Toril Moi

Sexual / Textual Politics

What is a woman? And what does it mean to be a feminist today? In her first full-scale engagement with feminist theory since her internationally renowned Sexual/Textual Politics (1985), Toril Moi challenges the dominant trends in contemporary feminist and cultural thought, arguing for a feminism of freedom inspired by Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. Written in a clear and engaging style What is a Woman? brings together two brand new book-length theoretical interventions, Moi's work on Freud and Bourdieu, and her studies of desire and knowledge in literature. In the controversial title-essay, Toril Moi radically rethinks current debates about sex, gender, and the body - challenging the commonly held belief that the sex/gender distinction is fundamental to all feminist theory. Moi rejects every attempt to define masculinity and femininity, including efforts to define femininity as that which 'cannot be defined. In the second new book-length essay, 'I am a Woman', Toril Moi reworks the relationship between the personal and the philosophical, pursuing ways to write theory that do not neglect the claims of the personal. Setting up an encounter between contemporary theory and Simone de Beauvoir, Moi radically rethinks the need, and difficulty, of finding one's own philosophical voice by placing it in new theoretical contexts. A sustained refusal to lay down theoretical or political requirements for femininity, and a powerful argument for a feminism of freedom, What is a Woman? is a deeply original contribution to feminist theory.

And Other Essays

What is a Woman?

Moving from the impact of educational institutions on Beauvoir to a representation of love, desire, and sexuality, Moi analyzes the conflicts and contradictions that shape intellectual women's lives, offering a new interpretation of Beauvoir's relationship to Sartre and to other women, and forging a new alliance between socio-historical and psychoanalytical perspectives.

The Making of an Intellectual Woman

Simone De Beauvior

For the second edition of her landmark study of Simone de Beauvoir, Toril Moi provides a major new introduction discussing current developments in Beauvoir studies as well as the recent publication of papers and letters by Beauvoir, including her letters to her lovers Jacques-Laurent Bost and Nelson Agren, and her student diaries from 1926-7.

Simone de Beauvoir

Teoria literaria feminista (CRITICA Y ESTUDIOS LITERARIOS) (Critica Y Estudios Literarios)

Feminist Literary Theory

Sexual/textual Politics

This radically original book argues for the power of ordinary language philosophy—a tradition inaugurated by Ludwig Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin, and extended by Stanley Cavell—to transform literary studies. In engaging and lucid prose, Toril Moi demonstrates this philosophy’s unique ability to lay bare the connections between words and the world, dispel the notion of literature as a monolithic concept, and teach readers how to learn from a literary text. Moi first introduces Wittgenstein’s vision of language and theory, which refuses to reduce language to a matter of naming or representation, considers theory’s desire for generality doomed to failure, and brings out the philosophical power of the particular case. Contrasting ordinary language philosophy with dominant strands of Saussurean and post-Saussurean thought, she highlights the former’s originality, critical power, and potential for creative use. Finally, she challenges the belief that good critics always read below the surface, proposing instead an innovative view of texts as expression and action, and of reading as an act of acknowledgment. Intervening in cutting-edge debates while bringing Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell to new readers, Revolution of the Ordinary will appeal beyond literary studies to anyone looking for a philosophically serious account of why words matter.

Literary Studies After Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell

Revolution of the Ordinary

Janice Radway

Materialist feminism is not an unproblematic term. Its relationship to what was called 'socialist feminism' in the 1970s and early 1980s is far from clear. This special issue of SAQ does not resolve these questions. Instead of providing a theory of materialist feminism in the abstract, the authors have tried to build up a provisional, tentative picture of what a 'materialist feminism' might look like in the 1990s.

Materialist Feminism

Feminist Theory & Simone de Beauvoir

A Reader ; Tranlated from the French

French Feminist Thought

Extracted from Toril Moi's 'What Is a Woman?', this intervention in feminist theory rethinks the legacy of Simone de Beauvoir, and shows that 'The Second Sex', properly read, offers solutions to urgent contemporary problems. These essays provide a third way for feminism, beyond the current stalemate between essentialism and constructionism.

The Student Edition of What is a Woman?

