Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Feminism & Feminist Theory

Although formal barriers to women's social and political participation have crumbled, society remains, to a significant degree, gendered in the roles that women and men play. Women's and men's choices regarding work and family are largely responsible for maintaining and reinforcing the differences. While feminists recognize the need to criticize women's choices, too often they focus on restrictive conditions rather than the choices themselves. Kimberly A. Yuracko argues instead that encouraging women to make choices in accordance with a grounded and well-defined conception of...

"No matter how wise a mother's advice is, we listen to our peers." At least that's writer Naomi Wolf's take on the differences between her generation of feminists--the third wave--and the feminists who came before her and developed in the late '60s and '70s--the second wave. In Not My Mother's Sister, Astrid Henry agrees with Wolf that this has been the case with American feminism, but says there are problems inherent in drawing generational lines.

Henry begins by examining texts written by women in the second wave, and illustrates how that generation identified with, yet also...

"This is altogether a most worthwhile book, a fine example of a growing genre of African literature... " Choice

"Mirza and Strobel let these women speak about their lives in their own words, and the results are wonderful.... This is an excellent book with which to introduce students both to Africa and to life histories... " American Historical Review

This exploration of the lives of three Mombasa women reveals the complexity of Swahili society its ethnic diversity, the impact of slavery, and the varied reactions to colonialism and Western culture. They illustrate the rich...

..". a warm, interesting, intellectual biography... " German Studies Review

..". thoughtful analysis... fine book... " Slavic Review

The remarkable life of the maverick German socialist feminist Lily Braun (1865 1916) and the relevance of her ideas to the women s movement of our own day emerge with strength and sensitivity.

Recent discussion of postmodern culture describes a movement from center to periphery, privileging cultures that were formerly marginalized. Women and Change in the Caribbean, a study of women marginalized by both gender and race in a region such as the Caribbean itself marginalized in global terms attempts to extract insights relevant both within and beyond geographical confines.

This volume offers a feminist interpretation of a multicultural society emerging from colonialism and in the process of change and restructuring. The nineteen chapters include case studies of fifteen...

What is essentialism? What is anti-essentialism? The Essential Difference attempts to answer questions at the heart of current feminist theory and cultural study. The book deals with origins and contexts of the debate; relationships between essentialism, anti-essentialism, and the power of language; reasons for the demonization of essentialism within the academy; the relationship between essentialism and Third World studies.

The essays also speculate about whether there can be an anti-essentialist feminism, whether there can in fact be a feminist politics that dispenses with the...

Consisting almost entirely of new essays specially prepared for this volume, Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt illuminates the diversity of contemporary feminisms while also generating new and suggestive readings of Hannah Arendt's political thought. The contributing authors' shared interest in Arendt provides a ground upon which to work out their disagreements regarding feminist theory and practice. At the same time, their shared commitment to some brand of feminism leads them to engage Arendt on an unusually wide array of issues, such as gender, sexuality, the body,...

Much contemporary feminist theory continues to see itself as freeing women from patriarchal oppression so that they may realize their own inner truth. To be told by postmodern thinkers such as Jacques Derrida that the very possibility of such a truth must be submitted to the process of deconstruction thus seems to present a serious challenge to the feminist project. From a postmodern perspective, on the other hand, most feminist discourse remains deeply rooted, if not in essentialism, at least in the logocentrism of traditional philosophical and political thought. Stepping beyond the usual...

In contrast to many previous feminist interpretations of Aristotle, which found much to disparage and little to salvage in his philosophy, the contributors to this volume enter into new, creative, and subtle dimensions of inquiry about Aristotle. They look more deeply into his influence and question the possibility of escape from it.

Feminists recognize that they too philosophize within the tradition founded by Plato and Aristotle and owe the Greeks a debt. Aristotle still influences our abstract thinking, search for principles, meditations on virtue, and reflections on nature,...

Nietzsche has the reputation of being a virulent misogynist, so why are feminists interested in his philosophy? The essays in this volume provide answers to this question from a variety of feminist perspectives.

