In her new book, Christine Battersby rethinks questions of embodiment, essence, sameness and difference, self and "other, " patriarchy and power. Using analyses of Kant, Adorno, Irigaray, Butler, Kierkegaard and Deleuze, she challenges those who argue that a feminist metaphysics is a contradiction in terms. The Phenomenal Woman marks out a place for a metaphysics of fluidity in the current debates concerning postmodernism, feminism and identity politics. It will interest philosophers unfamiliar with feminist theory, and open up debates in feminist philosophy to non-philosophers studying women and gender.