Suchergebnisse

Books reviewed:Richard Campbell, Illusions of Paradox: A Feminist Epistemology NaturalizedMatthew Festenstein, Pragmatism, and Political Theory: From Dewey to Rorty

"This book is about gender politics in Mozambique over three decades from 1975 to 2005. The book is also about different ways of understanding gender and sexuality. Gender policies from Portuguese colonialism, through Frelimo socialism to later neo-liberal economic regimes share certain basic assumptions about men, women and gender relations. But to what extent do such assumptions fit the ways in which rural Mozambican men and women see themselves? A major line of argument in the book is that gender relations should be investigated, not assumed, and that policies not matching people's lives are not likely to succeed. The empirical data, on which the argument is based, are first a unique body of data material collected 1982-1984 by the national women's organization, the OMM [when the author was employed as a sociologist in the organization] and secondly data resulting from more recent fieldwork in northern Mozambique. Importantly inspired by African post-colonial feminist lines of thinking, the book engages in a project of re-mapping and re-interpreting 'culture and tradition'. In this context, the book investigates in particular matriliny [c. 40% of Mozambique's population live under conditions of matriliny] and female initiation. The findings open new avenues for gender politics, and for re-thinking sexuality and gender - in Africa and beyond."--Publisher's website

This article brings together the history of US independent animation production in the 1970s and 1980s and feminist social reproduction theory in these same decades in order to understand independent animation in the context of an increasingly precarious and feminized post-Fordist creative economy. The article builds a composite portrait of independent animation at that time, anchored by films by six artists who navigated this economy at its nascency. It proposes the "homeworker" as an alternative figure to the common categories of "freelancer" or "independent artist" as part of a feminist analysis of living and working conditions that sustain independent artistic practice. By framing independent women's animation as a site of speculation about creative possibilities of social reproduction, the article contributes to expanding scholarship on gendered labor in creative and cultural production.

Abstract
In the current revival of fundamentalist right-wing politics globally, Poland occupies an important place given the struggles for abortion and reproductive justice that have been ongoing there since 2016. Together with Mexican, Argentinian, South Korean, and Italian women, Polish feminists contributed to creating the International Women's Strike, which later spread throughout the globe, uniting movements in seventy countries. This article discusses the symmetric heroisms imposed by the conservative governments on women, who have to give birth "no matter what," as well as on men, who are told to "defend their fatherland." Such acute, gendered demands for heroism also perpetuate the binary heteromatrix, further marginalizing LGBTQIA+ people and groups. Recent Polish struggles have contributed to the shift in feminist proabortion narratives from the liberal one, centered on choice, to others more preoccupied with reproductive justice. This article argues that the recent legal limitations on access to abortion in Poland and other countries are central to the current effort to reestablish the rule of the state of exception. It also analyzes the weak resistance of grassroots feminist movements organizing for reproductive justice. The refusal to participate in heroic politics requires not only work for better access to abortion but also an alternative kind of subject formation, here tentatively defined as "unheroic," as well as politics of weak resistance.

A number of radical teachers have attempted to restructure classroom education to encourage subjectivity & to meet therapeutic aims. The top priority in this approach is completing emotional business to make room for natural learning. This approach, however, is in fact covertly authoritarian, relying on manipulative methods of getting things done. Classes are conducted in series of small group activities. Yet this approach, which tries to make learning painless, is incapable of presenting critical theory, which is a painfully difficult subject. The model human mind on which this is based is essentially that of utilitarian liberalism, leading to a preoccupation with individual experience capable of justifying reactionary institutions. While this approach is often favored by feminists, it in fact enmeshes women more deeply in the limits of the mode of awareness imposed on them by present society. What is needed is a persuasive advocacy of a critical stance. In particular, overly simplified feminist positions must be criticized & rejected, not embraced as having the right aim underneath their errors, for feminists to achieve anything. W. W. Stoddard

"From the presidential level down, men and women who run for political office confront different electoral realities. In her probing study, Navigating Gendered Terrain, Kelly Dittmar investigates how gender influences the campaign strategy and behavior of candidates today. Concurrently, she shows how candidates' strategic and tactical decisions can influence the gendered nature of campaign institutions. Navigating Gendered Terrain addresses how gender is used to shape how campaigns are waged by influencing insider perceptions of and decisions about effective campaign messages, images, and tactics within party and political contexts. Dittmar uses survey information and interviews with candidates, political consultants, and other campaign professionals to reveal how gender-informed advertising, websites, and overall presentation to voters respond to stereotypes and perceptions of female and male candidates. She closes her book by offering a feminist interpretation of women as candidates and explaining how the unintended outcomes of political campaigns reinforce prevailing ideas about gender and candidacy"--

An interview conducted on 12 June 2000 with Jackson discusses, among other things, Jackson's Heterosexuality in Question (1999), illustrating changes in the author's employment of vocabulary used for examining issues of sexuality & her increased focus on heterosexuality rather than sexuality. The fragmentation of the women's movement around the issue of identity formation & the effects of the subsequent injection of queer theory into the aforementioned debate are discussed. The popular assertion that sexuality precedes gender is strongly repudiated. Differences between French difference & materialist feminists are discussed in order to better understand how American feminism has currently become the predominant feminist discourse. The problems associated with deconstructing the category of gender are also addressed, eg, the creation of additional gender categories. The need to utilize a social structural perspective in answering the question "Why does gender exist?" is articulated. In addition, the need for North American & European feminists to communicate & for American feminists to read the works of feminists from all European nations is stressed. J. W. Parker

AbstractIts critics call it 'feminism-as-crime-control', or 'Governance Feminism', diagnosing it as a pernicious form of identity politics. Its advocates call it taking sexual violence seriously – by which they mean wielding the power of the state to 'punish perpetrators' and 'protect vulnerable women'. Both sides agree that this approach follows from the radical feminist analysis of sexual violence most strikingly formulated by Catharine MacKinnon. The aim of this paper is to rethink the Governance Feminism debate by questioning this common presupposition. I ask whether taking MacKinnon's analysis of sexual violence seriously might, in fact, itself give us reason to be critical of political strategies that embrace the punitive state. By raising this question, I hope to persuade radical feminists to listen to critics of carceral politics rather than dismissing them as rape apologists, and critics of carceral politics to listen to radical feminists rather than dismissing them as state apologists.

In her important essay 'Praxis in the time of empire', Ananya Roy (2006) calls for planning theory to confront imperialism and colonialism as the constitutive 'present history' of planning and to substitute a liberal 'responsibility for' others with a postcolonial 'accountability to' them. This article takes up Roy's appeal with reference to the disciplines of anthropology, critical development studies and feminist studies. It argues that in order to move beyond the limits of 'liberal benevolence', planners need an ethics of accountability that recognizes the conditions of postcoloniality, to be sure, but that can also foreground the relational subjectivities of planners and beneficiaries more generally with an eye to broaching the normative terrain of 'what is to be done?'. Through a review of literature at the juncture of planning and critical development studies, and reflections on my own cross-disciplinary travels, the article identifies four theoretical concepts that planning needs to recognize and engage in order to strengthen both its critical and normative orientations: the structures of imperialism, agency and resistance among the 'beneficiaries' of planning action, the subjectivity of planers and the conditions of collective action. The article argues that, cumulatively, these concepts can inform an ethics of accountability that encompasses both postcolonial critique and a 'reflexive relationality'.

Abstract
Almost three decades after its first publication, Anne Phillips reflects on the Politics of Presence in the context of contemporary developments from #MeToo to Black Lives Matter. Granting the importance of a contingent and intersectional understanding of presence, she reemphasizes the necessity of descriptive representation. Phillips reflects on questions of anonymity, essentialism, the multiple self, unconditional equality, and the current role of feminist research in democratic theory. She also opens perspectives toward mending the divide between a politics of recognition and a politics of distribution.

This article revisits Irigaray's theory of sexual difference in the light of more contemporary developments in terms of nomadic becomings and non-unitary subjectivity, especially in Deleuze. It defends the notion of embodied materiality on philosophical grounds, by linking it to the issues of power, access, hegemony and exclusion, which are central to post-structuralism. Through a detailed analysis of the sexual politics of difference feminism, the author argues for a non-reactive redefinition of the feminine as a project of becoming, and connects it firmly to feminist discussions about gender and queer theory.