Reading Feminist Theory From Modernity to Postmodernity

by Mann, Susan Archer; Patterson, Ashly Suzanne

• ISBN13: 9780199364985
• ISBN10: 0199364982
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780197872994
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2015-03-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

Reading Feminist Theory: From Modernity to Postmodernity interweaves classical and contemporary writings from the social sciences and the humanities to represent feminist thought from the late eighteenth century to the present.

Editors Susan Archer Mann and Ashly Suzanne Patterson pay close attention to the multiplicity and diversity of feminist voices, visions, and vantage points by race, class, gender, sexuality, and global location. Along with more conventional forms of theorizing, this anthology points to multiple sites of theory production--both inside and outside of the academy--and includes personal narratives, poems, short stories, zines, and even music lyrics. Offering a truly global perspective, the book devotes three chapters and more than thirty readings to the topics of colonialism, imperialism and globalization. It also provides extensive coverage of third-wave feminism, poststructuralism, queer theory, postcolonial theory, and transnational feminisms.

Author Biography

Susan Archer Mann is Professor of Sociology and Director of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of New Orleans. She is the author of Doing Feminist Theory: From Modernity to Postmodernity (OUP, 2012).

Ashly Suzanne Patterson is an instructor of Sociology and Feminist Thought at both Southeastern Louisiana University and Delgado Community College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgement
Introduction
Using this Text to Navigate Feminist Thought
Unique Features of this Anthology

Chapter 1: Doing Feminist Theory
Introduction
How Feminists Do Theory and for Whom?
Feminist Epistemologies
Feminist Empiricism
Standpoint Epistemologies
Postmodern Epistemologies
A Postcolonial Response to Western Feminist Epistemological Debates
Conclusion
Readings
1. Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler, "Woman", "Feminists" and "Feminism" from The Feminist Dictionary (1985)
2. bell hooks, "Theory as Liberatory Practice" from Teaching to Transgress (1994)
3. Sandra Harding, "The Woman Question in Science to the Science Question in Feminism" (1986)
4. Charlotte Bunch, "Not by Degrees: Feminist Theory and Education" (1979)
5. Maria C. Lugones and Elizabeth V. Spelman, "Have We Got a Theory for You! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for 'The Woman's Voice'" (1983)
6. Jane Flax, "The End of Innocence" (1992)
7. Uma Narayan, "The Project of Feminist Epistemology: Perspectives from a Nonwestern Feminist" (1989)

SECTION I: MODERN FEMINIST THOUGHT

Chapter 2: Liberal Feminisms
Introduction
The "Woman Question" and Enlightenment Thought
The Rise of the U.S. Women's Movement in Early Modernity
The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments
Liberal Feminists on Love, Marriage and Sex in Early Modernity
First Wave Environmental Activism
Winning Suffrage
Advances and Setbacks between the Waves
Liberal Feminisms in Late Modernity
Liberal Psychoanalytic Feminisms
Conclusion
Readings
8. Abigail and John Adams, Selected Letters from the Adams Family Correspondence (1776)
9. Mary Wollstonecraft, "Introduction" to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
10. Sarah M. Grimke, from Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women (1838)
11. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "Declaration of Sentiments" from The History of Women's Suffrage (1848)
12. Harriet Taylor Mill, "Enfranchisement of Women" (1851)
13. John Stuart Mill, from The Subjection of Women (1870)
14. Victoria Woodhull, "And the Truth Shall Make You Free": A Speech on the Principles of Social Freedom" (1871)
15. Susan B. Anthony, Speech after Arrest for Illegal Voting (1872)
16. Kate Chopin, "The Story of an Hour" (1894)
17. "American Suffragettes" (1896)
18. Jane Addams, "On Municipal Housekeeping" (1907)
19. Virginia Woolf, "Shakespeare's Sister" from Chapters III and VI of A Room of One's Own (1929)
20. Virginia Woolf, "A Room of One's Own" from Chapter I of A Room of One's Own (1929)
21. Margaret Mead, "Sex and Temperament" from Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)
22. Betty Friedan, "The Problem That Has No Name" from The Feminine Mystique (1963)
23. National Organization for Women, "1966 Statement of Purpose" (1966)
24. Carol Gilligan, from In a Different Voice (1982)

