Abstract

In this paper I shall develop further my view that we need to go "beyond feminist aesthetics" by examining some of the difficulties of such a concept, drawing specific examples from the areas of both literature and the fine arts. More controversially, perhaps, I shall suggest that although feminist criticism does not need an (autonomous) aesthetic, it cannot afford to ignore the realm of the aesthetic, because it is necessarily implicated within and influenced by its institutional and discursive logics.