On the notion of the political in feminist theory

Human Affairs ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ľubica Kobová
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Politics Of Representation ◽  
Challenging Issue ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Women's Emancipation ◽  
Number Of Publications

AbstractThe turn of the 1990s saw the emergence of “the political” in feminist theory. Despite there being a number of publications devoted to the theme, the concept itself has remained rather undertheorized. Instead of producing a thoroughly developed concept, it served to create an epistemic community devoted to the (supposedly dead, modernist) political aim of women’s emancipation. In the article, I argue that it would be beneficent for feminist theory to adopt an affirmative stance towards the contingency of politics. This of course poses a challenge to feminist politics, which still operates mainly within the framework of the politics of representation. Nevertheless, Linda Zerilli’s approach, which interprets contingency in an Arendtian vein as the condition of the world-creating and world-building power of feminism as a practice of freedom may prove to be a productive way of approaching the challenging issue of contingency in feminist theory

Feminist Theory

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Disch ◽  
Mary Hawkesworth
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
The World ◽  
Contemporary Life ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
And Gender

This chapter introduces readers to feminist theory as a multifaceted and multi-sited project, not a bounded field. Grounded in the political struggles for women’s empowerment that have emerged in all regions of the world and convinced of the arbitrariness of exclusion based on sexual difference, feminist theory has flourished as a mode of critical theory that illuminates the limitations of popular assumptions about sex, race, sexuality, and gender. This introduction identifies three common characteristics of feminist theory projects in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries: (1) efforts to denaturalize that which passes for difference, (2) efforts to challenge the aspiration to produce universal and impartial knowledge, and (3) efforts to engage the complexity of power relations through intersectional analysis. It sets the stage for the principal aim of this Handbook: to demonstrate how feminist theory is crucial to grasping the power dynamics operating in contemporary life.

Popular Feminism: Considering a Concept in Feminist Politics and Theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 0094582X2110130
Author(s):  
Janet M. Conway
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Feminist Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Left ◽  
Popular Feminism ◽  
Mixed Gender

An analysis of popular feminism as a category in Latin American feminist studies from its origins in the 1980s and its disappearance in the 1990s to its resurgence in the present through the protagonism of the World March of Women, asks what is at stake in this contemporary claim to popular feminism in relation to the multiplication of feminisms. The contemporary use of the concept specifies a feminist praxis that is contentious, materialist, and counterhegemonic in permanently unsettled relations both with other feminisms and mixed-gender movements on the left. Despite converging agendas for redistribution, it also remains in considerable tension with black and indigenous feminisms. As a racially unmarked category, contemporary popular feminism continues to reproduce an elision of race and colonialism common to mestiza feminism and the political left. Un análisis del feminismo popular como categoría en los estudios feministas latinoamericanos, desde sus orígenes en la década de 1980 y su desaparición en la década de 1990 hasta su actual resurgimiento a través del protagonismo de la Marcha Mundial de la Mujer nos lleva a preguntarnos qué está en juego en esta reivindicación contemporánea del feminismo popular cuando lo consideramos en relación a la actual multiplicación de feminismos. El uso contemporáneo del concepto especifica una praxis feminista que es polémica, materialista y contrahegemónica dentro del marco de relaciones permanentemente inestables, tanto con otros feminismos como con movimientos izquierdistas de género mixto. A pesar de las agendas convergentes de redistribución, también mantiene una tensión considerable con los feminismos negros e indígenas. Como categoría racialmente inespecífica, el feminismo popular contemporáneo mantiene sus elisiones de raza y colonialismo, asunto característico del feminismo mestizo, así como de la izquierda política.

scholarly journals Feminism and Neoliberal Governmentality

2013 ◽  
pp. 32-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Oksala
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Neoliberal Governmentality ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Diagnostic Framework ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
Nancy Fraser ◽  
Socialist Politics

