Abstract Then Silvia Bovenschen in 1976 posed the question ‘Is there a feminine aesthetic?’, the only answer she could give was. yes and no: ‘Certainly there is. if one is talking about aesthetic awareness and modes of sensory perception. Certainly not. if one is talking about an unusual variant of artistic production or about a painstakingly constructed theory of art. If this contradiction seems familiar to anyone even vaguely acquainted with the development of feminist thought over the past fifteen years. it is because it echoes a contradiction specific to, and perhaps even constitutive of, the women’s movement itself: a twofold pressure, a simultaneous pull in opposite directions, a tension toward the positivity of politics, of affirmative action.