Diotima at the Barricades

Argues that the debates that emerged from the burgeoning of feminist intellectual life in postmodern France involved complex, structured, and reciprocal exchanges on the interpretation and position of Plato and other ancient texts in the western philosophical and literary tradition. Paul Allen Miller argues that the works of Anglo-American figures such as Toril Moi, Judith Butler, and Kaja Silverman, as well as movements such as queer theory, are rooted in feminist theoretical debates that began in the sixties in France and have continued right up to the present day. Miller demonstrates that French philosophy as represented by writers as diverse as Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Sarah Kofman, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Luce Irigaray cannot be understood without a full appreciation of these authors' reception of the Platonic texts and the debates that ensued. He reveals that in order to comprehend the intellectual substructure of much of later critical theory, it is crucial to examine the development of postmodern French feminist thought in relation to its dialogue with antiquity. In modern feminism and poststructuralism, the ancient world, and Plato in particular, truly function as our theoretical unconscious.