The Way Out West: Development and the Rhetoric of Mobility in Postmodern Feminist Theory

Hypatia ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-72
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH A. PRITCHARD
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
West Development ◽  
The Way

The Way Out West: Development and the Rhetoric of Mobility in Postmodern Feminist Theory

Hypatia ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Pritchard
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Postmodern Theory ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
West Development ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Way

In this essay, I trace a rhetorical affinity between feminist postmodern theory and an Enlightenment narrative of development. This affinity consists in the valorization of mobility and the repudiation of locatedness. Although feminists deploy this rhetoric in order to accommodate differences and to accustom readers to the instability that results from such accommodation, I show how this rhetoric works to justify Western colonial development and to efface women's very different experiences of mobility in the early twenty-first century.

scholarly journals (Re)assembling the ‘normal’ in neoliberal policy discourses: tracing gender regimes in the age of risk

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarina Giritli Nygren ◽  
Siv Fahlgren ◽  
Anders Johansson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Policy Document ◽  
Gender Regime ◽  
Gender Neutral ◽  
Gender Regimes ◽  
Modes Of Governance ◽  
The Way

The purpose of this article is to explore through a reading of an official Swedish policy document what questions and challenges such a document poses for feminist theory by the way the ‘normal’ is (re)assembled in accordance with what others have called the risk politics of advanced liberalism.  The intensified focus on risk in neoliberalism has seen responsibility move from the state to individuals, and old divisions between society and market as well as between civil society and state are being refigured. The argument put forward here is that current modes of governance tend to neglect the complexities of present-day life courses when using a gender-‘neutral’ approach to social policy that is in fact the work of a gender regime.

scholarly journals On the Politics of Coalition

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Ruíz ◽  
Kristie Dotson
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
The State ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The Way

In the wake of continued structural asymmetries between women of color and white feminisms, this essay revisits intersectional tensions in Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State while exploring productive spaces of coalition. To explore such spaces, we reframe Toward a Feminist Theory of the State in terms of its epistemological project and highlight possible synchronicities with liberational features in women-of-color feminisms. This is done, in part, through an analysis of the philosophical role “method” plays in MacKinnon’s argument, and by reframing her critique of juridical neutrality and objectivity as epistemic harms. In the second section, we sketch out a provisional coalitional theory of liberation that builds on MacKinnon’s feminist epistemological insights and aligns them with decolonizing projects in women-of-color feminisms, suggesting new directions and conceptual revisions that are on the way to coalition.

scholarly journals Examining the representations of social actors in FASD prevention campaigns

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riki Yandt
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Medical System ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Health Campaigns ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Public Health Campaigns ◽  
Mother Blame ◽  
The Way

Through an exploration of public health campaigns targeting the prevention of FASD, I identified and challenged the concepts of mother blame and stigma found within the discursive practices of the medical system. Framed by feminist theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA), I used van Leeuwan’s approach to social actors to name and explore the representations of people depicted within the campaigns. The discussion focuses on how the current discourse on FASD informs the way that people are perceived and explores possible avenues to challenge and shift the way that substance use is discussed in relation to women and pregnancy.

scholarly journals Teaching feminism: Problems of critical claims and student certainty

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (10) ◽  
pp. 1203-1224
Author(s):  
Richard Stopford
Keyword(s):  
Student Learning ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
The World ◽  
Descriptive Theory ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
The Way

