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This article will consider a split within current feminist theory which appears to require some declaration of loyalties. This split is not altogether easy to describe in terms of the standard academic classification of feminist positions that prevailed in the 1970s and early 1980s. This schema seems to have been eclipsed over the last ten years or so by a different one which offers feminists a choice between just two basic self-images. Nowadays feminists can be, as before, "liberals" now sometimes designated "liberal-humanists"; or they can be 'radical' in an updated sense, defined by the questioning of certain untenable theoretical assumptions-and so of the authoritarian power structures which these assumptions are held to sustain. The central aim of this paper is to outline, and then to consider the usefulness of, radical, anti-humanist critiques within feminist scholarly writing. This aim is pursued, firstly, by the assembly of some evidence about how an anti- (or, putatively, post-) humanist feminism would differ from its humanist counterpart; and secondly, by the staging of an encounter between anti-humanist theory (thus reconstructed) and the specific political effort summed up in the well-known feminist slogan, "No means no.". 26 References. T. K. Brown

RICHARD RORTY HAS SOUGHT TO SHOW THE RELEVANCE OF HIS BRAND OF PRAGMATISM TO THE CONCERNS OF FEMINISTS. IN THIS ESSAY, THE AUTHOR ARGUES THAT RORTY'S CRITIQUE OF A FEMINISM CAST IN "REALIST" AND "UNIVERSALIST" TERMS WRONGLY CONTENDS THAT PROPONENTS OF THE LATTER ARE UNAWARE OF THE CONCEPTUAL INNOVATIONS UPON WHICH A COHERENT FEMINISM MUST DEFEND ITSELF.

Offers a defence of the continuing validity of the ideals of equality and enlightenment. Argues that the new relativism is inimical to advancement of social justice wherever the latter encounters entrenched traditional obstacles, as the struggle for women's equality certainly does. (Abstract amended)