The organization of the volume into two sets of essays, "Nietzsche's Use of Woman" and "Feminists' Use of Nietzsche," reflects the two general approaches taken to the issue of Nietzsche and woman. First, many debates have focused on how to interpret Nietzsche's remarks about women and femininity. Are all of Nietzsche's comments to be read literally, or is he being ironic,...

This landmark anthology is the first to engage critically the writings of Ayn Rand from feminist perspectives. The interdisciplinary feminist strategies of re-reading Rand range from the lightness of camp to the darkness of de Sade, from postandrogyny to poststructuralism. A highly charged dialogue on Rand's legacy provides the forum for a reexamination of feminism and its relationship to egoism, individualism, and capitalism. Rand's place in contemporary feminism is assessed through comparisons with other twentieth-century feminists, such as de Beauvoir, Wolf, Paglia, Eisler, and...

This open-ended anthology is a journey into the very canon that Mary Daly has argued to be patriarchal and demeaning to women. This volume deauthorizes the official canon of Western philosophy and disrupts a related story told by some feminists who claim that Daly's work is unworthy of re-reading because it contains fatal errors. The editors and contributors attempt to prove that Mary Daly is located in the Western intellectual tradition. Daly may be highly critical of conventional Western epistemological and theological traditions, but she nevertheless appropriates themes "out-of-context"...

Diplomat, bureaucrat, and practical politician, Niccolo Machiavelli served as Second Secretary to the Republic of Florence in the early sixteenth century and became the first major political thinker in the western tradition to make a complete break with the Aristotelian model of politics as a branch of ethics. While The Prince is his most famous work, grounding his reputation as the progenitor of "Realpolitik," his many other writings have contributed to a more complex and broader image of the man and his political thought. Thus in recent years Machiavelli has come to be seen as a...

In Is Philosophy Androcentric?, Iddo Landau contends that none of the arguments for viewing philosophy as pervasively androcentric ultimately stand up to rational scrutiny, while the ones that show it to be nonpervasively androcentric do not undermine it in the way that many critics have supposed. "Philosophy emerges, in almost all of its parts," he concludes, "as human rather than male, and most parts and aspects of it need not be rejected or rewritten."

Within the popular consciousness, Emma Goldman has become something of an icon, a symbol for rebellion and women's rights. But there has been surprisingly little substantive analysis of her influence on social, political, and feminist theory. In Feminist Interpretations of Emma Goldman, Weiss and Kensinger present essays that resist a simplistic understanding of Goldman and instead attempt to examine her thinking in its proper social, historical, and philosophical context. Only by considering the sources, influences, and specific significance of Goldman's ideas can her proper...

This volume presents an exploration of the intersection between the work of Michel Foucault and feminist theory, focusing on Foucault's theories of sex/body, identity/subject, and power/politics.

Like the other books in this series, this volume seeks to bring a feminist perspective to bear on the interpretation of a major figure in the philosophical canon. In the case of Michel Foucault, however, this aim is somewhat ironic because Foucault sees his work as disrupting that very canon. Since feminists see their work as similarly disruptive, Foucault and feminism would seem to find...

The right to cast a ballot from a feminine hand occupied the attention and efforts of hundreds of women for more than a century in the US. In these two volumes, Campbell provides a basic understanding of two processes: the development of the rhetoric used by the women who argued for equal rights, and the constraints and sanctions applied to those women who affronted the norms of society's expectation that true women were seldom seen and never spoke in public. The first volume lays the foundation for the analysis of rhetorical style and content by its fine introduction and by a succession...

Strenuously attacked for their attempts to involve themselves in concerns outside the home, nineteenth-century women reformers soon recognized the need to work for their own rights before they could effectively champion other reformist causes. This book examines the creative response to that challenge. It offers critical analysis of the speeches and writings that set forth the platform and arguments of the early woman's rights movement and guided its development from the 1840s through the early decades of the twentieth century.

Following an introductory overview of the...