Learning about feminism can be a revelation for many students. However, for others, it can be a confounding, troubling experience. These difficulties return as problems for the teacher: how to help sceptical, resistant students understand the theory. Moreover, understanding what can be so troubling about learning feminism helps us to better understand the situation of feminist modules in the contexts of broader humanities curricula. Obviously, these are complex issues, and I wish to focus on just two specific points: how feminist theories make critical claims and the challenges that emerge for students as a result; how feminist theory claims find challenges in student certainty. Firstly, feminist theory claims, which describe sociocultural states of affairs while at the same time destabilising them, are operating with critical norms. These critical norms are at odds with norms of descriptive theory claims that students find elsewhere in their curriculum. As such, I want to explore the effects of this clash in student learning experience, and the difficulties that teachers face a result. In the second part of the article, I use Wittgenstein’s analysis of certainty to explore how feminist theory claims often challenge the very foundations of students’ understanding of themselves, and the world around them. As such, learning in the feminist classroom is not merely an issue of learning about and then adjudicating between theories. Feminist theories implicate the way in which we live, and the conditions of intelligibility for theories as such. In light of my discussions, I do not think there are onesize solutions to these issues. However, I think that recognising these problems in theory can help us to articulate them in the classroom, and this might go some way to alleviating the structural challenges faced by teachers of feminism.

The Science of Rape: (Mis)Constructions of Women's Trauma in Evolutionary Theory

2007 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Zeedyk
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Evolutionary Explanation ◽  
Psychological Pain ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Way

The social sciences are witnessing renewed enthusiasm for sociobiological accounts of human behaviour. Feminist theory has, understandably, tended to engage cautiously with biological reasoning, because women have often been poorly served by the politics of such research. It is important, though, that feminists continue to contribute to this literature, in order to challenge problematic discourses that may emerge. The present paper seeks to analyse a domain of sociobiology that has been the focus of recent controversy: an evolutionary explanation of rape. Particular attention is given to the way in which women's traumatic experience of rape is constructed within this framework. It is argued that women's psychological pain is contorted, via the strategies of (a) diminishing women's pain and (b) ignoring their experience altogether. The operation of these two strategies is illuminated, and their practical consequences in the domains of legal reform and the depoliticization of science are evaluated.

scholarly journals Examining the representations of social actors in FASD prevention campaigns

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riki Yandt
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Medical System ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Health Campaigns ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Public Health Campaigns ◽  
Mother Blame ◽  
The Way

Through an exploration of public health campaigns targeting the prevention of FASD, I identified and challenged the concepts of mother blame and stigma found within the discursive practices of the medical system. Framed by feminist theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA), I used van Leeuwan’s approach to social actors to name and explore the representations of people depicted within the campaigns. The discussion focuses on how the current discourse on FASD informs the way that people are perceived and explores possible avenues to challenge and shift the way that substance use is discussed in relation to women and pregnancy.

Does Marriage Require a Head? Some Historical Arguments∗

Hypatia ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-154
Author(s):  
Linda A. Bell
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
The Way

Are hierarchies necessary in human relationships? This issue is a central one for feminist theory, and there is a continuing need to rethink relationships and to envision what they might be like without any sort of dominance of some over others. To aid this process of envisioning alternatives, this paper examines more closely the way one of the most intimate of hierarchies — marriage — has been argued and envisioned historically.

scholarly journals Theorising sexual violence in global politics: Improvising with feminist theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Marysia Zalewski
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Feminist Work ◽  
The Way

Abstract A key curiosity animating this article concerns how sexual violence is theorised. The work of feminist scholars has been crucial in unearthing ways in which women's traditionally demeaned bodies regularly materialised as ‘easy targets’ for such violence. The gift of the concept of gender has played a significant role in facilitating the production of this corpus of knowledge. Less noticed in the literature, in policy and legislation has been sexual violence against men – an egregious omission. Yet it seems that redeploying the concept of gender to make sense of sexual violence against men and elevate this violence into the realms of theoretical and legislative attention is not straightforward. Identifying feminist work as in part responsible for the rendering of sexual violence against men as too ‘unseen’ in theory provoked my attention, though it's not that I place feminist theory as ‘innocent’ or infallible – far from it. In this article I unpack some of the complexities around theorising sexual politics in Global Politics turning towards the aesthetics of feminist thinking to help reconsider the way connections take shape between gender, sex and violence. Underpinning this discussion are questions about feminist intentions to transform patriarchal and colonial structures and institutions.

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