Download or read book The Sceptical Feminist RLE Feminist Theory written by Janet Radcliffe Richards and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A systematic and original study of feminist issues, The Sceptical Feminist fights a battle on two fronts: against the view that little or nothing is wrong with women’s position, and at the same time against much current feminist dogma. It is written by a philosopher who, in the tradition of John Stuart Mill’s classic The Subjection of Women, avoids the psychological and sociological speculation characteristic of much recent feminism and concentrates on the analysis of arguments. By these means she constructs a powerful and often unexpected case for radical change in the position of women, as well as for a change of attitude among many feminists. From her analysis, Janet Radcliffe Richards argues that positive discrimination in favour of women is essential for justice, that traditional sexual roles never had anything to do with beliefs about each sex’s capabilities, that current abortion practice reflects a disguised wish to punish women’s sexual activity, that ‘women’s work’ is rightly little valued, and that traditional ideals of femininity are inherently pernicious. But she also argues that a movement for sexual justice cannot ‘take the woman’s side in everything’, that feminism should not be thought of as the primary struggle, that dismissing ‘male’ logic and science will undermine feminists’ own intentions, that the state should not subsidise motherhood, that ever available crèches would be disastrous for women, that there is no inherent degradation in prostitution, and that contempt for beauty and adornment has nothing to do with feminism. This is a book for feminists, for their critics, and for students of moral, political and social philosophy.
Download or read book The Sceptical Feminist written by Janet Radcliffe Richards and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Sceptical Feminist RLE Feminist Theory written by Janet Radcliffe Richards and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A systematic and original study of feminist issues, The Sceptical Feminist fights a battle on two fronts: against the view that little or nothing is wrong with women’s position, and at the same time against much current feminist dogma. It is written by a philosopher who, in the tradition of John Stuart Mill’s classic The Subjection of Women, avoids the psychological and sociological speculation characteristic of much recent feminism and concentrates on the analysis of arguments. By these means she constructs a powerful and often unexpected case for radical change in the position of women, as well as for a change of attitude among many feminists. From her analysis, Janet Radcliffe Richards argues that positive discrimination in favour of women is essential for justice, that traditional sexual roles never had anything to do with beliefs about each sex’s capabilities, that current abortion practice reflects a disguised wish to punish women’s sexual activity, that ‘women’s work’ is rightly little valued, and that traditional ideals of femininity are inherently pernicious. But she also argues that a movement for sexual justice cannot ‘take the woman’s side in everything’, that feminism should not be thought of as the primary struggle, that dismissing ‘male’ logic and science will undermine feminists’ own intentions, that the state should not subsidise motherhood, that ever available crèches would be disastrous for women, that there is no inherent degradation in prostitution, and that contempt for beauty and adornment has nothing to do with feminism. This is a book for feminists, for their critics, and for students of moral, political and social philosophy.
Download or read book The Sceptical Feminist written by Janet Radcliffe Richards and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 1991 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The sceptical feminist written by Janet Radcliffe Richards and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Oppositional Imagination RLE Feminist Theory written by Joan Cocks and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-27 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oppositional Imagination draws together elements from Marxism, analytical philosophy, post-structuralism, and post-colonial criticism to analyse the elusive interplay of culture and power. It focuses its attention on cultural domination, opposition and evasion in the realm of sex and gender. Joan Cocks reflects on questions crucial to both political theorists and feminists: the relationship between political theory and practical life; the possibility of bringing together a philosophical and a literary language to comprehend and evoke concrete experience; and the reconciliation of radical political commitment with an appreciation of shades of grey in the social world. She explores the variety of ways in which power and eroticism intersect; the liberating and tyrannical impulses of marginal cultures; and the place of the loyalist, the eccentric, the critic, the traitor, and the rebel in the sexual struggle. The Oppositional Imagination reaffirms the centrality of political theory and feminist practice while at the same time challenging certain of their key principles in thought-provoking ways.
Download or read book Coming to Terms RLE Feminist Theory written by Elizabeth Weed and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-27 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over a decade, feminist studies have occupied an extraordinary position in the United States. On the one hand, they have contributed to the development of a strong ‘identity’ politics; on the other, they have been part of the post-structuralist critique of the unified subject – its experience, truth and presence – and of the massive challenge to Western metaphysics and humanism. Along with race and ethnic studies, feminist enquiry has moved beyond the fiction of a unitary feminism to address the differences within the study of difference. The essays in this volume all address feminism’s relationships to theory and politics at the level of the criticism and production of knowledge. Readers and students of politics, history, literature, philosophy, sociology and the sciences – anyone with a stake in theory and politics – will benefit from this powerful book.
