva Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986)Google Scholar. Drucilla Cornell, more than any other feminist writer, has shown the extent to which this account can be seen as historically situated, and can be deconstructed and appropriated for feminist use by showing the indeterminable signification of ‘woman’. Cornell, Drucilla, Beyond Accommodation: Ethical Feminism, Deconstruction and the Law (New York: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar; see also her contributions to Feminist Contentions.

²² For an insightful account of this see Brennan, Teresa, History After Lacan (London: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar especially the section entitled ‘The Ego's Era’.

²³ Freud, Sigmund, Totem and Taboo in his The Origins of Religion, trans. Strachey, James (Penguin Freud Library Vol. 13, Harmondsworth, Penguin: 1985)Google Scholar.

²⁴ As we find, for example, in Davies, Brian, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion New edition (Oxford: University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, chapter 2.

²⁵ Irigaray, Luce ‘Divine Woman’ in Sexes and Genealogies, trans. Gill, Gillian C. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

²⁶ See, among others, Derrida, Jacques, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Bass, Alan (University of Chicago Press, 1982)Google Scholar where he investigates the ‘margins’ of philosophers such as Plato and Rousseau, and Irigaray, Luce, This Sex Which is Not One, trans. Porter, Catherine and Burke, Carolyn (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1985)Google Scholar where she uses the technique on psychoanalytic writing.

²⁷ Luce Irigaray, ‘Divine Women’, in her Sexes and Genealogies.

²⁸ Kristeva, Julia ‘Stabat Mater’, in her Tales of Love, trans. Roudiez, Leon S. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; reprinted in Moi, Toril, ed. The Kristeva Reader, op. cit.Google Scholar

²⁹ Derrida, JacquesSpurs: Nietszche's Styles, trans. Harlow, Barbara (Chicago: University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

³⁰ The phrase needs to be taken in its context: Foucault, Michael, The History of Sexuality, Vol I: An Introduction, trans. Hurley, Robert (New York: Random House, 1980), p. 102Google Scholar; where it is obvious that it is precisely from within a context of agency and accountability that the self as pre-given needs to be questioned.

³¹ See Judith Butler ‘Contingent Foundations’ in Feminist Contentions.

³² Saussure, Ferdinand de, General Course in Linguistics, trans. Harris, Roy (London: Duckworth, 1983).Google Scholar

³³ Jakobson, Roman, Fundamentals of Language (The Hague: Mouton, 1956).Google Scholar

³⁴ The primary texts here are Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics and Lévi-Strauss, Claude, The Savage Mind (English trans. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1966).Google Scholar For useful secondary literature see Culler, Jonathan, Saussure (London: Fontana Modern Masters, Collins, 1976)Google Scholar; Sturrock, John, Structuralism, second edition (London: Fontana, Harper Collins, 1993)Google Scholar; Bannet, Eve Tavor, Structuralism and the Logic of Dissent: Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan (London: Macmillan, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁵ Julia Kristeva gives a helpful account of this, in her ‘The System and the Speaking Subject’ in Moi, Toril, ed. A Kristeva Reader, p. 25.Google Scholar

³⁶ In this it is of course indebted to Freud, Sigmund, The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and its Discontents, both in his Civilization, Society and Religion, trans. James, Strachey (Penguin Freud Library Vol. 12, London: Penguin, 1991).Google Scholar

³⁷ Jay, Nancy, Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion, and Paternity (Chicago: University Press, 1991), p. xxiii.Google Scholar

³⁸ Kristeva, Julia, Strangers to Ourselves, trans. Roudiez, Leon S. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

³⁹ See for example Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, op. cit.

⁴⁰ Derrida, Jacques, Dissemination, trans. Johnson, Barbara (Chicago: University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

⁴¹ See, for an exploration of this with regard to Lacan, , Macey, David, Lacan in Contexts (London: Verso, 1988)Google Scholar chapter three; and with regard to Foucault, Miller, James, The Passion of Michel Foucault (Flamingo, Harper Collins: 1994)Google Scholar, chapters three and four.

⁴² While these are abiding interests in the lives and thought of many French thinkers, they have received most published prominence in the work of Michel Foucault: see his Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Howard, Richard (London: Tavistock, 1967)Google Scholar; The Birth of the Clinic, trans. Sheridan, A. M. (London: Routledge, 1973)Google Scholar; Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan, Alan (London: Penguin, 1977)Google Scholar; The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans. Hurley, Robert (London: Penguin, 1979).Google Scholar

⁴³ See among others, Baudrillard, Jean, Fatal Strategies, trans. Beitchman, Philip and Niesluchowski, W. G. J. (London: Pluto, 1990)Google Scholar; The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena, trans. Benedict, James (London: Verso, 1993)Google Scholar. For critical analysis of Baudrillard, see Kellner, Douglas, ed. Baudrillard: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994)Google Scholar, and Gane, Mike, Baudrillard: Critical and Fatal Theory (London: Routledge, 1991).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Taylor, Mark, Erring: A Postmodern A/theology (Chicago: University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Along with the primary sources already cited, see Richard Bernstein ‘Foucault: Critique as a Philosophic Ethos’ and ‘Serious Play: The Ethical–Political Horizon of Derrida’, both in his The New Constellation, op. cit.

⁴⁶ Irigaray, Luce, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gill, Gillian C. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985) pp. 191–240Google Scholar; and Julia Kristeva Tales of Love, op. cit.

⁴⁷ For an account and critique of this, see Moulton, Janice ‘The Adversary Method’ in Harding, Sandra and Hintikka, Merrill B., ed. Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983).Google Scholar

⁴⁸ As I think it does, for example, in Mark Taylor, Erring.

⁴⁹ As for example in his essays in Foucaul, Michel, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 ed. Gordon, Colin (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1980).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Rorty, Richard, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Mark Taylor, Erring, op. cit. For a discussion of Rorty see Bernstein ‘Rorty's Liberal Utopia’ in his The New Constellation, op cit.

⁵¹ Derrida, Jacques ‘Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority”’ in Cornell, Drucilla et al. , eds. Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (New York: Routledge, 1992).Google Scholar

⁵² For Lacan's view, see his ‘God and the Jouissance of The Woman’, op. cit.. The idea derives broadly from Freud, of course, especially his The Future of an Illusion.

⁵³ Irigaray, Luce ‘Women, the Sacred, Money’ in her, Sexes and Genealogies, op. cit. p. 75.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Thus for example David Macey in his otherwise excellent book, Lacan in Contexts, largely ignores Lacan's constant use of Biblical phrases and allusions, as also does Elizabeth Grosz in her, Jacques Lacan.

⁵⁵ See Hart, Kevin, The Trespass of the Sign (Cambridge: University Press, 1989)Google Scholar and Coward, Harold and Foshay, Toby, eds. Derrida and Negative Theology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ See for example Crownfield, David, ed. Body? Text in Julia Kristeva: Religion, Women, and Psychoanalysis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Stockton, Kathryn Bond, God Between Their Lips: Desire Between Women in Irigaray, Bronte, and Eliot (Stanford: University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Kim, C. W. Maggie et al. , eds. Transfigurations: Theology and the French Feminists (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Smart, Ninian, The Religious Experience of Mankind (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969)Google Scholar; and more recently John Hick An Interpretation of Religion, op. cit.