Demystifing a French literary mode in which the sexism of the content is hidden behind the worship of its own discourse, that is the iconoclastic task brilliantly undertaken by Somer Brodribb. While she will certainly cause a lot of trouble in 'le petit monde parisien', she has magnificently shown that "postmodernism is the cultural capital of late patriarchy. It is the art of self-display, the conceit of masculine science and genetic engineering in an ecstatic Nietzschean cycle of stasis."

This brave, brilliant (and funny!) book by a Canadian feminist is the antidote for intellectual toxicities caused by decentered deconstructionist detritus. The Plucky Wench of the Year Awards definitely goes to Brodribb, for proving the emperor has no clothes or brains.

If one has any interest in 'postmodernism' whatsoever, Somer Brodribb's excellent Nothing Mat(t)ers is required reading. Through extensive and detailed discussions of the historical, intellectual, cultural, and philosophical contexts of the founding 'fathers' of postmodernism, her erudite analysis illuminates the phenomena of postmodernism. (She argues) feminism must be praxis, a critique in actionŠ an ethics that occurs within the circumference of human touch: to touch matter, and to make touch matter. In essence, the book confronts the lack of humanity evident in the absence of the subject and privileging of the 'system' or structure over experience in postmodernism. This book needs to be read and pondered not because it has the answers or is complete in its purview (it is remarkably thorough in regard to the theory and theorists it addresses), but because Brodribb raises the vital question that postmodernism has slowly erased under the weight of the critique of ideological structure-what matters.