Introduction: Women in Theory

In this special issue, then, we propose an experiment: what would happen if “women” who work in “theory” (in the broadest, wildest sense of both terms) were to thematize and discuss the question of women in theory? How does this issue inflect literary studies and related fields? Here, scholars whose work emerges from distinct areas of critical theory and philosophy—deconstruction, Marxism, psychoanalysis, critical race theory, classical philosophy, political theory, media theory, in short: areas of “theory” in which women are comparatively scarce—come together to engage with the problem of gender in philosophy and critical theory from and through their methodological and conceptual areas of interest.