The Gaps of the “Linguistic Turn”: Some Preliminary Remarks on the Nexus of Representations, the Surplus and the Material

The move to the linguistic has provided significant advantages for feminist scholars, in showing how differences (for example, in regard to sex, class and race) are indebted to discursive productions rather than to material “facts”. However, there are some key issues or areas in which the linguistic turn needs to be further theorized. In order to problematize the linguistic turn this position paper opens up new fields of research. The aim is to display three gaps – areas to be developed – within the feminist linguistic stands: 1) the concept of material; 2) the concept of surplus; and 3) the existence of representations and their place, meaning and potential within current feminist studies.