THE VIEW FROM ELSEWHERE - UTOPIAN CONSTRU CTIONS OF DIFFERENCE

Daphne Patai:''The View from elsewhere: Utopian Constructions of 'Diff erence'''. The obviousness of the concept of ''difference'' between me n and women permeates contemporary feminist discourse, which has devot ed much energy, to explicating the sources of this ''difference'' In o rder to take a critical look at this concept, I draw on a body of lite rature that helps us to see the obvious, the unnoticed the habitual in our gendered positions: utopian fictions cast as sex-role reversals. After discussing these texts in some detail, I argue that the utopian vision of the British writer Katharine Burdekin hints at a path that c an lead us out of the endless debates over ''essentialism'' and ''soci al conscructionism'' as explanations of ''difference''.