Gender Struggles: Practical Approaches to Contemporary Feminism / Edition 376

by Constance L. Mui, Kathryn Pyne Addelson, Sandra Lee Bartky, Susan Bordo, Rosi Braidotti Professor and Director, C

Overview

Contemporary feminist theory and postmodernism have left significant marks on how we think about practical matters, most notably the old and new forms of gender struggles that many women confront in their daily lives. The essays collected in Gender Struggles are designed to highlight those influences by addressing the following questions: What is practical feminism in a postmodern world? How does rethinking the nature and boundaries of philosophy affect the way we understand practical issues that we confront daily? What new forms of freedom, autonomy, subjectivity, social welfare, motherhood, public and private space, and political resistance have emerged from this new philosophical sense?
Together, the sixteen essays in this volume represent many different voices of feminists who boldly take up familiar, everyday concerns from unorthodox vantage points within new conceptual and theoretical frameworks. The essays in Gender Struggles address a wide range of issues in gender struggles, from the more familiar ones that, for the last thirty years, have been the mainstay of feminist scholarship, such as motherhood, beauty, and sexual violence, to new topics inspired by post-industrialization and multiculturalism, such as the welfare state, cyberspace, hate speech, and queer politics, and finally to topics that traditionally have not been seen as appropriate subjects for philosophizing, such as adoption, care work, and the home. Incorporating the latest, most "cutting-edge" material on feminism, this volume aims at reaching a broad spectrum of readers by connecting postmodern feminist theory with concrete issues that are practical and relevant to their daily lives and experiences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780742512542
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	04/03/2002
Series:	Feminist Constructions
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.18(w) x 9.24(h) x 1.01(d)

About the Author

Constance L. Mui is associate professor of philosophy at Loyola University in New Orleans. Julien S. Murphy is professor of philosophy at the University of Southern Maine in Portland.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Doing without Knowing: Feminism's Politics of the Ordinary Chapter 2 Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom Chapter 3 After the Family Wage: A Postindustrial Thought Experiment Chapter 4 "Not My Way Sesha, Your Way, Slowly": "Maternal Thinking" in the Raising of a Child with Profound Intellectual Disabilities Chapter 5 The Emergence of the Fetus Chapter 6 Outliving Oneself: Trauma, Memory, and Personal Identity Chapter 7 Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention Chapter 8 Sovereign Performatives Chapter 9 The Harm That Has No Name: Street Harassment, Embodiment, and African American Women Chapter 10 The Sexual Harasser is a Bully, Not a Sex Fiend Chapter 11 Suffering to be Beautiful Chapter 12 Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality Chapter 13 Time, Space, and Motherhoods Chapter 14 Re-thinking Consciousness Raising: Citizenship and the Law and Politics of Adoption Chapter 15 House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme Chapter 16 Cyberfeminism with a Difference

Editorial Reviews

This intriguing collection offers a unique combination of philosophically bold and theoretically astute essays on practical feminist issues concerning everyday life and 'real world' politics. Feminist philosophy in the best of both senses!

Linda Martín Alcoff

Gender Struggles represents the views of some of the most imaginative and provocative feminist thinkers of our time, demonstrating the practical significance of major theoretical innovations of the 20th Century for the everyday lives of women. These essays powerfully suggest that feminist philosophy can change the ways that we think about our lives, including work, child care and family, violence against women, our sense of self-worth, our speech, and our relations with each other.

Kelly Oliver

A volume of first-rate essays, which demonstrates the continued vibrancy and diversity of feminist theory in the new century.

Sonia Kruks

Rejecting the artificial dichotomy between feminist theoretical philosophy and the experiences of everyday life, Mui (philosophy, Loyola U.) and Murphy (philosophy, U. of Southern Maine) 16 essays in which postmodern feminism (for the most part) is applied to traditional and nontraditional issues of feminist concern. Among the topics are abortion politics as related to women's bodies, patriarchal understandings of knowledge and language, feminist constructions of social welfare, gender equity in paid and unpaid labor, rape and assault trauma as related to conceptions of the self, the performative role of language in rape, the ideologies reproduced in street harassment, the possibilities of reconstructing queer theory to include race, and notions of gender identity in cyberspace. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

This intriguing collection offers a unique combination of philosophically bold and theoretically astute essays on practical feminist issues concerning everyday life and 'real world' politics. Feminist philosophy in the best of both senses!

Linda Martín Alcoff

Gender Struggles represents the views of some of the most imaginative and provocative feminist thinkers of our time, demonstrating the practical significance of major theoretical innovations of the 20th Century for the everyday lives of women. These essays powerfully suggest that feminist philosophy can change the ways that we think about our lives, including work, child care and family, violence against women, our sense of self-worth, our speech, and our relations with each other.--Kelly Oliver, SUNY, Stony Brook

A volume of first-rate essays, which demonstrates the continued vibrancy and diversity of feminist theory in the new century.--Sonia Kruks, Robert S. Danforth Professor of Politics, Oberlin College; author of Retrieving Experience

This intriguing collection offers a unique combination of philosophically bold and theoretically astute essays on practical feminist issues concerning everyday life and 'real world' politics. Feminist philosophy in the best of both senses!--Linda Martín Alcoff, Hunter College

From the Publisher