Chapter 3: Radical Feminisms
Introduction
The Dialectic of Sex
Lesbianism, Feminist Separatism, and the Woman-Identified-Woman
Mending the Gay/Straight Split in the Second Wave
The "Sex Wars"
Sex as a Realm of Pleasure
Sex as a Realm of Danger
Cultural and Spiritual Ecofeminisms
A Radical Feminist Response to Queer Theory
Conclusion
Readings
25. Gertrude Stein, from "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" (1922)
26. Joreen (Jo Freeman), from "The BITCH Manifesto" (1969)
27. Redstockings, "Redstockings Manifesto" (1969).
28. Shulamith Firestone, "Revolutionary Demands" from The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
29. Radicalesbians, "The Woman Identified Woman" (1970)
30. Charlotte Bunch, "Lesbians in Revolt" (1972)
31. Robin Morgan, "Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape" (1974)
32. Susan Griffin, "Use" from Woman and Nature: The Roaring inside Her (1978)
33. Carol P. Christ, "Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological, and Political Reflections" (1978)
34. Anais Nin, "Mandra, II" from Little Birds: Erotica (1979)
35. Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" (1980)
36. Gloria Steinem, "If Men Could Menstruate" (1983)
37. Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality" (1984)
38. Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, "Model Anti-Pornography Civil Rights Ordinance" (1994)
39. Suzanna Danuta Walters, "From Here to Queer: Feminism, Postmodernism, and the Lesbian Menace (Or, Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Fag?)" (1996)

Chapter 4: Marxist, Socialist and Anarchist Feminisms
Introduction
The Origins of Women's Oppression
Women's Work in the Home
Class Differences in Women's Lives and Work
Love, Marriage, and Sexual Practices in Early Modernity
Precursors to Ecofeminism in Early Modernity
Marxist, Socialist, and Anarchist Feminisms between the Waves
Women's Work in Late Modernity
Feminist Existential Phenomenology
Psychoanalytic Approaches of the Feminist New Left
Socialist Feminist Standpoint Theories
Marxist, Socialist and Anarchist Ecofeminisms
Conclusion
Readings
40. Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus" (1883)
41. Friedrich Engels, "Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" (1884)
42. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, from The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
43. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, from Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution (1898)
44. Mother (Mary) Jones, "Girl Slaves of the Milwaukee Breweries" (1910)
45. Emma Goldman, "The Traffic in Women" from Anarchism and Other Essays (1910)
46. James Oppenheim, "Bread and Roses" (1911)
47. Rose Schneiderman, "We Have Found You Wanting" (1911)
48. Alexandra Kollontai, "Working Woman and Mother" (1914)
49. Crystal Eastman, "Now We Can Begin" from On Women and Revolution (1919)
50. Margaret Sanger, "My Fight for Birth Control" (1920)
51. Tillie Olsen, "I Want You Women up North to Know" (1934)
52. Simone De Beauvoir, "The Married Woman" from The Second Sex (1949)
53. Margaret Benston, "The Political Economy of Women's Liberation" (1969)
54. Nancy Chodorow, "Gender Personality and the Reproduction of Mothering" from The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (1978)
55. Heidi I. Hartmann, "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union" (1979)
56. Iris Marion Young, "Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spaciality" (1980)
57. Ynestra King, from "Feminism and the Revolt of Nature" (1981)
58. Dorothy E. Smith, from The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (1987)
59. Nancy Hartsock, "Foucault on Power: A Theory for Women?" (1990)
60. Donna Haraway, "The Cyborg Manifesto and Fractured Identities" from Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991)