Sex, Gender, and the Body

Professor of Literature and Romance Studies Toril Moi

This book examines the strengths and limitations of the two main strands in feminist criticism, the Anglo-American and the French, paying particular attention to the works of Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva.What are the political implications of a feminist critical practice? How do the problems of the literary text relate to the priorities and perspectives of feminist politics as a whole?Sexual/Textual Politics addresses these fundamental questions and examines the strengths and limitations of the two main strands in feminist criticism, the Anglo-American and the French. It pays particular attention to the works of Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva, and since publication this book has rightly attained the status of a classic. Although written for readers with little knowledge of the subject, Sexual/Textual Politics makes its own intervention into key debates, arguing provocatively for commitedly political and theoretical criticism rather than a textual or apolitical approach.With a new afterword in this edition, Sexual/Textual Politics is a brilliantly accessible must-read for all those interested in feminist literary theory.

Published to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of his death, this is first major critical study in English of Henrik Ibsen for almost forty years. Toril Moi offers a radical reappraisal of Ibsen's place in the birth of modernism and the origins of modern theatre, his influence on other writers, and the connection between his visual imagination and his plays.

Art, Theater, Philosophy

Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism

Rita Felski

Amanda Anderson

Over the last few decades, character-based criticism has been seen as either naive or obsolete. But now questions of character are attracting renewed interest. Making the case for a broad-based revision of our understanding of character, Character rethinks these questions from the ground up. Is it really necessary to remind literary critics that characters are made up of words? Must we forbid identification with characters? Does character-discussion force critics to embrace humanism and outmoded theories of the subject? Across three chapters, leading scholars Amanda Anderson, Rita Felski, and Toril Moi reimagine and renew literary studies by engaging in a conversation about character. Moi returns to the fundamental theoretical assumptions that convinced literary scholars to stop doing character-criticism, and shows that they cannot hold. Felski turns to the question of identification and draws out its diverse strands, as well as its persistence in academic criticism. Anderson shows that character-criticism illuminates both the moral life of characters, and our understanding of literary form. In offering new perspectives on the question of fictional character, this thought-provoking book makes an important intervention in literary studies.

Three Inquiries in Literary Studies

Character

Kjønn og kropp i feministisk teori

Hva er en kvinne?

Toril Mois essay "Språk og oppmerksomhet" er den første av 12 tekster i "Aschehoug Stemmer"-serien, som markerer 100-årsjubileet for kvinners stemmerett i Norge. Toril Moi diskuterer hvordan vår tenkning om moral i for stor grad er preget av et uoppmerksomt språk. Med diskusjoner av Iris Murdoch, Lille Eyolf og med et blikk på rettsaken mot Anders Behring Breivik, stiller Moi spørsmål om hvordan vi skal snakke om det vi ser for virkelig å forstå hverandre. Til grunn for våre moralske vurderinger og vår forståelse av verden må vi anlegge det Moi kaller "et rettferdig og kjærlig blikk". Hva som ligger i det - og hvor vanskelig det er - blir den lille boken en diskusjon av. I år er det 100 år siden kvinner fikk stemmerett i Norge. I forbindelse med jubileet utgis "Aschehoug Stemmer", en serie med 12 utgivelser - én for hver måned - skrevet av 12 kvinner som vil bidra til den offentlige debatten. "Stemmer" er en arena for dagens samfunnsspørsmål. Tekstene kan leses frittstående, men samlet vil de gi et bilde av hva som rører seg i Norge i 2013. Prosjektet handler ikke om hva det vil si å være kvinne, men hva kvinner vil si.

Språk og oppmerksomhet

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is the founder of modern theater, and his plays are performed all over the world. Yet in spite of his unquestioned status as a classic of the stage, Ibsen is often dismissed as a fuddy-duddy old realist, whose plays are of interest only because they remain the gateway to modern theater. In Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism , Toril Moi makes a powerful case not just for Ibsen's modernity, but for his modernism. Situating Ibsen in his cultural context, she shows how unexpected his rise to world fame was, and the extent of his influence on writers such Shaw, Wilde, and Joyce who were seeking to escape the shackles of Victorianism. Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism also rewrites nineteenth-century literary history; positioning Ibsen between visual art and philosophy, the book offers a critique of traditional theories of the opposition between realism and modernism. Modernism, Moi argues, arose from the ruins of idealism, the dominant aesthetic paradigm of the nineteenth century. She also shows why Ibsen still matters to us today, by focusing on two major themes-his explorations of women, men, and marriage and his clear-eyed chronicling of the tension between skepticism and the everyday. This radical new account places Ibsen in his rightful place alongside Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Manet as a founder of European modernism.

Toril Moi

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