What is essentialism? What is anti-essentialism? The Essential Differenceattempts to answer questions at the heart of current feminist theory and culturalstudy. The book deals with origins and contexts of the debate, relationships betweenessentialism, anti-essentialism, and the power of language, reasons for thedemonization of essentialism within the academy, the relationship betweenessentialism and Third World studies. The essays also speculateabout whether there can be an anti-essentialist feminism, whether there can in factbe a feminist politics that dispenses with the notion of Woman. This long-awaitedvolume questions the bases of feminism itself. The contributorsare Teresa de Lauretis, Diana Fuss, Elizabeth Grosz, Luce Irigaray, Leslie WahlRabine, Ellen Rooney, Robert Scholes, Naomi Schor, and Gayatri ChakravortySpivak.