As writers, philosophers, speakers and feminists, Julia Kristeva, Hlne Cixous and Luce Irigaray are among the most provocative, subtle and illuminating voices in contemporary culture. Their concepts and methodologies continue to excite debate and contention among feminists and cultural critics. Ives discusses their major ideas, which include: jouissance and 'explosive' sexuality; women and marginality; the 'gift'; the pre-oedipal chora and semiotic realm; labial lips that embrace; social oppression; the relations between writing, language and identity; and the politics of gender, patriarchy and motherhood. Ives studies the relation of Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva to other feminists, and to figures such as Nietzsche, de Beauvoir, Hegel, Marx, Joyce, Derrida, Barthes, Rimbaud, Lacan and Freud.