UI Press | Teresa de Lauretis | Figures of Resistance: Essays in Feminist Theory

Figures of Resistance

Essays in Feminist Theory

The changing face of feminist discourse as reflected by the career of one of its preeminent scholars

Figures of Resistance brings together crucial essays and unpublished lectures of internationally renowned theorist Teresa de Lauretis, spanning twenty years of her finest work. De Lauretis's rigorous thought and elegant writing interrogate how cinema, literature, and psychoanalytic theory construct and deconstruct gender, sexuality, and ways of knowing. This collection invites us to reflect on the history of feminist theory and its power to envision anew issues of representation, reading, and epistemology. Essays include "Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation," "The Lure of the Mannish Lesbian," "Eccentric Subjects," "Habit Changes," "The Intractability of Desire," and the unpublished title essay "Figures of Resistance."

An introduction by feminist film scholar Patricia White provides an overview of the development and essential contribution of de Lauretis's thought.

“This is crucial work. What we find here is a scholar at the top of her form paying attention to her field, in its broadest contours and attempting to make sense of it at a key moment of transition. In terms of feminist writing on cinema, there is nobody else in de Lauretis’s league."--B. Ruby Rich, author of Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement

“De Lauretis’s work is stimulating, innovative, and groundbreaking. Readers from a wide range of audiences will be grateful to have in a single volume the works of one of the most important feminist theorists working today."--Judith Mayne, Distinguished Humanities Professor, French and women’s studies, Ohio State University

Teresa de Lauretis is a professor of the history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema and other books. Patricia White, an associate professor and chair of film and media studies at Swarthmore College, is the author of Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability.