The power of feminist theory: domination, resistance, solidarity

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 Feminist Conceptions of Power: A Critical Assessment -- Power as Resource -- Power as Domination -- Power as Empowerment -- Conclusion -- 2 The Genealogy of Power: Michel Foucault -- Foucault's Conception of Power -- A Theory for Women? -- A Theory for Feminists -- Limits to the Collaboration: Resistance, Agency, and Solidarity, -- Conclusion -- 3 Power Trouble: Judith Butler's Feminist Genealogy of Power -- Performativity: Take One -- Performativity: Take Two -- Limitations to Performativity -- Conclusion -- 4 The Power of Solidarity: Hannah Arendt -- Foucault, Butler, and Arendt: An Unlikely Alliance -- Arendt's Conception of Power -- Beyond Sisterhood: Rethinking Solidarity -- A Limitation to Arendt's Conception of Power -- 5 A Feminist Conception of Power -- Defining Power -- Methodological Considerations -- Bibliography -- Index

Power is clearly a crucial concept for feminist theory. Insofar as feminists are interested in analyzing power, it is because they have an interest in understanding, critiquing, and ultimately challenging the multiple array of unjust power relations affecting women in contemporary Western societies, including sexism, racism, heterosexism, and class oppression.In The Power of Feminist Theory, Amy Allen diagnoses the inadequacies of previous feminist conceptions of power, and draws on the work of a diverse group of theorists of power, including Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Hannah Arendt, in order to construct a new feminist conception of power. The conception of power developed in this book enables readers to theorize domination, resistance, and solidarity, and, perhaps more importantly, to do so in a way that illuminates the interrelatedness of these three modalities of power.