Nostalgia and Sexual Difference (RLE Feminist Theory)

Dissatisfaction with the present can cause people to gaze nostalgically back to an idealized past; that nostalgia pervades contemporary rhetoric. In lamenting the ΓÇÿdegeneracyΓÇÖ of present-day America, social and literary critics as well as contemporary novelists often choose as their scapegoat the womenΓÇÖs movement and its increasing influence. Doane and Hodges show us how these social observers seek to ΓÇÿreinstateΓÇÖ America and American values in ways that, overtly or covertly, do battle with the feminist movement for control of rhetoric, the power of language.