02/08/2013
http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=1381
"What’s absent from the book, though, is a sense of these ideas being galvanizing for readers in general and women in particular. Part of what I remember about that era is the thrill of theory — how it seemed to promise profound aesthetic relevance and political engagement. Beyond Foucault and Derrida, thinkers like Gayatri Spivack and Hélène Cixous served as models of empowerment and intellectual heft. Female friendships, which seem almost incidental to Madeleine’s existence, were formative and central, as my friends and I argued about feminism and deconstruction and politics and s*x." --Alix Ohlin
IN ANTOINE WIERTZ’ 1853 painting The Reader of Novels, a naked woman lies on her back, comfortably secluded in her bo***ir, holding a copy of The Three Musketeers to her face. The sheets beneath her are in slight disarray. She looks like she’s having a good time. The painting, reproduced in Belinda…
