This paper explores a contrast between the Marxist and feminist traditions of emancipatory social theory: whereas in the Marxist tradition theorists have spent considerable time and energy discussing the problem of the viability of classlessness as an emancipatory project, feminists have spent relatively little time defending the viability of a society without male domination. The paper argues that this difference in preoccupations reflects, at least to some extent, differences in the relationship between prefigurative egalitarian micro experiences and macro institutional change (...) with respect to gender oppression and class oppression. The paper also explores the implications of this contrast for the kinds of explanatory theory developed within the two traditions. Marxists' greater tendency than feminists to seek relatively deterministic accounts of the demise of the form of oppression on which they focus is viewed as at least partially a way of contending with the difficulty in establishing the viability of the emancipatory project of classlessness. (shrink)

Dai Jinhua _Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and Cultural Politics in the Work of Dai Jinhua_ Edited by Jing Wang and Tani E. Barlow London and New York: Verso, 2002 ISBN 1-85984-264-X 280 pp.

A critical assessment of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism and their significance to Marxism and feminism. Assiter challenges commonly held views regarding Althusser's contribution to Marxism and offers an alternative to radical feminism.

While discussions of dissolving the hyphen between Marxism and feminism were put on the back burner in the United States and England in the 1980s, the author argues that changes in Latin America during the same decade favor a possible convergence of contemporary Marxist and feminist theory and practice. These conditions include the emergence of a second-wave feminist movement in many Latin America countries, the central role of women in contemporary social movements, and an internal critique within Latin (...) American Marxism. Key issues pointing toward a convergence of thinking include a reevaluation and redefinition of democracy, the concept of “a plurality of social subjects” or potential revolutionary actors, the importance of autonomy for popular movements in relation to political parties and the state, and a new understanding of the importance of daily life in the struggle for socialism. (shrink)

This book shows the fruitfulness of approaching key philosophical and political questions from a Marxist-feminist point of view. The idea is that different modes of production like capitalism and feudalism have structures -- 'relations of production' -- which shape and limit the potentials for human emancipation in general and women's freedom in particular. Capitalism is then understood as a framework within which other relations of oppression operate, with more or less salience in different times and places. Each of the essays (...) takes this basic approach to key philosophical questions about freedom, rationality and human nature. (shrink)

This unique anthology brings together readings from the works of the most significant post-Leninist Marxist thinkers. The selections reflect the diversity and high intellectual accomplishment of twentieth-century Marxism and show how these theorists have transformed traditional Marxism's general philosophical orientation, interpretation of historical materialism, models of socialist political practice, and conception of human liberation. The writings reveal the evolution of a sophisticated and democratic Marxism with a theoretical emphasis on class consciousness and subjectivity, a resistance to all (...) forms of domination--including sexism--and a belief in the political power of consciousness-raising. The selections include the work of forerunners Karl Korsch, George Lukacs, and Antonio Gramsci; figures from the 1930s, including Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Wilhelm Reich; post-war and New Left thinkers Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Gorz, Herbert Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas; and contemporary socialist-feminists Sheila Rowbotham, Juliet Mitchell, Barbara Ehrenreich, Heidi Hartmann, and Ann Ferguson. Gottlieb places the readings in historical and theoretical context, providing a clear and insightful account of the intellectual problems and historical events that gave rise to the Western Marxism, and describing how it both anticipated and influenced contemporary radical movements. Each selection is prefaced by a biographical sketch and the book concludes with a bibliography suggesting further research. (shrink)

In this article, I use a Marxist feminist methodology to map the organisation of migrant sex workers’ socially reproductive paid and unpaid labour in one city and country of arrival, London, UK. I argue that unfree and ‘free’ labour exists on a continuum of capitalist relations of production, which are gendered, racialised, and legal. It is within these relations that various actors implement, and migrant sex workers contest, unfree labour practices not limited to the most extreme forms. My analysis reveals (...) that many migrant sex workers have very limited ‘freedom’. This is in stark contrast to the classical liberal claim of sex worker rights activists and academics that the vast majority of migrant sex workers are free, and therefore not coerced, exploited or trafficked. I then consider whether the emerging labour approach to trafficking could help achieve ‘freedom’ for migrant sex workers. Advocates argue that anti-trafficking efforts must, and can, be refocused on extending minimum labour and social protections to all vulnerable workers. I argue that this approach is disconnected from material interests and history. Rather, migrant sex workers, sex worker rights activists, and all migrant and citizen workers and activists globally must collectively organise against ‘labour unfreedom’ and hence for meaningful control over their labour and lives. (shrink)

