Raia Prokhovnik lectures in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. She has written on feminist theory, the concept of sovereignty, Hobbes, Spinoza and early-modern political thought.

Introduction; Chapter 1 Dichotomy; Chapter 2 Reason and emotion; Chapter 3 Sex and gender; Chapter 4 Conclusion;

To feminists and some postmodernists reason/emotion and man/woman represent two fundamental polarities, fixed deep within Western philosophy and reflected in the structures of our languages, and two sets of hierarchical power relations in patriarchal society. Raia Prokhovnik challenges the tradition of dualism and argues that rational woman need no longer be a contradiction in terms. Prokhovnik examines in turn: · the nature of dichotomy, its problems and an alternative · the reason/emotion dichotomy · dichotomies central to the man/woman dualism, such as sex/gender and the heterosexual/ist norm