I don't like most of the ways I've been given to think. Oh, I can dig on the whole scientific method thing pretty well. There are still some things wrong with it, and I'm okay with it, but it's not really helpful for thinking about art or pleasure or culture, in many ways.
The new ways of thinking of which I am currently very enamored are feminism and cultural studies. The thinkers below fall loosely into both categories. Most Americans are fairly familiar with Wolf, at least by reputation, but I'm distressed by the small number of folks who've heard of Cixous and Irigaray. They've given me words for some things that I really needed to be able to think through. Cixous, a poet, playwright, and literary and cultural theorist, is director of the Center for Research in Feminine Studies at the University of Paris VIII, and has been described as "notoriously playful." I think that might be the coolest thing ever. Irigaray has two doctorates, one in philosophy and one in linguistics, and is trained as a psychoanalyst. When she published Speculum of the Other Woman, which challenged Freudian theory's notions of the feminine, Lacan kicked her out of school. Such a charmer, that Lacan. Anyhoo, she's now at the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, researching the relation of language and psychology, while also writing and maintaining a private practice as an analyst.