Chapter 5: Intersectionality Theories
Introduction
Precursors to Intersectional Analyses in Early Modernity
Precursors to Intersectional Analyses between the Waves
This Bridge Called My Back
Simultaneous and Multiple Oppressions
From Margin to Center
Decentering and Difference
U.S. Third World Feminism
The Environmental Justice Movement
Integrating Disability Studies with Intersectionality Theory
Conclusion
Readings
61. Sojourner Truth (Isabella Baumfree), "Ain't I a Woman?" (1851)
62. Harriet Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
63. Frederick Douglass, "On Woman Suffrage" (1888)
64. Anna Julia Cooper, "Woman versus the Indian" from A Voice from the South (1892)
65. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, "Lynch Law in America" (1900)
66. Zora Neale Hurston, "Sweat" (1926)
67. Maya Angelou, from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
68. Combahee River Collective, "A Black Feminist Statement" (1977)
69. Mitsuye Yamada, "Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster: Reflections of an Asian American Woman" (1981)
70. Chrystos, "I Walk in the History of My People" (1981)
71. Alice Walker, "Womanist" from In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (1983)
72. Audre Lorde, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" from Sister/Outsider (1984)
73. Gloria Anzaldua, from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987)
74. Kimberle Crenshaw, "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics" (1989)
75. Patricia Hill Collins, from Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (1990)
76. Chela Sandoval, "U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Differential Oppositional Consciousness" (1991)
77. Angela Y. Davis, "Outcast Mothers and Surrogates: Racism and Reproductive Politics in the Nineties" (1993)
78. Andy Smith, "Ecofeminism through an Anticolonial Framework" (1997)
79. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, "Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory" (2001)

SECTION II: FEMINIST THOUGHT AFTER TAKING THE POSTMODERN TURN

Chapter 6: Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, Queer, and Transgender Theories
Introduction
Challenging Modern Thought
Major Assumptions of Postmodernism and Poststructuralism
Tensions between Foucault and Feminism
Power and Discourse
Modern Techniques of Power
Sex, Sexuality and Deconstructing the "Natural"
Queer Theory
Transgender Theory
Conclusion
Readings
80. Michel Foucault, "Method" Chapter 2 from The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction (1976)
81. Sandra Lee Bartky, "Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power" (1988)
82. Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination" (1991)
83. Susan Bordo, "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity" (1993)
84. Kate Bornstein, from Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us (1994)
85. Judith Halberstam, "An Introduction to Female Masculinity" from Female Masculinity (1998)
86. Anne Fausto-Sterling, "Should There Be Only Two Sexes?" from Sexing the Body (2000)
87. Riki Wilchins, "A Certain Kind of Freedom: Power and the Truth of Bodies" from Genderqueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary (2002)
88. Judith Halberstam, "Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies" from In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (2005)
89. Julia Serano, "Trans Woman Manifesto" (2009)

Chapter 7: Third Wave Feminisms
Introduction
Historically Grounding the Third Wave
Tracing the Third Wave's Lineage to Intersectionality Theory
Tracing the Third Wave's Lineage to Poststructuralism and Queer Theory
Third Wave Theory Applications
Solitary Sisterhood?
Conclusion
Readings
90. Bikini Kill Zine Cover (circa 1991)
91. Rebecca Walker, "Being Real: An Introduction" from To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism (1995)
92. Susan Jane Gilman, "Klaus Barbie, and Other Barbie Dolls I'd Like to See" from Adiós, Barbie (1998)
93. Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, "A Day without Feminism" from Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (2000)
94. Cathryn Bailey, "Unpacking the Mother/Daughter Baggage: Reassessing Second- and Third-Wave Tensions" (2002)
95. Bushra Rehman and Daisy Hernández, "Introduction" from Colonize This!: Young Women of Color in Today's Feminism (2002)
96. Julie Bettie, from Women without Class: Girls, Race and Identity (2003)
97. Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake, "'It's all about the Benjamins': Economic Determinants of Third Wave Feminism in the United States" (2004)
98. Astrid Henry, "Solitary Sisterhood: Individualism Meets Collectivity in Feminism's Third Wave" (2005)

SECTION III: BRIDGING THE LOCAL AND THE GLOBAL: FEMINIST DISCOURSES ON COLONIALISM, IMPERIALISM AND GLOBALIZATION
Introduction
Conceptualizing Imperialism and Colonialism