Given the sociopolitical crisis and turmoil in the world today, there is a great need for philosophical and sociocultural critiques that are not only concerned with deconstructing the present and the past but also with offering forward-looking, radical solutions to the problems and challenges we face. Drastic times call for drastic measures, including in exploring and advancing a flagrantly partisan scholarship with explicitly transformative activist agendas of strengthening the public and personal agency needed to constrain capital for the sake of (...) social and economic justice. The argument advanced in this article is that Marxism – reinvigorated, re-envisioned and infused with insights from recent scholarship in feminism, critical pedagogy, cultural-historical and critical race theories, and new materialism, among others – can offer a new worldview in which political imagination and other phenomena of human subjectivity find their due, that is, central and formative place to thus allow for the advancement of research with activist agendas as a form of resistance. In utilizing such a worldview, research and theoretical constructions can break away from the ethos of adaptation and instead to actively strive for social transformation based in a radical reworking of the status and role of political imagination and associated notions of agency, hope, and commitment. (shrink)

Feminist issue and Marxist issue mainly meet under the question of reproduction of working class in capitalism. Among other things, the existence of capitalist system is conditioned by possibility of, how Marx put it,?worker to show up at factory?s gates every day?. Traditional Marxist analysis of this question entails taking wage as a main point. According to this position, reproduction of a worker is thought only through a wage as money paid to him for buying his/her labor force. It is (...) at this point where feminist perspective help us see narrowness of traditional Marxist analysis by insisting on category of reproductive labor. Reproductive labor is unpaid housework that is mostly done by women. Nonetheless, introduction of this category is not just an addition to Marxist analysis since this labor is necessary for reproduction of capitalist system itself. It is a system that allocates labor in such a way that besides paid waged labor there also exists unpaid reproductive labor that is also crucial for existence of the system. This leads us to two complex problems: question of women?s emancipation in capitalism and question of productivity of labor in capitalism. nema. (shrink)

Both feminists and Marxists have realized that it is necessary to avoid reductionism and recognize the intersections between gender, race, and class. But we donot have a methodology sufficient to develop this idea. I argue that Bertell Ollman’s book Dance of the Dialectic provides a way to think about intersectionality usingMarx’s methodology of abstraction and his theory of internal relations. As a relational abstraction, gender is intersectional. We may legitimately focus on it, as longas we treat it dialectically. We can (...) recognize that it is not homogeneous but stands in relations of identity and/or contradiction with other social relations. (shrink)

Iranian women were extremely active during the revolution of 1979. They were or became active within various political organizations and fought for democracy and freedom. The focus of this paper is on the activities of a group of Iranian women leftists within Marxist organizations in Iran and their experiences in exile. These political activists had to leave Iran when it became a crime to be a Marxist. During their activities in Iran, their Marxist convictions limited the ways in which they (...) dealt with issues such as gender, sexuality, and women’s rights. However the fact that they became so active made them potentially aware of their rights as women. It was later when this potential knowledge became manifest. These women who initially underestimated women’s questions and suppressed their womanhood in the framework of Marxist ideology, became strong advocates of women’s rights and serious contributors in the women’s movement when they were in exile. (shrink)

