SOURCE: Friedman, Susan Stanford. “Relational Epistemology and the Question of Anglo-American Feminist Criticism.” Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 12, no. 2 (fall 1993): 247-61.

In the following essay, Friedman analyzes the dialectical implications of the term “Anglo-American feminist criticism” in Sexual/Textual Politics, surveying the American feminist/academic milieu.

Is there an Anglo-American feminist criticism? The question of this forum contains a host of other questions about the meaning of the question itself. What does “Anglo-American” mean in the context of feminist criticism? Does it imply a “school,” with a coherent system of ideas, common project, and related methodologies? Or does it more loosely suggest a confederation of “family resemblances” based in two cultures whose dominant language is English? Does the term imply a specific body of critics who identify themselves as “Anglo-American feminists”? Or is “Anglo-American” a term applied to certain feminist critics after the fact, as descriptor of what...