"This Space In Between": Barbara Johnson's Dislocations of Feminism and Deconstruction

Occasioned by the publication of her new book, Persons and Things, the review essay sets out to analyze Barbara Johnson's contributions to contemporary literary theory. Ever since The Critical Difference, Johnson's literary criticism and theory has been uniquely sensitive to deconstructive as well as feminist inquiry, two theoretical and political positions which, according to many critics, remain skeptical of each other. In "Apostrophe, Animation and Abortion," the author negotiates the fundamental differences between these two discourses through the figure of abortion, the political debates about which seem to hinge on a rhetorical figure, apostrophe. The essay concludes by reviewing Persons and Things, which can be regarded as a return to the theme of rhetoric and politics put forward originally in A World of Difference: all of Johnson's keen-eyed analyses revolve around the figurative powers of language that structure the separation and conflation of persons and things.