It's commonly understood within the academy that the terms "man," "woman," and "other" are socially constructed, and that their meanings are maintained by the current political order. But few thinkers have attempted to reconcile that knowledge - which is rooted in Marxism - with queer theory. The few who have, meanwhile, usually attempt to do so through issues of libidinal desire and sexual expression. In the Politics of Everybody, Holly Lewis argues powerfully that the emphasis on desire, though seemingly (...) innocuous, is actually symptomatic of neoliberal habits of thought, and consequently, is responsible for a continued focus on the limited politics of identity. Instead, Lewis shows, we should look to the arena of body production, categorization, and exclusion; only through such a reorientation can we create a politics of liberation that is truly inclusive and grounded in lived experience."-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Can Marxism still serve the American left? "History and Subjectivity" answers this question by synthesizing the conflict perspectives of traditional Marxism, Western and neo-Marxism, socialist-feminism, and various minority political movements into a comprehensive and original social theory. Roger Gottlieb argues convincingly that a properly transformed Marxism must understand how socialisation processes and political structures and experiences have joined the mode of production as socially primary. Drawing on resources from Marxist philosophy, political economy, feminism, Western (...) Marxism, and from detailed historical studies of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and the American left, Gottlieb has produced a sweeping synthesis of existing Marxist thought and an original and compelling social theory. In this edition, Roger Gottlieb has added a new introduction addressing the central questions that have emerged since the book's first publication. These include the effect on Marxist theory of the fall of communism, the theoretical challenge of postmodernism, the environmental crisis, and the rise of modern spiritual movements. The book is challenging and complex, yet clearly written and accessible to advanced undergraduate and graduate students. It will provoke a strong response from any scholar concerned with the present status and future possibilities of Marxist theory. (shrink)

This collection investigates the current state of play in studies informed by Marxism. It includes a magisterial essay on state theory by Bob Jessop, a discussion of fundamental socialist values using analytical Marxism by Alan Carling, an introduction to Fromm's humanist Marxism by Lawrence Wilde, and provocative pieces on Marxism and ecology, Marxism and feminism, the debate between Marxists and post-Marxists, the democratic Marxism of Hal Draper, the confrontation between Marxism and Liberalism, (...) and Marxism's place in the history of political thought. (shrink)

From a feminist perspective, I am interested in ‘women's ways of knowing’ ( et al., ) and the relationship between knowledge, difference and power ( et al., ). Here I trace the relevance of Gramsci to my own feminist consciousness, and the part he played in my journey to praxis. I also address feminism's intellectual debts, most particularly in relation to the concept of hegemony. The intellectual context has shifted in emphasis from macro‐ to micro‐narratives which reject Marxism (...) as masculinist and dichotomous. The dilemma has been an overemphasis on the personal‐cultural at the expense of the collective‐political, distracting us from action for social justice at the same time as globalisation is creating escalating world crises of justice and sustainability. In conclusion, I advocate a re‐reading of Gramsci in the light of key feminist critiques of class and patriarchy in order to develop i) analyses based on multiple sites of oppression and ii) action which reaches from local to global through alliances to achieve a more integrated feminist praxis. Throughout, I use ‘dis’ability and ‘race’ to denote the socially constructed nature of these concepts. (shrink)

The article investigates the consequences for feminist politics of the neoliberal turn. Feminist scholars have analysed the political changes in the situation of women that have been brought about by neoliberalism, but their assessments of neoliberalism’s consequences for feminist theory and politics vary. Feminist thinkers such as Hester Eisenstein and Sylvia Walby have argued that feminism must now return its focus to socialist politics and foreground economic questions of redistribution in order to combat the hegemony of neoliberalism. Some have (...) further identified post-structuralism and its dominance in feminist scholarship as being responsible for the debilitating move away from socialist or Marxist paradigms. I share their diagnosis to the extent that it is my contention that the rapid neoliberalization characterising the last thirty years has put women and feminist thought in a completely new political situation. However, in contrast to those feminist thinkers who put the blame for the current impasse on the rise of poststructuralist modes of thought, it is my contention that the poststructuralist turn in feminist theory in the 1980s and 1990s continues to represent an important theoretical advance. I will discuss Foucault’s genealogy of neoliberalism in order to assess the ways it can contribute to feminist theory and politics today. I contend that Foucault can provide a critical diagnostic framework for feminist theory as well as for prompting new feminist political responses to the spread and dominance of neoliberalism. I will also return to Nancy Fraser and Judith’s Butler’s seminal debate on feminist politics in the journal Social Text (1997) in order to demonstrate that a critical analysis of the economic/cultural distinction must be central when we consider feminist forms of resistance to neoliberalism. (shrink)

