In Love and Struggle : Letters in Contemporary Feminism

by Jolly, Margaretta

• ISBN13: 9780231137928
• ISBN10: 0231137923
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-01
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

Winner of the 2009 Feminist and Women's Studies Association Book PrizeDo you think I can be a feminist mother? Did I make you and your kisses up in my mind? Will you join our military protest at the gate? Will you feed the kids when I'm in prison? Are you able to forgive me for breaking off this correspondence because you are a man?During the women's movement of the 1970s and 1980s, feminists in the United States and Britain reinvented the image of the woman letter writer. Symbolically tearing up the love letter to an absent man, they wrote passionate letters to one another, exploring questions of sexuality, separatism, and strategy. These texts speak of the new interest women began to feel in one another and the new demands-and disappointments-these relationships would create.Margaretta Jolly provides the first cultural study of these letters, charting the evolution of feminist political consciousness from the height of the women's movement to today's e-mail networks. Jolly uncovers the passionate, contradictory emotions of both politics and letter writing and sets out the theory behind them as a fragile yet persistent ideal of care ethics, women's love, and epistolary art. She follows several compelling feminist relationships sustained through writing and confronts the mixed messages of the "open letter," which complicated political relations between women (such as Audre Lorde's "Open Letter to Mary Daly," which called out white feminists for their implicit racism).Jolly recovers the unsung literature of lesbianism and feminist romance, examines the ambivalent feelings within mother-daughter correspondences, and considers letter-writing campaigns during the peace movement. She concludes with a discussion of the ethical dilemma surrounding care versus autonomy and the meaning behind the burning or saving of letters. Letters that chart love stories, letters stowed away in attics, letters burnt at the end of romances, bittersweet letters written but never sent... this fascinating glimpse into women's intimate archives illuminates one of feminism's central concerns& -that all relationships are political-and uniquely recasts a social movement in very emotional terms.

Table of Contents

Introduction. The Feminist World of Love and Ritual	p. 1
Yours in Sisterhood ...	p. 4
Letter Writing and the Ethics of Care	p. 9
The Limits of Care: Letters and the Life Cycle of a Social Movement	p. 12
Reading Other People's Letters	p. 14
Yours in Sisterhood ...
Love Letters to a New Me	p. 23
Women's Liberation Is a Lesbian Plot	p. 24
Why Do Women Like Personal Letters?	p. 35
Feminist Epistolary Romance	p. 40
Falling in Love with Letter Writing	p. 42
Feminist Academics Like Letter Writing Too...	p. 52
Velvet Boxing Gloves	p. 59
Confidantes in Conflict	p. 61
The End of an Affair	p. 71
Letter Writing and the Ethics of Care
Theorizing Feminist Letters	p. 79
Letters, Feminist Aesthetics, and the Relational Self	p. 80
The Ethics of Care: Writing the Contracts of Sisterhood	p. 85
Conclusion	p. 93
Mothers and Daughters in Correspondence	p. 96
With Love and Happy Hope, Mom	p. 96
Teresa and Kate's Right to Choose	p. 104
Conclusion	p. 110
Writing the Web: Letters from the Women's Peace Movement	p. 113
Letter-Webs: Greenham as Virtual Community	p. 115
Do Webs Work? Letters and the Clash of Communities	p. 129
Rituals of Community at the Seneca Women's Encampment for Peace and Justice	p. 133
Should We Be Writing to the Government Instead of One Another?	p. 140
The Right to Be Cared For: Letters and the Life Cycle of a Social Movement
Care Versus Autonomy: The Problem of (Loving) Men	p. 147
Trying Not to Care	p. 149
The Last Letter to a Man	p. 156
Conclusion	p. 161
The Paradox of Care as a Right	p. 164
Me or You First? Care, Autonomy, and Feminist Citizenship	p. 166
Feminist Generations in Correspondence	p. 171
How Different Is E-mail?	p. 178
The Gender of E-mail and the Network Society	p. 180
Women on the Net: Difference and the Virtual Community	p. 186
Care Ethics Online	p. 194
The Afterlife of Letters
On Burning and Saving Letters	p. 205
Burning Letters	p. 207
Saving Letters	p. 212
On Stealing Letters: The Ethics of Epistolary Research	p. 224
Stealing Letters	p. 226
Privacy, Relationship, and Feminism	p. 232
Conclusion	p. 241
Notes	p. 249
Bibliography	p. 265
Acknowledgments	p. 291
Index	p. 299
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