These two books are part of the series, edited by Mark C. Taylor, on 'Religion and Postmodernism'. Like so many other books treating postmodern themes, these books are mainly preoccupied with the concept of 'alterity'' or 'Other/ness,' although neither author would perhaps describe alterity as a concept. For both Wyschogrod and Taylor, conceptualizing activity is a highly suspect process, indicating a latent drive to power on the part of a totalizing rationality that desires control over the objects of its knowledge. Conceptualizations of the Other do violence to it by forcing alterity to 'fit' within predetermined mental structures that deprive the Other of its own unique identity. To some extent both Wyschogrod and Taylor are well taken in making this point, although it is one that was made long before the intellectual phenomenon of postmodernity entered the academic scene. T. W. Adorno's Negative Dialectics, for example, is devoted to probing the coercive power of thought in its rage for complete knowledge. For Adorno, unitary Systems that strive for philosophical wholeness harbour an annexing, or colonizing, force that violates its objects. The difference, however, between Adorno's negative dialectics and Wyschogrod's and Taylor's treatments of alterity has to do with the nature of the relationship between subject and object. For Adorno, this means a rethinking of the relationship that does not jettison subjectivity; for Wyschogrod and Taylor, subjectivity must wither away before alterity. In Wyschogrod's view, a moral theory that promotes the conditions of agency for others betrays alterity in that it presupposes the other as a 'second self ' to whom the conditions of agency are to be extended. For Wyschogrod, moral theories that strive to restore conditions whereby agency and subjectivity may be mobilized are inadequate. Although Taylor does not treat the theme of agency in Nots, he does so in an earlier work, Erring: A Postmodern A/theology, where subjectivity disappears, giving way to the emergence of the 'trace'.
The emphatic concept of alterity found in both Wyschogrod and Taylor, along with their disavowal of subjectivity and agency as relevant to moral theory and action, has important implications for feminist theory in general and for feminist critiques of religion, although neither author addresses feminist issues. The implications for feminism arise out of the implications for all victims of injustice, for all those who suffer from the failure of moral theories to give any guidance for ethical conduct. While neither Wyschogrod nor Taylor deals directly with feminist issues, their work must be taken seriously by feminists because of their concern with doing justice to the Other.