Judith Butler and Marxism invites leading scholars to discuss the absences in both Butler and Marxism, and the ways in which each satisfies the other. The unique contributions of this collection critique Butler from a Marxist position and propose Butler as necessary to the contemporary project of Marxism. Judith Butler and Marxism offers a practical politics of Butlerian performativity, vulnerability, and care, while giving the first full theoretical account of the critical intersections binding Butler and (...) class='Hi'>Marxism. (shrink)

The stated goal of Donna Haraway's “Cyborg feminism” is to liberate sensuality from violence. In examining her book alongside that of Jesuit Toletus it becomes clear that both argue that sensuality is a place of metaphysical violence. The first two sections of the essay demonstrate this, and, in addition that Toletus' commentary on Aquinas is hardly accurate. This fact will help justify the claim that the Jesuit tradition includes a rather particular theory of sensuality, the origin of which is (...) perhaps Giles of Rome. A third section shows how the Jesuit Gaston Fessard rediscovered Aquinas' own theory of sensuality through a thoroughgoing critique of Hegelian and Marxist dialectic. The essay concludes that Haraway would do well to adopt Aquinas' non‐violent theory of sensuality as her own. (shrink)

Richard McCormick examines the concepts of postmodernity and postmodernism as they apply to West Germany, discussing them against the background of cultural and political upheaval in that country since the 1960s, rather than exclusively in the more familiar setting of intellectual history. Considering six literary and cinematic texts that are marked by a preoccupation with the self and subjectivity, he underscores the crucial influence of feminism on writers and filmmakers--and on the "postmodern." In a broad international context he describes (...) the conflicting forces that affected the West German student movementthe rationalistic tradition of the Weimar Left and more "irrational" influences such as French existentialism and surrealism (as well as the American "Beat" movement and rock & roll)--and shows how these forces played themselves out so that dogmatic Marxist Leninism was repudiated in favor of a "New Subjectivity.". At the center of the discussion are the novels Lenz by Peter Schneider, Class Love (Klassenliebe) by Karin Struck, and Devotion by Botho Strauss, and the films Wrong Move written by Peter Handke and directed by Wim Wenders, Germany, Pale Mother by Helma Sanders-Brahms, and The Subjective Factor by Helke Sander. The author shows how ongoing attempts to attack the separation of emotion from reason, life from art, the private from the public, and the personal from the political brought about changes in outlook, from the 1960s to the early 1980s, that are related to the rise of new political movements--ecology, nuclear disarmament, and feminism. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Classic feminist social theory highlights the exploitation of women’s labor in capitalist societies traditionally through an examination of how housework and childcare is perceived and organized, excluding an explicit analysis of older adult care work. In light of the surge in the demand for older adult caregiving over the last several decades, this paper uses older adult care work as a new lens to understand how gender, and its intersections with other critical identities such as race, ethnicity, and nativity, are (...) a basis for continued exploitation and marginalization in modern capitalist systems. Building on Marxist feminism and Sylvia Wynter’s work on social value and domination, I argue that women’s care labor, both paid and unpaid, is an instrument of capital accumulation that differentially exploits women based on key intersectional identities. An examination of the system of older adult care work in the United States allows us to see the multilayered and complex system of exploitation that creates and institutionalizes existing social hierarchies as capitalism seeks to expand. The paper ends with a discussion of two potential family care paths America could conceivably pursue in the coming years; one toward increased commodification of care work in line with neoliberal capitalism, and the other toward more comprehensive social welfare policies that alleviate women’s reproductive labor burden and begin to break down gendered and racialized hierarchies. (shrink)

