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“THE BRIDES OF DECONSTRUCTION AND CRITICISM” AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF FEMINISM IN THE NORTH AMERICAN ACADEMY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2018

GREGORY JONES-KATZ
GREGORY JONES-KATZ*
Affiliation:
School of Humanities and Social Science (HSS), the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen E-mail: joneskatz@cuhk.edu.cn
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Abstract

“The Brides of Deconstruction and Criticism,” an informal group of feminist literary critics active at Yale University during the 1970s, were inspired by second-wave feminist curriculum, activities, and thought, as well as by the politics of the women's and gay liberation movements, in their effort to intervene into patterns of female effacement and marginalization. By the early 1980s, while helping direct deconstructive reading away from the self-subversiveness of French and English prose and poetry, the Brides made groundbreaking contributions to—and in several cases founded—fields of scholarly inquiry. During the late 1980s, these feminist deconstructionists, having overcome resistance from within Yale's English Department and elsewhere, used their works as social and political acts to help pave the way for the successes of cultural studies in the North American academy. Far from a supplément to what Barbara Johnson boldly called the “Male School,” the Brides of Deconstruction and Criticism arguably were the Yale school. Examining the distinct but interrelated projects of Yale's feminist deconstructive moment and how local and contingent events as well as the national climate, rather than the importation of so-called French theory, informed this moment gives us a clearer rendering of the story of deconstruction.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 413 - 442
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018

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Footnotes

Thanks go to the following friends and colleagues for their help with drafts of this essay: Laura Jones-Katz, Grace Allen, Brad Baranowski, Vaneesa Cook, Aaron Dowdall, Daniel Hummel, Rivka Maizlish, Elena McGrath, Nick Strohl, Kate Turner, and Kevin Walters. Special thanks to “The Always Already Metaphysical Club.”

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