Abstract

Michèle Le Doeuff's research interests include British Renaissance philosophy (especially the works of Francis Bacon and Thomas More) and the writings of Shakespeare. However, she is best known in Anglo‐American philosophy for her writings on the philosophical imaginary and feminism. Le Doeuff is a somewhat idiosyncratic figure in contemporary French philosophy. As Colin Gordon has remarked, her work “shows no systematic affiliation, no signs of a formative debt or repudiation” (translator's Preface, Le Doeuff 1989, p. vi). Le Doeuff does, however, mention the work of Simone de beauvoir (see Article 22), Gaston Bachelard, Michel Foucault (Article 49) and Gilles deleuze (Article 51) as contributing to the development of her own philosophical stance. As we shall see, this issue of discipleship is pertinent to her appraisal of the historical situation of women in philosophy. She states “one is commonly asked whether one is a this man‐ian or a that manian … once one becomes a whoeverian, that is the end of philosophy and of the desire for intellectual independence which should also be a characteristic of feminism” (1991, pp. 59–60).