Katerina Kolozova is a Macedonian philosopher whose publications from last two decades aim to analyze various topics using François Laruelle’s “non-philosophy” or “non-standard philosophy.” Non-philosophy could be roughly described as radicalized deconstruction: Laruelle claims that not everything can be grasped by a philosophy: for Laruelle, “philosophy is too serious an affair to be left to the philosophers alone.”1 Non-philosophy opposes the “principle of sufficient philosophy” through which philosophy determines and decides what is real. According to Laruelle, the ultimate limit of (...) philosophical thought and its self-proclaimed sufficiency lies in its inherent tendency to close itself in a transcendental system of autofetishist conceptions, which presume that one can grasp the Real (“The Real is neither capable of being known or even ‘thought,’ but can be described in axioms. [...] Even ‘immanence’ only serves to name the Real which tolerates nothing but axiomatic descriptions or formulations.”) by a philosophical thought, or that the Real could be mediated only through human thought. Laruelle criticizes this tendency of philosophy, which is usually expressing itself through the structure of “philosophical Decision.” (“To philosophize is to decide Reality and the thoughts that result from this, i.e. to believe to be able to order them in the universal order of the Principle of Reason [Logos].”) Katerina Kolozova use Laruelle’s non-philosophy to explore more explicitly political topics. In the Cut Of Th e Real (2014), she criticized certain dogmatism of poststructuralist philosophy and feminist theory, namely their symptomatic rejection of the Real and the One. In Toward a Radical Metaphysics of Socialism (2015) and The Lived Revolution (2016) Kolozova presented a rereading of Marx, whose work she found relevant for the critique of speculative philosophical dimension of the capitalist economy, embodied in the 2008 global finance crisis, and in the latter book, she explored the possibility of a new political solidarity, based on “bodies in pain.” Kolozova doesn’t call to philosophically reconstruct Marx’s thought for the current situation, but she goes back to Marx with the help of Laruelle’s non-Marxism, contrary to the usual approach of Marxist philosophers, who often try to create certain philosophical system of Marx’s work. Together with Eileen A. Joy, Kolozova edited the anthology After the “Speculative Turn” (2016), which addressed recent realist and materialist tendencies in feminist philosophy. In her most recent book, Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals (2019), Kolozova aimed to explore broader philosophical foundations of neoliberal capitalism, and its dealing with nonhuman animals and their suffering. According to Kolozova, “We have to start by coming to terms with what we did to the animals in the constitutive act of philosophy and via proxy to all those dehumanised that belong to the species of man ‘by courtesy’ only.” . (shrink)

This book analyzes Marxian theories of justice within the context of contemporary political philosophy and intellectual history. Transcending perspectives from classical Marxism, the author analyses how western Marxism has engaged with critically and responded to the theories of justice, especially since the 1970s. The nine chapters cover major intellectual movements and multi-dimensional frameworks of thought that critique and understand anew the idea of justice, including anglophone debates on Marxism and justice, global distributive justice, and viewpoints from analytical (...) Marxism, radical egalitarianism, the Frankfurt School, Marxian feminism and ecological Marxism. The second part of the book returns to the classical texts of Marxism, with a focus on historical materialism and a critique of capitalism to reinterpret basic tenets of justice in Marxism and to reconstruct Marxian theory of justice. This title will be of value to scholars and students interested in theories of justice, Marxian philosophy and political philosophy. (shrink)

Feminism as a radical discourse has always been a challenge to Christian Theology. The contemporary deconstructive feminist social thought that signals a radical epistemic shift in transnational politics, economics and culture invokes theology to re-locate its methodology and focus. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s deconstructive feminism re-positions contemporary feminist thought in a post-Marxist, postcolonial, and postmodern epistemological context. This article tries to explore the methodological significance of the Spivakian de-constructive feminist epistemology and to sketch out its implications on the contemporary (...) theological program. The thesis is analysed in three major sections. The first section is an introduction to the Spivakian epistemological ‘itinerary’. The second section tries to explicate the contours of Spivakian feminist epistemology by elucidating three specific categories, viz: subalternity, marginality, and planetarity. The third section explores its implications on theological methodology in conversation with some of the contemporary postcolonial feminist theologians who engage creatively with Spivak. Spivakian feminist epistemology is being signified here in order to re-imagine a feminist systematic theology in a post-globalized context. (shrink)

