Gender Ascendant: The Dawn of Feminist Theory in Eighteenth-Century German Writing

Does feminist theory—the theoretical grasp of exactly how a patriarchal oppression of women operates and has operated in Western societies—arise simply as women’s response to the experience of oppression? Bennett argues that no such substantial current of thought ever arises in this manner, and that feminist theory is not truly grasped until we uncover in intellectual history the not-yet-feminist body of thought from which it emerges. He approaches this matter by discussing an anti-aesthet...