The article investigates the consequences for feminist politics of the neoliberal turn. Feminist scholars have analysed the political changes in the situation of women that have been brought about by neoliberalism, but their assessments of neoliberalism’s consequences for feminist theory and politics vary.  Feminist thinkers such as Hester Eisenstein and Sylvia Walby have argued that feminism must now return its focus to socialist politics and foreground economic questions of redistribution in order to combat the hegemony of neoliberalism.  Some have further identified post-structuralism and its dominance in feminist scholarship as being responsible for the debilitating move away from socialist or Marxist paradigms. I share their diagnosis to the extent that it is my contention that the rapid neoliberalization characterising the last thirty years has put women and feminist thought in a completely new political situation. However, in contrast to those feminist thinkers who put the blame for the current impasse on the rise of poststructuralist modes of thought, it is my contention that the poststructuralist turn in feminist theory in the 1980s and 1990s continues to represent an important theoretical advance.  I will discuss Foucault’s genealogy of neoliberalism in order to assess the ways it can contribute to feminist theory and politics today.  I contend that Foucault can provide a critical diagnostic framework for feminist theory as well as for prompting new feminist political responses to the spread and dominance of neoliberalism. I will also return to Nancy Fraser and Judith’s Butler’s seminal debate on feminist politics in the journal Social Text (1997) in order to demonstrate that a critical analysis of the economic/cultural distinction must be central when we consider feminist forms of resistance to neoliberalism.

scholarly journals POLITIK DAN KAUM FEMINIS

2017 ◽  
pp. 141-152
Author(s):  
Audra Jovani
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Work Ability ◽  
The Political ◽  
White Skin ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Family Work ◽  
Language Class ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Objective ◽  
Woman Movement

AbstractFeminist theory attempted to analyze the various conditions that shape the lives of womenand explore diverse cultural understanding about women. Feminist theory was originallydirected to the political objective of the Woman Movement. The feminist rejected the viewthat the inequality between men and women are naturally. Thinking as a feminist involvesattempts to challenge many of the things that are considered as “knowledge”. Historically,live in a society dominated by men, women are more often made into objects rather than thecreator of knowledge. As the result, many things are passed down as an objective knowledgeabout the world is actually produced by men (white skin, middle class and heterogeneous).Women are in a variety of different positions in local and global contexts and displayeddifferently in art, literature and other media; the different in terms of nationality, ethnicity,education, language, class, family, work, ability or disability and sexuality is crucial.Keywords: Politics, Feminism, Feminist

Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Simone
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Existential Perspective

Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world: A Heideggerian Study explores Woolf’s treatment of the relationship between self and world from a phenomenological-existential perspective. This study presents a timely and compelling interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s textual treatment of the relationship between self and world from the perspective of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Drawing on Woolf’s novels, essays, reviews, letters, diary entries, short stories, and memoirs, the book explores the political and the ontological, as the individual’s connection to the world comes to be defined by an involvement and engagement that is always already situated within a particular physical, societal, and historical context. Emma Simone argues that at the heart of what it means to be an individual making his or her way in the world, the perspectives of Woolf and Heidegger are founded upon certain shared concerns, including the sustained critique of Cartesian dualism, particularly the resultant binary oppositions of subject and object, and self and Other; the understanding that the individual is a temporal being; an emphasis upon intersubjective relations insofar as Being-in-the-world is defined by Being-with-Others; and a consistent emphasis upon average everydayness as both determinative and representative of the individual’s relationship to and with the world.

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

THE GENESIS OF CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY, DEVELOPMENT TRENDS AND PROSPECTS IN THE POLITICAL REFORM OF MODERN COUNTRIES (ON THE EXAMPLE OF RUSSIA AND FRANCE)

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-43
Author(s):  
MARIETA EPREMYAN ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Reform ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Political ◽  
Development Trends ◽  
Conservative Ideology ◽  
The World ◽  
Christian Conservatism ◽  
The Future ◽  
Conservative Policy ◽  
Depth Interviews