For over twenty years Nancy Hartsock has been a powerful voice in the effort to forge a feminism sophisticated and strong enough to make a difference in the real world of powerful political and economic forces. This volume collects her most important writings, offering her current thinking about this period in the development of feminist political economy and presenting an important new paper, “The Feminist Standpoint Revisited.”Central themes recur throughout the volume: in particular, the relationships between theory and activism, (...) between feminism and Marxism, and between postmodernism and politics. Readers will appreciate Hartsock’s account of how so much of her theoretical work grew directly out of the demands of the activist life. The Feminist Standpoint Revisited is an important record and a timely reevaluation of the development of feminist thought, as well as a contribution to current work. It will be a valuable resource for feminist theorists in a wide variety of disciplines. (shrink)

Since 1972, the journal _Radical Philosophy_ has provided a forum for the discussion of radical and critical ideas in philosophy. It is the liveliest and probably the most widely read philosophical journal in Britain. This anthology reprints some of the best articles to have appeared in the journal during the past five years. It covers topics in social and moral philosophy which are central to current controversies on the left, focusing on theoretical issues raised by the socialist, feminist and environmental (...) movements. Topics covered include feminist perspectives on a range of traditional philosophical issues and contemporary problems; theoretical questions involved in the rethinking of socialism and Marxism; and questions about the relation between humanity and nature raised by environmental debates. The pieces included engage with contemporary issues in critical terms, and represent the best of recent philosophical work on the left. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the current state of radical thought. (shrink)

Following Hannah Arendt’s insights into the affinities between Marxism and the philosophy of life, this article reconstructs a theoretical position that we propose to call ‘vitalist Marxism’. This position conceives of life not only as an essential foundation of the production process, but also as a critical resource for resistance to the capitalist logic of exploitation. We highlight the role Georges Canguilhem (1904–95) played in developing this position, in particular by depicting tools and machines as ‘organs of life’. (...) Drawing on Canguilhem’s early writings as well as unpublished manuscripts, we show that this ‘organological’ understanding of technology was rooted in the increasingly anti-fascist reception of Marx in France during the 1930s. Against the background of today’s protests against climate destruction, racism, and anti-feminist violence, all of which invoke the defense of basic living conditions, we argue that the critical position of vitalist Marxism acquires remarkable topicality. (shrink)

The illuminated building is surrounded by nocturnal darkness. Visibly displayed are people working late at the office. The cover of Kathi Weeks’s excellent book clearly sets the scene for her analysis of the problems we might well have—or should have—with work in its current configuration. One apparently has to work, but it is also supposed to be “good” to work; one should always try to work more, be more performative, exert oneself more, put in the extra hours to become more (...) efficient. Drawing on Weber’s analysis of the Protestant work ethic and its constitutive contradictions, Weeks wants us to question this productivist model of the “ever more” that can cost us so dearly. She sets out to render strange our .. (shrink)

This article discusses three different conceptions of ethics within contemporary feminist theory and how they depict the connection between ethics and politics. The first position, represented by Wendy Brown, mainly describes ethics as a sort of anti-political moralism and apolitical individualism, and hence as a turn away from politics. The second position, represented by Saba Mahmood, discusses ethics as a precondition for politics, while the third position, represented by Vikki Bell, depicts it as the ‘external consciousness’ of the political, and (...) as destabilising political discourse by confronting it with singularity and ‘radical’ difference. Though they represent distinct positions, the article argues, all three suffer from a tendency to reify ethics by failing to give a contextualised account of it. The article then introduces the ethical perspective of Judith Butler, arguing that she – while offering both a transhistorical and a contextualised dimension – tends to psychologise and individualise ethics and politics. The last part of the article introduces Terry Eagleton and what, in a Marxist vein, could be called a ‘materialist ethics’ or an ‘ethics of socialism’, and argues that this way of framing the relationship between ethics and politics provides a solution to the trap of reification identified in the three described positions. This part also discusses how Eagleton’s theory relates to – but also differs from – arguments made by Butler. One advantage of Eagleton’s work, the article argues, is that it does not psychologise and individualise ethics and politics as Butler’s work does. (shrink)

