The Equality/Difference Debate - Judith Evans: Feminist Theory Today. An Introduction to Second-Wave Feminism, London, Sage, 1995, 183 pp, hardback £35.00, paperback £10.95.

1996 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 372-375
Author(s):  
Vicky Randall
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Second Wave

scholarly journals Antisocial Feminism? Shulamith Firestone, Monique Wittig and Proto-Queer Theory

Paragraph ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 364-379
Author(s):  
Lisa Downing
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Monique Wittig ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
The Family ◽  
Feminist Perspectives ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Second Wave

Recent iterations of feminist theory and activism, especially intersectional, ‘third-wave’ feminism, have cast much second-wave feminism as politically unacceptable in failing to centre the experiences of less privileged subjects than the often white, often middle-class names with which the second wave is usually associated. While bearing those critiques in mind, this article argues that some second-wave writers, exemplified by Shulamith Firestone and Monique Wittig, may still offer valuable feminist perspectives if viewed through the anti-normative lens of queer theory. Queer resists the reification of identity categories. It focuses on resistance to hegemonic norms, rather than on group identity. By viewing Wittig's and Firestone's critique of the institutions of the family, reproduction, maternity, and work as proto-queer — and specifically proto-antisocial queer — it argues for a feminism that refuses to shore up identity, that rejects groupthink, and that articulates meaningfully the crucial place of the individual in the collective project of feminism.

Beauvoir, Hegel, War

Hypatia ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 66-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meryl Altman
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Direct Exposure ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
Second Wave

The importance of Hegel to the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir, both to her early philosophical texts and to The Second Sex, is usually discussed in terms of the master-slave dialectic and a Kojève-influenced reading, which some see her as sharing with Sartre, others persuasively describe as divergent from and corrective to Sartre's. Altman shows that Hegel's influence on Beauvoir's work is also wider, both in terms of what she takes on board and what she works through and rejects, and that her reading of Hegel is crucially inflected by two additional circumstances that Sartre did not entirely share: the experience of her first serious study of Hegel as a noncombatant in Paris during the German occupation and her earlier direct exposure to an eccentric, idealist reading of Hegel as developed by the group Philosophies in connection with surrealism and the artistic avant-garde. Altman also explores the afterlife of Hegel's influence on Beauvoir on second-wave feminism in the United States and Europe, and suggests continuing relevance to feminist theory today.

scholarly journals A Literary Exploration of Existential Feminism in the Novella The Moon Opera Through the Application of Intertextuality Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Ruixi Yan
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Western World ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Chinese Opera ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Peking Opera ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Second Wave

Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s in the western world, which focused on criticizing the patriarchal institutions or cultural practices throughout the society. Originating several centuries earlier, Chinese opera culture has been ahead of its time in demonstrating the male-dominated society’s oppression against women. As one of the principal founders of second-wave feminism, Simone de Beauvoir’s classical feminist theory in her book, The Second Sex, mainly introduced the sex-gender distinction. In this article, the author aims to reveal how Bi Feiyu, the writer of The Moon Opera, successfully conveyed existential feminist ideas, especially Beauvoir’s famous assertion that "one is not born but becomes a woman", through his careful selection of the art type Qing Yi (Qingyi is the main woman role in Peking Opera and often plays dignified, serious, and decent characters, which are mostly wives or mothers undergoing severe ordeal) and the portrayal of two generations of Qing Yi performers. In the process of analysis, the author not only examined Bi Feiyu’s application of intertextuality theory, but also derived conclusions from other mainstream feminist thoughts such as the feminist theory of the dressed female body and the transactional sex theory.

Carole King's Tapestry

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loren Glass
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Professional Autonomy ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
Riot Grrrl ◽  
The Third ◽  
Women's Music ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Historic Significance ◽  
Second Wave

Carole King’s Tapestry is both an anthemic embodiment of second-wave feminism and an apotheosis of the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter sound and scene. And these two elements of the album’s historic significance are closely related insofar as the professional autonomy of the singer-songwriter is an expression of the freedom and independence women of King’s generation sought as the turbulent sixties came to a close. Aligning King’s own development from girl to woman with the larger shift in the music industry from teen-oriented singles by girl groups to albums by adult-oriented singer-songwriters, this volume situates Tapestry both within King’s original vision as the third in a trilogy (preceded by Now That Everything’s Been Said and Writer) and as a watershed in musical and cultural history, challenging the male dominance of the music and entertainment industries and laying the groundwork for female dominated genres such as women’s music and Riot Grrrl punk.

scholarly journals Imported feminism: problematizing the Westernized image of the feminist in Arab social media

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramy Magdy ◽  
Maries Mikhael ◽  
Yassmine G. Hussein
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Arab Women ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Women Experiences ◽  
Facebook Pages ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second Wave

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the discourse of Arab feminism social media pages as a form of real-time new media. This is to be conducted culturally to understand the Westernized character these pages tend to propagate and the politico-cultural significations of such a propagation. Design/methodology/approach Using visual and content analysis the paper analyzes both the written and visual contents of two popular Arab feminist Facebook pages, “Thory” and “Feminist doodles” to explore its culture relevance/Westernization via the categories of “re-employing the binary second wave feminism, the historical relevance and the Westernized tone of both pages. Findings The pages showed a tendency toward second wave, Westernized, anti-orient feminism. Such importation of feminism made the pages’ message not only a bit irrelevant but also conceptually violent to a large extent. Starting from alien contexts, the two pages dislocate the Arab women experiences of their situation for the sake of comprehending and adapting to heavily Westernized images. Originality/value The paper contributes to the ongoing debate over the gender issue in the Arab context after 2011, what it originally offers is discussing the cultural relevance of popular feminist Facebook pages claiming to represent the everyday struggles of the Arab women. In addition, it shows the impact of real-time media on identity formulation.

scholarly journals “The Handmaid’s Tale”: a legal-literary essay

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-147
Author(s):  
Clarice Beatriz da Costa Söhngen ◽  
Danielle Massulo Bordignon
Keyword(s):  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fictional Space ◽  
Second Wave

This paper proposes an analysis of the legal aspects present in the narrative of “The Handmaid´s Tale”, a novel by Margaret Atwood. First published in 1985, and heavily influenced by second-wave feminism, “The Handmaid´s Tale” addresses, mainly, the matter of gender inequality, once it creates a reality in which fertile women are compelled to reproduce through a servitude system. Through a rupture with the Cartesian dichotomy whose dualist notion separates objectivity from subjectivity, reason from emotion, this paper exposes that this oppression is not a literary creation by Atwood, but a reproduction of the power relations put forward in the history of humankind. In this regard, it is explored how Literature can aid the Law in facing the questions that come up in the resolution of legal and social problems. Besides gender inequality, it is possible to spot in the novel several violations concerning the principle of human dignity. Therefore, this research analyzes the legal provisions taken in the fictional space of Gilead, as well as in the country that preceded it, the United States of America, as well as in Brazil. In addition, it studies the symbolic violence to which women are submitted in Gilead and how it relates to the experiences lived by contemporary Brazilian women.

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