The article examines the epistemological roots of conservative ideology, development trends and further prospects in political reform not only in modern Russia, but also in other countries. The author focuses on the “world” and Russian conservatism. In the course of the study, the author illustrates what opportunities and limitations a conservative ideology can have in political reform not only in modern Russia, but also in the world. In conclusion, it is concluded that the prospect of a conservative trend in the world is wide enough. To avoid immigration and to control the development of technology in society, it is necessary to adhere to a conservative policy. Conservatism is a consolidating ideology. It is no coincidence that the author cites as an example the understanding of conservative ideology by the French due to the fact that Russia has its own vision of the ideology of conservatism. If we say that conservatism seeks to preserve something and respects tradition, we must bear in mind that traditions in different societies, which form some kind of moral imperatives, cannot be a single phenomenon due to different historical destinies and differing religious views. Considered from the point of view of religion, Muslim and Christian conservatism will be somewhat confrontational on some issues. The purpose of the work was to consider issues related to the role, evolution and prospects of conservative ideology in the political reform of modern countries. The author focuses on Russia and France. To achieve this goal, the method of in-depth interviews with experts on how they understand conservatism was chosen. Already today, conservatism is quite diverse. It is quite possible that in the future it will transform even more and acquire new reflections.

The New Terrain of International Law

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen J. Alter
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Courts ◽  
Constitutional Review ◽  
Delegation Of Authority ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law

In 1989, when the Cold War ended, there were six permanent international courts. Today there are more than two dozen that have collectively issued over thirty-seven thousand binding legal rulings. This book charts the developments and trends in the creation and role of international courts, and explains how the delegation of authority to international judicial institutions influences global and domestic politics. The book presents an in-depth look at the scope and powers of international courts operating around the world. Focusing on dispute resolution, enforcement, administrative review, and constitutional review, the book argues that international courts alter politics by providing legal, symbolic, and leverage resources that shift the political balance in favor of domestic and international actors who prefer policies more consistent with international law objectives. International courts name violations of the law and perhaps specify remedies. The book explains how this limited power—the power to speak the law—translates into political influence, and it considers eighteen case studies, showing how international courts change state behavior. The case studies, spanning issue areas and regions of the world, collectively elucidate the political factors that often intervene to limit whether or not international courts are invoked and whether international judges dare to demand significant changes in state practices.

The Star and the Stripes

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael N. Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
American Jews ◽  
Peace And Justice ◽  
The World ◽  
Policy Beliefs ◽  
Justice Movements

How do American Jews envision their role in the world? Are they tribal—a people whose obligations extend solely to their own? Or are they prophetic—a light unto nations, working to repair the world? This book is an interpretation of the effects of these worldviews on the foreign policy beliefs of American Jews since the nineteenth century. The book argues that it all begins with the political identity of American Jews. As Jews, they are committed to their people's survival. As Americans, they identify with, and believe their survival depends on, the American principles of liberalism, religious freedom, and pluralism. This identity and search for inclusion form a political theology of prophetic Judaism that emphasizes the historic mission of Jews to help create a world of peace and justice. The political theology of prophetic Judaism accounts for two enduring features of the foreign policy beliefs of American Jews. They exhibit a cosmopolitan sensibility, advocating on behalf of human rights, humanitarianism, and international law and organizations. They also are suspicious of nationalism—including their own. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that American Jews are natural-born Jewish nationalists, the book charts a long history of ambivalence; this ambivalence connects their early rejection of Zionism with the current debate regarding their attachment to Israel. And, the book contends, this growing ambivalence also explains the rising popularity of humanitarian and social justice movements among American Jews.

Adab Konstitusi; Upaya Meluruskan Kesesatan Pikir Konstitusi

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yogi Prasetyo
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The World

The Constitution as the legal basis for formation of legislation in the system of Indonesia. The misuse of the constitution (UUD 1945) by the political interests of goverment caused mislead and made the situation of the nation getting worse. Liberal capitalistic value wrapped in modern positivistic legal system that puts the ratio had diverge from culture constitution. needs to be clarified with the balance of conscience through culture constitution. Culture constitution is a constitutional concept who saw citizen of Indonesia as creatures of God by virtue of intelligence and unseen. So with that constitution is formed, conceived and executed to be qualified and to bring the benefit of the world and the hereafter.

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