The relationship between feminist theory and traditionally feminine activities like mothering and caring is complex, especially because of the current diversity of feminist scholarship. There are many different kinds of feminist theory, and each approaches the issue of women's oppression from its own angle. The statement, "feminist ethics is about mothering and caring," can be critically evaluated by outlining specific feminist approaches to ethics and showing what role mothering and caring play in each particular view. In this paper, feminine and (...) feminist perspectives are delineated, and the four classic feminist approaches (liberal, Marxist, radical, and socialist) are summarized. I argue that to some extent all of the examples of feminist ethics are "about" mothering and caring. In some cases this is because the particular view describes mothering and caring as features of the roots of women's oppression, or as a positive force in changing the prevailing social order to do away with oppression. I include a discussion of an additional role mothering might play in the socialist feminist framework. (shrink)

This is the first source-book for this cross-disciplinary area. It takes students through a wide range of readings from philosophy, politics, and sociology, to human geography, international relations, and feminist studies. Bringing together statements from leading twentieth-century thinkers such as Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Laclau and Mouffe, and with the editor's substantial introduction, this is an ideal teaching text, inspiring debate about the future of Marxism as a cultural theory.

From the historical roots of second-wave feminism to current debates about feminist theory and politics. This introduction to Anglo-American feminist thought provides a critical and panoramic survey of dominant trends in feminism since 1968. Feminism is too often considered a monolithic movement, consisting of an enormous range of women and ideologies, with both similar and different perspectives and approaches. The book is divided into two parts, the first of which takes a close look at the most influential (...) strands of feminism: liberal feminism, Marxist/socialist feminism, radical feminism, lesbian feminism, and black feminism. In later chapters, Whelehan ties these complexities of, and conflicts within, feminism. The role and relationship of men to feminism, and feminism's often thorny relationship to postmodernism, are also the subject of chapter length treatment. Concluding with a provocative discussion of the much-heralded advent of post-feminism and the rise of the new feminist superstars such as Camille Paglia, Naomi Wolf, Susan Faludi, and Katie Roiphe, Modern Feminist thought is an ideal text for students and a book no feminist teacher or activist should be without. (shrink)

This article reflects upon what can go wrong when feminist philosophers begin with a universal identity, rather than with the needs of particular individuals, and argues that we can group individuals together without such a universal identity if we develop a practice of social generalization that places shared needs, rather than identities, at the center of attention.

After a time dominated by nature-phobia, a naturalistic turn is emerging within feminist theory. Welcoming this new theoretical embrace of nature and sympathising with its insistence that nature is not feminism’s enemy, this article nevertheless points to some problematic features of this turn. Focusing on Elizabeth Grosz’s postmodernist readings of Charles Darwin, I suggest that their emphasis of nature’s dynamic, indeterminate and enabling qualities both implies a politically unmotivated glorification of the dynamic and unruly, and as such obscures the (...) important fact that nature also works as a constraining factor on societies. I demonstrate, from the point of view of a Marxist-realist perspective, why an acknowledgement of nature’s limiting force is crucial for the coherence of any theoretical account of the workings of social systems. The article also addresses the feminist imperative to transcend the dualism between nature and culture, and shows how the concept of emergence offers a solution to dilemmas that tend to appear in connection to such efforts of transcendence. (shrink)

The current feminist debate over ecology raises important and timely issues about the theoretical adequacy of the four leading versions of feminism-liberal feminism, traditional Marxist feminism, radical feminism, and socialist feminism. In this paper I present a minimal condition account of ecological feminism, or ecofeminism. I argue that if eco-feminism is true or at least plausible, then each of the four leading versions of feminism is inadequate, incomplete, or problematic as a theoretical (...) grounding for eco-feminism. I conclude that, if eco-feminism is to be taken seriously, then a transformative feminism is needed that will move us beyond the four familiar feminist frameworks and make an eco-feminist perspective central to feminist theory and practice. (shrink)

