Böcker av Lois (Somerville College McNay

There has been a lively debate amongst political theorists about whether certain liberal concepts of democracy are so idealized that they lack relevance to real politics.

This work provides an introduction to the work of Michel Foucault. It offers an assessment of all of Foucault's work, including his final writings on governmentality and the self. McNay argues that the later work initiates an important shift in his intellectual concerns which alters any retrospective reading of his writings as a whole. Throughout, McNay is concerned to assess the normative and political implications of Foucault's social criticism. She goes beyond the level of many commentators to look at the values from which Foucault's work springs and reveals the implicit assumptions underlying his social critique. The author also provides an account and assessment of recent literature on Foucault, including that of Habermas and Taylor. She discusses Foucault's position in the modernity/postmodernity debate, his own ambivalence to Enlightenment thought and his place in recent developments in feminist and cultural theory.

This book offers a systematic attempt to explore the point of convergance between feminist theory and the work of Michel Foucault.

aeo An important re--assessment of the idea of agency in the context of changing relations between men and women. aeo Brings together the owrk of leading feminist theorists with the work of key continental social theorists.

The struggle for recognition features prominently in the work of various thinkers. Lois McNay argues that the insights of the recognition theorists are undercut by their reliance on an inadequate account of power. By focussing on issues of gender she develops an alternative account of individual agency that connects identity to structure.