Abstract
The feminist thinker who wishes to tackle the puzzles of and take up questions of meaning must consider the nature of language itself. There are several reasons for this. First, debates whether or not discourse is inevitably or necessarily domination, a form of power over others, provides much of the exciting interplay of diatribe and dialectic, polemic and philosophical argumentation, that characterize contemporary debates in social and political theory. Some writers on the text as are feminists; others are not.1 But all who explore these issues are intrigued by the peculiar relationship between author-text-reader along some vector of power. A mild version of the thesis that infuses discourse is stated by Paul Foss: Discourse has become the arena for the generation and propagation of historically specified norms and socially adequate forms of power.2 Sheila Rowbotham puts the case more urgently: Language conveys a certain power. It is one of the in-
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