Download or read book Disputed Subjects RLE Feminist Theory written by Jane Flax and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Incorporating autobiography as well as reflections on relations between mothers and daughters, psychoanalysis, feminist theorizing, race, and modernist political theories and philosophies, renowned feminist theorist Jane Flax brings together eight of her most recent essays in Disputed Subjects. ‘Indisputably required reading ... Lively, sophisticated, and challenging discussions at the crucial intersection of feminist, psychoanalytic, and political ideas. Jane Flax allows her own multiple and conflicting identities into open dialogue, and the result is a promontory on the postmodern landscape.’ – Kenneth J. Gergen ‘Jane Flax is one of the most challenging women writing today ... It is the well-informed voice of sanity, balance and courage.’ – Phyllis Grosskurth ‘Jane Flax’s bold new book challenges orthodoxies in feminism, psychoanalysis, and postmodernism. By questioning the questions that have been taken to define these fields, she demonstrates once again the originality of her thinking.’ – Alison M. Jaggar
Download or read book Feminist Knowledge RLE Feminist Theory written by Sneja Gunew and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-20 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ‘minority’ feminist viewpoints have often been submerged in the interests of maintaining a mainstream, universal model of feminism. This anthology takes into account the various differences among women while looking at the important areas of feminist struggle. While sisterhood is indeed global, it certainly does not mean that all women are required to submerge their specific differences and assimilate to a universal model. Consequently, the collection includes essays by leaders in the field of post-structuralist enquiry as well as by those immersed in the new spirituality, and the social consequences of recent biological research. Other essays reflect the political struggles which continue to be waged with different strategies by socialist and radical feminists, and the self-searching analyses undertaken by feminists uneasy about their inclusion within educational institutions and the radical new interpretations of sexuality within the cultural domain. The collection begins with a critique of white mainstream feminism emanating from Aboriginal women in Australia. The implications of the critique indicate that there is a pervasive racism within the feminist movement.
Download or read book Problems for Feminist Criticism RLE Feminist Theory written by Sally Minogue and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feminist criticism has come a long way in the last twenty years. Its development has been rapid, its snowball progress picking up elements of structuralism, deconstruction and psychoanalytic criticism; just as rapidly it has been shedding its own early theories and methodologies. Now it is a critical orthodoxy with its own established canonical texts. Now is the time, then, to begin to question that orthodoxy. In Problems for Feminist Criticism five women critics seek to do that, in a spirit of enquiry whose central point of focus is the literature for which feminist critics have offered a re-reading. By reference to a wide range of writers, from Milton to the contemporary poet, with a strong emphasis on the nineteenth-century novel, the contributors ask what we may be losing from literature by adopting the feminist orthodoxy. Each chapter provides a survey of feminist critical approaches to its subject and highlights the inherent problems. The book frees the way forward for critics who have found much that is stimulating and revealing in feminist approaches to literature, but who find its proscriptiveness potentially reductive. It shows how literature may have the flexibility to absorb and benefit from new critical approaches, whilst still retaining its own life, never quite to be contained in criticism’s theories and methodologies.
Download or read book Skeptical Feminism written by Carolyn Dever and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this major work, Carolyn Dever considers the ambivalence or outright hostility many feminists feel toward theory, arguing that a fundamental skepticism toward abstraction has been vital to the development of the movement. Dever analyzes the politics of feminist theory by looking at its popular, activist, and academic modes, from the liberation movements of the 1970s to gender and queer studies now. Using key moments in the history of modern feminism--consciousness-raising, best-selling books like Sexual Politics by Kate Millett and The Women's Room by Marilyn French, and media representations of women's struggle for equality--Dever outlines heated debates over psychoanalysis, sexuality, and activism. The abstract and the grounded converge in discussions about the relationship between the feminist mind and the feminist body and in the preoccupation, both uneasy and utopian, with lesbian sexuality. Powerful, illuminating, and galvanizing, Skeptical Feminism traces the strategies the women's movement has used to make theory matter--and points toward a new, politically engaged approach to feminist thought. A clarion call for a new approach to feminist thought.
