Seductions: Studies in Reading and Culture

In looking at the complex relation of women to culture and literature, and to theory and politics, and in recalling her own coming to feminism, the author asks how women experience themselves within ideas and traditions which simultaneously include and exclude them, take their presence for granted and deny it - seducing in short. She examines the work of Raymond Williams and his curious banishment of women from politics and even from history; Edward Said and Frantz Fanon are shown to use female imagery in their discussions of colonialism and imperialism - and yet women as people are markedly absent from their work, and she also discusses the ideas of Volosinov and Bakhtin. And it also includes the story of the author's great aunt, Clara Collet, close friend of George Gissing, civil cervant and expert on women's work and education.