Evaluate critically Kadiatu Kanneh's position in "Love, Mourning and Metaphor: Terms of Identity" indicating her reasons for criticising other feminists theorists.
             In her essay, Kanneh takes a critical view of some of the foundation stones upon which Helen Cixous builds her arguments in her seminal work "The Laugh of the Medusa". It is by developing an understanding of her critique of Cixous that best allows the reader to formulate a coherent opinion of where Kanneh stands in relation to other feminist critics and the field of feminist criticism as a whole.
             In this, my exploration of Kanneh's essay, I aim to discuss how she relates to Cixous' arguments before, in conclusion, I present what I understand to be the political ground on which she stands.
             Taking a radical feminist approach, that being one that recognises patriarchal control over political, social and economic systems (N.B. I take my definition from Joy Magezis' "Women's Studies" Hodder & Stoughton. 1996. p.15), Kanneh, shares common ground with Cixous in so much as she believes that the female body has been subjected to oppression and propaganda from male dominated institutions and social practices. Like Cixous she believes in instigating a positive reaction that "revalues" the female body.
             Giving the example of Pauline Reag's 1954 "The Story of O", a novel of female servitude and degradation that features genital mutilation, she illustrates the sexually sadistic extremity to which the misuse of the female body goes to in cultural outpourings. However, Kanneh argues that, although functional, using the body as a metaphorical focus for insurrectionary activity is fraught with dangers which are not constructive ...