Download or read book Feminist Criticism and Social Change RLE Feminist Theory written by Deborah Rosenfelt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-20 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lively and controversial collection of essays sets out to theorize and practice a ‘materialist-feminist’ criticism of literature and culture. Such a criticism is based on the view that the material conditions in which men and women live are central to an understanding of culture and society. It emphasises the relation of gender to other categories of analysis, such as class and race, and considers the connection between ideology and cultural practice, and the ways in which all relations of power change with changing social and economic conditions. By presenting a wide range of work by major feminist scholars, this anthology in effect defines as well as illustrates the materialist-feminist tendency in current literary criticism. The essays in the first part of the book examine race, ideology, and the literary canon and explore the ways in which other critical discourse, such as those of deconstruction and French feminism, might be useful to a feminist and materialist criticism. The second part of the book contains examples of such criticism in practice, with studies of individual works, writers and ideas. An introduction by the editors situates the collected essays in relation both to one another and to a shared materialist/feminist project. Feminist Criticism and Social Change demonstrates the important contribution of materialist-feminist criticism to our understanding of literature and society, and fulfils a crucial need among those concerned with gender and its relation to criticism.
Download or read book Tearing the Veil RLE Feminist Theory written by Susan Lipschitz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This a collection of essays about women, by women, which examine the production of femininity within a patriarchal society. The essays show that characteristics generally considered to be ‘feminine’ are in fact cultural constructions within a patriarchal order. The patriarchal culture is taken by us to be a system of meanings, as well as power relations, which pervades our view of women at both a conscious and an unconscious level. The symbolism of the rituals, myths, art works and polemics examined in the essays is related to the ways women are psychically constructed and constrained by the dominant heterosexual order. The Mother, the Witch, the Whore, the Pure Woman, the Amazon and the Free Woman are considered and the contributors make extensive use of original source material to give force to the argument that the stereotypic view of a feminine woman as naturally and inevitably weak, passive and powerless is one that can be seriously challenged.
Download or read book Feminist Knowledge RLE Feminist Theory written by Sneja Gunew and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-20 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ‘minority’ feminist viewpoints have often been submerged in the interests of maintaining a mainstream, universal model of feminism. This anthology takes into account the various differences among women while looking at the important areas of feminist struggle. While sisterhood is indeed global, it certainly does not mean that all women are required to submerge their specific differences and assimilate to a universal model. Consequently, the collection includes essays by leaders in the field of post-structuralist enquiry as well as by those immersed in the new spirituality, and the social consequences of recent biological research. Other essays reflect the political struggles which continue to be waged with different strategies by socialist and radical feminists, and the self-searching analyses undertaken by feminists uneasy about their inclusion within educational institutions and the radical new interpretations of sexuality within the cultural domain. The collection begins with a critique of white mainstream feminism emanating from Aboriginal women in Australia. The implications of the critique indicate that there is a pervasive racism within the feminist movement.
Download or read book Feminists and State Welfare RLE Feminist Theory written by JENNIFER DALE and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed for students of social policy and women’s studies, this text gives a readable account of the wide range of feminist ideas about women and welfare. The authors draw on feminist theory, research and analysis to explore women’s experiences of welfare, and the debates within feminism on how and why the welfare state oppresses women. In an original contribution they discuss women’s impact on the development of the welfare state both as feminist campaigners and as pioneers of new welfare professions. The book concludes by reviewing contemporary feminist strategies to transform the welfare state to meet women’s needs. Whilst the authors put forward their own evaluation of these different feminist approaches, they aim to leave readers with plenty of scope to make up their own minds on the issues.
Download or read book Ethics and Human Reproduction RLE Feminist Theory written by Christine Overall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-20 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Ethics and Human Reproduction, Christine Overall blends feminist theory and philosophical expertise to provide a coherent analysis of a range of moral questions and social policy issues pertaining to human reproduction and the new reproductive technologies. Topics covered include: sex preselection, artificial insemination, prenatal diagnosis, abortion, in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer, surrogate motherhood, and childbirth. Throughout the book, the author examines the values and assumptions underlying common perceptions of sexuality and fertility, the status of the foetus, the value of children, the nature of parenting, and the roles of women. In so doing, she develops a feminist approach to answering questions about reproductive rights and freedoms, the value of a genetic link between mother and their offspring, the commodification of reproduction, and the effects of reproductive technologies on women and children. This book should be essential reading for anyone interested in the new reproductive technologies, biomedical ethics, and women’s health.
Download or read book Subordination RLE Feminist Theory written by Clare Burton and published by . This book was released on 2014-04-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Subordination presents a survey of some of the most important ideas developed within feminism since the 1970s. Among the central themes addressed are: the origins of womene(tm)s subordination; the private/public split; the nature and the role of domestic labour; the impact of psychoanalysis on feminist theory; the relationship between the State and womene(tm)s subordination. One of the booke(tm)s purposes is to draw together strands of thought and debate often kept separate. Throughout, the major theoretical developments in Britain, the United States and Australia are reviewed within a comparative perspective. Consistently, the focus of attention is on how, and how far, theorists in these countries have been able to point to ways of explaining the changing but enduring nature of sexual inequalities.