Chapter 8: Feminism and Imperialism in Early Modernity
Introduction
U.S. Western Expansion and the "Woman Question"
U.S. Overseas Expansion and the "Woman Question"
Rosa Luxemburg on Imperialism and the "Woman Question"
Anti-War Writings between the Waves
Conclusion
Readings
99. Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience" (1849)
100. Julia Ward Howe, "Mother's Day Proclamation" (1870)
101. Matilda Joselyn Gage, "Indian Citizenship" (1878)
102. Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, from The Squatter and the Don (1885)
103. Tekahionwake (Emily Pauline Johnson), "A Cry from an Indian Wife" (1885)
104. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "On Educated Suffrage" (1897)
105. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "Petition for the Women of Hawaii" (1889) and Samuel Gompers's Reply on Behalf of the American Federation of Labor (1899)
106. Emma Goldman, from "Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty" (1911)
107. Rosa Luxemburg, "Militarism as a Province of Accumulation" from Chapter 32 of The Accumulation of Capital (1913)
108. The International Congress of Women, "Resolutions Adopted" (1915)
109. Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin), from American Indian Stories (1921)
110. Waheenee (Buffalo Bird Woman), from An Indian Girl's Story Told by Herself to Gilbert L. Wilson (1921)
111. Virginia Woolf, from Three Guineas (1938)

Chapter 9: Feminism and Imperialism in Late Modernity
Introduction
The Anti-Vietnam War Movement
Modernization Theory and Dependency Theory
Liberal Feminisms Inspired by Modernization Theory
Feminisms Inspired by Dependency Theory
Radical Feminist Global Analyses
Global Feminist Analyses Inspired by Rosa Luxemburg's Work
Feminism and the Military
Conclusion
Readings
112. Irene Tinker, "The Adverse Impact of Development on Women" (1976)
113. Mary Daly, from Gyn/Ecology: The MetaEthics of Radical Feminism (1978)
114. Barbara Ehrenreich and Annette Fuentes, "Life on the Global Assembly Line" (1981)
115.Off Our Backs Cover (1983)
116. Robin Morgan, "Introduction, Planetary Feminism: The Politics of the 21st Century" from Sisterhood is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology (1984)
117. Minerva Salado, "Report from Vietnam for International Women's Day" (1985)
118. June Jordan, "Report from the Bahamas" (1985)
119. Maria Mies, from Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour (1986)
120. Vandana Shiva, "Development, Ecology and Women" from Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (1989)
121. Grace Chang, "The Global Trade in Filipina Workers" from Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire (1997)
122. Cynthia Enloe, "Wielding Masculinity inside Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo: The Globalized Dynamics" (2007)

Chapter 10: Feminism and Imperialism in Postmodernity
Introduction
Postcolonial and Transnational Feminisms
Decolonizing Feminist Thought
Can the Subaltern Speak?
Diasporas and the Gender Politics of Postcolonial Space
Feminism and Religious Fundamentalisms
Queering Global Analyses
Transnational Feminist Organizing
Conclusion
Readings
123. Edward W. Said, from Orientalism (1978)
124. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses" (1984)
125. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (1985)
126. Trinh T. Minh-ha, "Infinite Layers/Third World?" (1989)
127. Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, "Postmodernism and Transnational Feminist Practices" from Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices (1994)
128. Fourth World Conference on Women, "Beijing Declaration" (1995)
129. Uma Narayan, "Introduction" to Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism (1997)
130. Greta Gaard, "Erotophobia and the Colonization of Queer(s)/Nature" (1997)
131. Ella Shohat, "After the Metanarratives of Liberation" from Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age (2001)
132. Lila Abu-Lughod, "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others" (2002)
133. Alison Symington, "From Tragedy and Injustice to Rights and Empowerment: Accountability in the Economic Realm" (2005)
134. Jyotsna Agnihotri Gupta, "Towards Transnational Feminisms" (2006)
135. Skye Brannon, "Fireweed" (2009)

Glossary
References