ABSTRACT
Within some quarters of feminist theory in recent years, there have been calls to retrieve the body from what is often characterized as the linguistic idealism of poststructuralism. In another quarter, philosopher Gianni Vattimo has argued that poststructuralism, understood as textual play, marks the dissolution of matter as a contemporary category. And it is this lost matter, he argues, which must now be reformulated in order for poststructuralism to give way to a project of greater ethical and political value. 1 The terms of these debates are diffi cult and unstable ones, for it is diffi cult to know in either case who or what is designated by the term “poststructuralism,” and perhaps even more diffi cult to know what to retrieve under the sign of “the body.” And yet these two signifi ers have for some feminists and critical theorists seemed fundamentally antagonistic. One hears warnings like the following: If everything is discourse, what happens to the body? If everything is a text, what about violence and bodily injury? Does anything matter in or for poststructuralism?
