’This lively collection affords fresh insights into the world of contemporary aesthetics. Penny Florence and Nicola Foster have gathered together a select group of artists, philosophers, and critical theorists, who offer individual perspectives on the aesthetic tradition and its feminist critics and their pertinence for the practice of art today. The result is a fertile mingling of views that represent current evolutions in feminist thinking about art and aesthetic values’ Carolyn Korsmeyer '... this book bridges divisions in contemporary thought, and, crucially, practices, and points to greater understanding of the power and appeal of cultural production.' Wordtrade.com

• Contents: Part 1: Introduction: Philosophy and Feminism, Penny Florence and Nicola Foster; Part 2: Contemporary Practices: Introduction, Penny Florence and Nicola Foster; Artists’ Statements, Mary Anson, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, RyyA Bread ©, Vicki Feaver, Barbara Freeman, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Lubaina Himid, Jo Hsieh, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, Valerie Reardon, Deborah Robinson, Lesley Sanderson, Nancy Spero, Yuen-yi Lo, Partou Zia; Part 3: In the (Western) Beginning: Introduction, Penny Florence and Nicola Foster; Love and writing - Phaedrus and the Symposium, Robyn Ferrell; Beautiful music - a fixed pitch? Plato, music and gender, Barbara Underwood; Part 4: And Then There Was (German) Enlightenment: Introduction, Penny Florence and Nicola Foster; Kant’s ghost, among others, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe; Aesthetics in the gaps - subverting the sublime for a female subject, Rachel Jones; Living dialectics, Aufhebung and performance art, Petra Kuppers; Nancy Spero and woman in performance, Judy Purdom; Part 5: And There Shall be (Polyvalent) Beyond: Introduction, Penny Florence and Nicola Foster; Transgressing with-in-to the feminine, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger; The gendering of allegory: Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document and Benjamin’s melancholy dialectics, Christine Conley; Feminism, postmodernism and the aesthetics of parody, Catherine Constable; Cybertime: towards an aesthetics of mutation and evolution, Sean Cubitt; The morphology of the mucous: irigarayan possibilities in the material practice of art, Hilary Robinson; A matter of paint: the carnal subject of aesthetics, Rosemary Betterton; From matter to materialisations: feminist politics and the aesthetics of radical difference, Marsha Meskimmon; Working hot: materialising practices, Barb Bolt; Bibliography; Index.