This article examines the complex intertwinements of feminism, anti-colonial Marxism and imperialism in the work of the recent Literature Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing, particularly in her writings on colonial Africa and the travelogue African Laughter. The article outlines the implications of these intersections for the representation of Zimbabwe against some political, aesthetic and epistemological developments in Lessing's oeuvre. Through a reading of African Laughter, the article argues that a crucial tension is at stake between Lessing's political project (...) of giving voice to black Zimbabweans and the western female protagonist as the authoritative subject of this project. The aim is to render an innovative perspective of Doris Lessing's status as a feminist icon, which she gained in the wake of her acclaimed novel The Golden Notebook, by proceeding from postcolonial feminist scholarship. (shrink)

It has become commonplace within feminist theory to claim that women’s lives are constructed by multiple, intersecting systems of oppression. In this thesis, I challenge the consensus that oppression is aptly captured by the theoretical model of “intersectionality.” While intersectionality originates in Black feminist thought as a purposive intervention into US antidiscrimination law, it has been detached from that context and harnessed to different representational aims. For instance, it is often asserted that intersectionality enables a representational politics that overcomes legacies (...) of exclusion within hegemonic Anglo-American feminism. I argue that intersectionality reinscribes the political exclusion of racialized women as a feature of their embodied identities. That is, it locates the failure of political representation in the “complex” identities of “intersectional” subjects, who are constructed as unrepresentable in terms of “race” or “gender” alone. Further, I argue that intersectionality fails to supplant race- and class-privileged women as the normative subjects of feminist theory and politics. In Chapter One, I demonstrate that intersectionality illicitly imports unitary concepts of “race,” “gender,” and “class.” In Chapter Two, I argue that intersectionality lacks a theory of hierarchy: it is a “flat geography” which cannot capture vertical and horizontal lines of power. In Chapter Three, I explore the role of analogical reasoning in rendering racialized women invisible both as gendered and as racialized subjects in twentieth-century social movements. To concretize this argument, I turn to Simone de Beauvoir’s use of race-sex analogies to describe (white, bourgeois) “women’s” situation in The Second Sex. In Chapter Four, I advance a programmatic unified account of oppression. I suggest that the possibility of a unified theory (as opposed to an intersectional one) is intimated in the concrete articulation of race, class, and gender. My point of departure is a phenomenology of capitalism, which reveals that these are all fundamentally modes of exploitation and appropriation. In Chapter Five, I theorize how they are made visible (and invisible) on the body. I extend Frantz Fanon’s account of “epidermalization,” drawing upon the marxian concepts of “fetishism” and “mode of appearance” to elaborate four structures of gendered racialized perception: first, the “miscegenation taboo” structures perceptions of the “purity” of whiteness and the “polluting” effects of blackness. Whiteness, theorised as a “possessive investment” and as “property” is defined by the right to exclude. Second, the “episteme of tellable differences” produces the conviction that we can automatically “tell the difference” between a body placed in one “racial” or gender category, and another—while bodies that temporarily confound classification cause fear and consternation. Third, the “race/reproduction bind” names the axiomatic assumption that “race” is reproduced through (heterosexual) procreation and that “race” is, therefore, biologically inheritable. Finally, the “fear/criminalisation reflex” refers to the bidirectional equation of particular racialised-gendered bodies with crime, and of crime with those bodies; this a function of the discursive use of ‘crime’ as an alibi for “race’” the systemic racialisation of punitive carceral institutions, and the historical origins of “race” in transatlantic chattel slavery, which shaped perceptual-cognitive associations of freedom with whiteness and captivity with blackness. (shrink)

Rosemary Hennessy confronts some of the impasses in materialist feminist work on rethinking `woman' as a discursively constructed subject. She argues for a theory of discourse as ideology taking into account the work of Kristeva, Foucault and Laclau.