SOURCE: Nicholson, Linda. “A Radical's Odyssey.” Women's Review of Books 7, no. 3 (December 1989): 11-12.

In the following review, Nicholson contends that Toward a Feminist Theory of the State exposes the strengths and weaknesses of radical feminism.

Toward a Feminist Theory of the State was written over an eighteen-year period (parts of it have already been published), but its unity as a theoretical expression of one individual's vision is obvious. Since the chapters were written relatively independently of each other, the reader has to do a bit more work than usual to bring them together. But that they fit together as smoothly as they do must attest to something strong and consistent in Catharine MacKinnon's own intellectual odyssey.

How useful is that unity for other feminists engaged with MacKinnon in the collective project of feminism as political movement? My response to this question is mixed. This book confirms my previous...