Looking Back to the Future

Book excerpt: In this selection of recent essays, Pollock insightfully engages all major areas of contemporary theory, especially focusing on sexed subjectivities, post-colonialism and Marxist-informed history. In her commentary, Penny Florence places Pollock's critique of modernism, art history, and criticism within the context of the social, political, and ideological developments that have taken place since the 1970s. Florence recognizes in Pollock's work a critical model that moves beyond the contradictions that take place within the history of art. Pollock's own essays and Florence's commentary elaborate the complexities in evaluating this prominent theorist and feminist, whose work demands a capacity to sustain contradiction.