Feminism and the academy

R.D. Klein and D.L. Steinberg (eds) Radical Voices. A Decade of Feminist Resistance from Women's Studies International Forum’ (Pergamon Press) Oxford, 1989. M. Paludi and G.A. Steuernagel (eds) Foundations for a Feminist Restructuring of the Academic Disciplines (Haworth Press), New York, 1990. L. Stanley (ed) Feminist Praxis. Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology (Routledge), London, 1990.     

Shock to Thought: An Encounter (of a Third Kind) with Legal Feminism

This paper takes a recently published text and, in examining it closely, argues that it exemplifies trends within feminist scholarship in law, which might be characterised asestablishing a form of orthodoxy. The paper explores some of the ways in which thiso rthodoxy is constructed and presented, and argues that it is characterised by a commitment both to `grand theory' and Hegelian dialectics. The adoption of this model of work seems to offer a chance to hold together the triangular figure of women/theory/law reform. The paper will argue that, whilst this model is clearly a valid choice, and attractive to feminist scholars in the promise it seems to hold, the model is not to be presumed but rather should be examined and considered in terms of its potential for feminist scholarship. Both within its own terms, and as part of the construction of an orthodoxy, the paper will argue that it is in fact problematic and that feminist scholarship would be better served by seeking an alternative theoretical model. An alternative is suggested, using the work of Deleuze, but it is acknowledged that this will require the acceptance of a very different theoretical configuration from that suggested by the triangular model of women/theory/lawreform.     

Feminism and the Technological Age

Abstract

Feminism advocates for the inclusion of women within the modern economy, but this has implicated feminism in a hyper-capitalist and instrumental mode of organising social life. Feminism has helped to legitimise the ubiquitous reach of this regime into all areas of social life, even parenting. Feminism can learn from Heidegger's proposition that in questioning modern technology we may open up a way of coming into a free relationship with it—to be open to the divinity of living beings and things. Jessica Benjamin's account of the relationship between the mother and her infant in terms of intersubjectivity seems to fit Heidegger's proposition for it highlights a dynamic and receptive exchange between two unique living beings. The question for feminism at this time is: how can it own its complicity with modern technology while opening up its distinctive contribution to finding a way of coming into a free relationship with it?     

Feminism and science

Ruth Bleier (ed.), Feminist Approaches to Science (Pergamon Press, The Athene Series) New York, 1986.     

Feminism and anthropology

Henrietta L. Moore, Feminism and Anthropology (Polity Press), Cambridge, 1988. Marilyn Strathern, The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia (University of California Press), Berkeley CA, 1988.     

Feminism and the Flat Law Theory

This article examines two modalities of law, depicted spatially as the vertical and the horizontal. The intellectual background for seeing law in vertical and horizontal dimensions is to be found in much socio-legal scholarship. These approaches have challenged the modernist, legal positivist and essentially vertical view of law as a system of imperatives emanating from a hierarchically superior source such as a sovereign. In keeping with the socio-legal critical tradition, but approaching it from the perspective of legal philosophy, my aim is to address three matters. First, why is vertical law problematic for feminists? Second, what are the theoretical characteristics of law in its horizontal register? Third, how is an appreciation of this ‘flat’ law useful for feminist legal theory and practice? In particular, I consider the ways in which feminist legal theory operating in the horizontal dimension can transgress, without transcending, the vertically determined perimeters of the nation state.     

Feminism Means Business: Business Feminism,Sisterhood and Visibility

ABSTRACT

By interviewing self-proclaimed feminists with small-scale businesses who sell feminist commodities, the aim of this article is to understand why and how the market has become an arena for doing feminism and what this can tell us about contemporary feminism. Using theories of postfeminism and popular feminism in combination with Lacanian discourse theory, the analysis shows that feminism is renegotiated into ownership by reshaping the feminist discourse of sisterhood into business support and advice. Furthermore, competition is reshaped into a positive value of expanding the feminist community, and making profit is reshaped into a feminist discourse of equal pay. Business feminism produces an individual, visible, affluent and entrepreneurial feminist subject who does not challenge economic structures or ownership conditions.     

Feminism and fairy tales

To examine selected popular folktales from the perspective of modern feminism is to revisualize those paradigms which shape our romantic expectations and to illuminate psychic ambiguities which often confound contemporary women. Portrayals of adolescent waiting and dreaming, patterns of double enchantment, and romanticizations of marriage contribute to the potency of fairy tales. Yet, such alluring fantasies gloss the heroine's inability to act self‐assertively, total reliance on external rescues, willing bondage to father and prince, and her restriction to hearth and nursery. Although many readers discount obvious fantasy elements, they may still fall prey to more subtle paradigms through identification with the heroine. Thus, subconsciously women may transfer from fairy tales into real life cultural norms which exalt passivity, dependency, and self‐sacrifice as a female's cardinal virtues. In short, fairy tales perpetuate the patriarchal status quo by making female subordination seem a romantically desirabie, indeed an inescapable fate.