Depoliticising the personal : A feminist slogan in feminist therapy

One of the great insights of second wave feminism was the recognition that “the personal is political.” Many feminist psychologists (both practitioners and researchers) claim a strong commitment to this slogan and attempt to implement it through their theory and practice. This article explores four interpretations of “the personal is political” in feminist psychological writing. It is argued that far from achieving radical feminist goals, psychological interpretations serve: (1) to personalise the political, translating social, economic, and ecological concerns into individual psychological matters; (2) to foster revolution “from within” at the expense of political change in the outside world; (3) that insofar as it aims uncritically to “validate women's experience,” it ignores the social and political factors which shape experience; and (4) that the concept of “empowerment” depends upon a radical split between the “personal” and the “political”. In sum, it is concluded that femenist acknowledgement that the personal really is political means rejecting psychology.     

hope with qualms: a feminist analysis of the 2013 Gezi protests

In this article, I argue for the distinctness of the 2013 Gezi uprisings from other anti-austerity protests. With a materialist feminist eye on the third-term AKP government’s conservative authoritarianism, I explore the causal links among patriarchal, racist biopolitics, heteronormative family values and increasing austerity measures. My broader analytical goal is to demonstrate the centrality of moral politics to uneven, security-based neoliberal regulations across markets, public spaces, and civic expression in and beyond Turkey. Second, I zoom in on the mothers’ rallies and gendered, ethnic acts of mourning to analyse the performative constitution of multiple publics during the protests. What exclusions have the participants produced in the name of inclusion? How can a performance paradigm help us understand the contradictory uses of space among and against the protestors, and more broadly, the relevance of embodied dissent to different visions of social justice? To deepen our intersectional feminist analysis, I suggest taking performances seriously, from human chains to soundscapes of resistance, stillness, and brutality; and from eclectic dance forms to architectural disruptions. Attending to the uprisings’ fault-lines and radical contributions, I also caution against ‘romancing resistance’. Hope with qualms is what remains.     

Women and drunken sociology: Developing a feminist analysis

The purpose of this paper is to outline some of the key areas of concern which relate to women and alcohol and to frame these issues within a feminist perspective. Five areas of discussion include: (1) alcohol research as multidisciplinary and multisexist; (2) ‘drunken sociology’ and the development or lack of development of the women's issue; (3) the women and alcohol issue thus far; (4) the need for a feminist perspective and women as passive consumers and economic targets and (5) alcoholism, addictions or just plain old dependency? It is hoped that the discussion presented in this paper will highlight some of the difficulties which confront feminist scholars working in this particular field of study.     

The public and the private in architecture: A feminist critique

Hanna Arendt's discussion of public and private derives more or less intact from Aristotle and forms a principal philosophical basis for mainstream architectural theory exemplified in the writings of Kenneth Frampton. An eminent architectural historian, teacher, and critic, Frampton proposes that the discipline of architecture is in crisis today because of an unprecedented enphasis on ‘the life-bound values of animal laborans,’ and because ‘it is largely divested of culturally valid institutions for its embodiment,’ which institutions, he suggests, find their archetypes in the agora of the ancient polis. The author criticizes Frampton's position from the perspective of feminist philosophy, based on Elshtain and Pitkin, and advocates some reformulation of the traditional hierarchical relationship between the two domains. The last section of the article locates architectural work within this feminist perspective: in programme, precedents, and formal expression. ‘The Ethical Polity’ provides a potential vehicle for architectural exploration predicated on the restructuring of public and private.     

the narrative reproduction of white feminist racism

White women’s racism has been the topic of many critiques, discussions and conflicts within British feminist theory and politics over the last fifty years, driven by women of colour’s insistence that white feminists must take on board the significance of race in order to stop perpetuating racism. Yet still today, feminist academia and activism in Britain continues to be white-dominated and to participate in the reproduction of racism and whiteness. This article examines the role of dominant historical narratives of feminism in enabling this reproduction, arguing that there is a direct correlation between how the feminist past is constructed in relation to race and racism and how feminist theory and politics are articulated in the present. Focussing on three contemporary feminist texts that address feminism itself as a subject, it highlights three techniques used in these texts that, it is argued, are commonly employed in the narrative reproduction of white feminist racism. These are: (1) the erasure of the work of British feminists of colour; (2) white feminist co-option of work by feminists of colour; and (3) the narration of feminist theory and politics as having ‘moved on’ from racism. These techniques lead to evasion of the topic of white feminist racism, both historically and in the present. They also reinforce the construction of British feminism as a story that belongs to white women. The article argues that in order to work towards ending white supremacy, white feminists must relinquish control of the feminist narrative and stop moving on from the topic of white feminist racism.